Today's post will be relatively short as it's currently 1:18 am and I have a session tomorrow morning at 9:00am at the Search Engine Strategies Conference here in beautiful San Jose. The sessions today have been excellent with speakers from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com and a number of notable SEO firms shedding light on some very interesting topics and research. That however, will have to wait until tomorrow. :)

(don't worry - I've been taking notes)



4th place engine Ask.com definitely deserves a very special mention and thank you for hosting an excellent party.



Thanks Ask.com for an awesome time !!!

At 2:19am on a Wednesday morning here in San Jose I sit to type a quick post on today's going-on at SES San Jose. As today was the day I spoke at my first SES conference (fortunately on a topic I know well - ranking across the three major search engines simultaneously) followed by a number of interesting sessions, networking and of course, the infamous Google Dance, I won't have time to write a long and thorough post on all the sessions however I should note that I have been taking notes and will be posting more information starting on Thursday regarding the sessions and at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/ses/ I will be posting more information on the session I spoke at.



That said, there are a couple interesting quotes that I feel are worth staying up and extra few minutes to post. Everything else couldn't be done justice in the time I have before falling asleep. And here are the quotes:

Many of you may be wondering why the title includes the phrase "Drinks For Links". Veteran SEO and all-round good guy Andy Beal coined the phrase drinks for links (implying that drinks could be the payment for links to a website). He was of course speaking "tongue in cheek" however I found the phrase itself so amusing that here I must use the term "drinks for links" pointing his website in hopes that the strength of the link may in fact help him secure the phrase itself on his homepage.

Another great quote overheard here at SES San Jose was put forth by Google's Peter Norvig when referring to Web 2.0. In it he referred to Sturgeon's Law as it applies to Web 2.0. The origin of Sturgeon's Law as defined in wikipedia places Sturgeon in a panel discussion with an English Literature professor. The professor read a few selected passages of "purple prose" from popular science fiction works, and declared "90% of this Science Fiction is crap." Sturgeon replied "90% of everything is crap." After referencing the origin Norvig went on to say:

"90% of everything is crap and that's certainly true with Web 2.0."

While true it's still amusing. :)



Unfortunately much of what I have been able to cover during the actual conference in the blog thus far has been "fluff". I can assure you all that I have been attending many sessions and will be posting information on these sessions and any important information from them on Thursday/Friday. The downside to attending the SES Conference is that I will need to be alert tomorrow to insure that I can best serve my clients with the information I've gathered and to serve you, the valued readers, who will get that main points of the sessions I've attended, you'll just have to wait a couple days for it (don't worry, it's worth it :)



As a final note, best of luck to Andy. I hope you rank for the phrase "drinks for links". ;)

While I unfortunately had to fly back from San Jose a day earlier than the conference ended it was a truly enjoyable and enriching experience. Having the opportunity to speak at the conference was a pleasure and I would like to extend special thanks to Danny for the opportunity.



Of course there were many sessions to attend and much information gained and/or reinforced. No matter how much you might know there's always a different take on what's going on and the SES attendees were certainly a wealth of differing opinions, all of them valid in some way.



The main drawback I found at this conference was that there were 5 sessions going on at a time and I only have one body to attend them in. I supposes that's why they hold more than one. :) I look forward to SES New York.



Here are the sessions I attended and the Coles-notes version of what I brought back:



Search Behaviour Research Update :

I attended this one primarily to hear David Williams of 360i. I am a big fan of much of the research they do into PPC conversion rates based on generic vs. branded keywords. I was pleased to find out that their second white paper of the subject is out and can be downloaded from their site at http://www.360i.com/brandwhitepaper/register-to-download.php. Highly recommended reading.



Some interesting point from notes from the session:

• Statistically searches linger briefly on the top sponsored listings prior to moving to the organic results. Properly worded this can be a powerful tool for traffic.
• The human eye visits first the top sponsored spots, then the top natural listings followed by the top paid listing on the left and then the 7th or 8th sponsodered listing! This means that you will get more visibility bidding to be number 7 than number 4 in that paid results.
• MSN users search further down in the results than either of the other two major engines.
• 44% of all conversions come from paid results for consumer good whereas B to B focus on the top organic listings (likely due to an increased awareness of the "highest bidder" nature the paid listings have).
• 62% of searchers will only click on results from the first page and then either switch engines or phrases.
• 36% of people believe that the top ranked companies are leaders in their field.

Branding And Search:

• 79% of searchers will discover a new brand through search.
• 56% of searchers will look at an unintended site provided it shows up in the search results.
• 21% of searchers will consider a new brand if it shows up in the results.
• Targeting "loosly related" phrases can be good for brand awareness but the cost must be low per click or easy to target organically.
• People have "disposable time" and spend much of that online. Entertain them during this period and they will stay on your site and become for familiar with your brand.
• Search holds power as it grabs people when they are looking to complete a task. The job of the online marketer is to determine the task and insure that it is fulfilled on your site.
• As opposed to offline, online the user is in complete control of their experience. Make that experience helpful and/or entertaining and you will have their business. Fail in this and they will go to the next search result.
• In the PPC world, unclicked impressions are a good thing. This is a free branding opportunity. (I have to admit that I never thought of it that way)
• Increases in conversion from PPC ads tend to increase when combined with TV (and logically other) offline ads.
• A sample site realized a 28% increase in conversion from organic SEO when PPC was added.

The Search Laboratories :



This session didn't provide much in the way of specific useful insight however it was very entertaining and was the source of one of my favorite quotes by Google's Peter Norvig.



One thing that was reinforced strongly was the need to utilize the Yahoo! social network such at Flickr and del.icio.us to insure that over time the site does well on Yahoo! search. Of course this wasn't specifically indicated by the fine folks at Yahoo! but those of us that could read between the lines certainly could see it.



Can You Please Them All? :



I didn't get the opportunity to take notes during this session as I was too busy speaking and answering questions. :) I will soon be posting resources and information on the topic at http://ses.beanstalk-inc.com/.



Successful Site Architecture :



The majority of what I got from this session was some great tools (highly recommended to check out by-the-way). They are:

• www.se-spider.com
• www.rexswain.com

And a FireFox extension I hadn't yet installed (shocking): XRay

There are MANY online tools for automatically creating a Google sitemap. Some are good, some are ... well ... not so good. Generally the biggest frustration with many of these free tools (and I try to remember the cost before I complain) is the number of pages and the depth of the pages it will include.



For those who may not be interested in installing scripts, etc. there's a handy sitemap generator that's free as long as you're site is less than 500 pages. You can set the default change frequency and priority however you'll have to go in manually after-the-fact and update the values as appropriate. For instance, not every page on your site should be set at a priority of 1.0. You may love your site but there are apges that are higher in priority than others. To use the Beanstalk site as an example, the only pages on the site with a 1.0 priority are the homepage, our blog homepage, our guarantee page, and our main services page. The rest of the pages fall between 0.1 and 0.9 (of course). Similarly, not every page changes with the same frequency. Our blog and homepage are set at a change freqency of "daily" whereas the majority of other pages are set at either monthly or yearly as they change far less often.



I only mention these things to point out that simply running the generator and posting the results isn't enough. You'll actually have to go into it and adjust some of the values. You can find this generator at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/. Once the map is made you can visit the Google Sitemaps page and submit it. You'll be insured that all the pages of your site are found and they also provide some interesting stats too if you verify your site.

Today Beanstalk CEO Dave Davies published an article on de-optimization. The article covers how to remove the tell-tale signs of SEO from your site while maintaining and even improving our your search engine rankings.



The article can be found on the Beanstalk website here.

I found on the SiteProNews website an interesting read published by Apollo Hosting's Eric Lester. The article chronicles the latest issues encountered over at the Googleplex regarding a single individual and his ability to add billions of pages into Google's index in a matter of weeks, many of which ranked well (and no, the article doesn't outline how to do it). ;)



Ironically, the revenue being generated for this individual came from ... you guessed it ... AdSense.



You can read the article on the SiteProNews homepage at http://www.sitepronews.com/.

As those of you who visit here often will know, Beanstalk's Dave Davies will be speaking at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose on August 8th. He will be speaking with SEO's Aaron Wall (SEOBook.com) and Mike Murray (FathomSEO.com) about ranking highly on the big three search engines, whether it's actually possible and how to decide when it's not worth it.



We have now set up a resource section on our site for this and future Strategies Conferences at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/ses/. This page will be filled with information pertaining to our session and additional information from the conference as it approaches.

There's a great article on the ISEDB website by Frederick Townes of W3 EDGE on SEO and semantics. The article covers the importance of understanding semantics for SEO's and those wishing to not just rank highly but to maintain those rankings.



An important point not missed on Frederick was the significance of where the search engines are headed, not jsut where they are. In the article Mr. Townes notes the long tems goals/purpose of the search engines and the importance that proper semantics play in how their algorithms do and increasing will play in how websites rank.



You can read the full article on the ISEDB website at http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1491/.

Well, as if controlling what's you see on the Internet wasn't enough Google is now working to control how you eat. With numerous launches of new products it was only a matter of time until they found a way to tie into not just our hearts, but also our stomachs.



Google Fridge is just this step. And how much for this new item that both cools and heats food? A mere $179.50 (plus $18 shipping).



So what's the catch?



Well, the catch is that it was a one-off on eBay and unfortunately for us and our location up here in the Great White North (thus running searches with the criteria "Available To Canada") we missed it (I personally would have paid more than $180 for this one). You can check out one of Google's fridges on the eBay website here.



If nothing else you'll get a glimpse of what the staff of Google get as a perk beside their desks (of course when I type "perk" what I mean is "a cheap way to keep you at their desks rather than wasting time traveling to the cafeteria ;).