Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Bad Links Can Kick You Once You Are Down
Taking you back to the -60 thread I blogged about earlier. The thread is at Google Groups and it shows us a little of something that may be obvious but should be spoken about. Once you are penalized in Google or probably any other search engine for that matter, it is extremely hard to get back in. While you may be able to get away with bad links linking to your site before getting penalized, - GOOG Stock Tanks on comScore Reports of Decline of Paid Search Clicks
comScore came out with a report that showed Google's sponsored clicks, the basis for its advertising revenue, fell 7 percent. That spread fears that there might be some type of recession taking place. Why? Because retailers are pulling back on spending. Is that the case? Well we had comScore speak yesterday and they said the whole thing is blown out of proportion. James of comScore said: Google, is by design, committing to the user and - Minimum Bids at Yahoo Search Marketing Now a Thing of the Past
I broke the news last night with my Search Engine Land post named Minimum Bids In Yahoo About To Change. In short, the Yahoo Search Marketing search network will no longer have a fixed minimum bid of $0.10. It now has a quality metric: (1) Value - the number of bidders and their bid amounts in a particular keyword market (2) Quality - the relevance of keywords, or how frequently users click on the ads - IM-NY To Host Charity Event During SES New York
The Internet Marketers of New York, which I am a member of, is hosting a charity event during SES NY, in just a few weeks. The charity event takes place on March 18th at the Black Finn on 218 East 53rd Street at 8pm until about midnight. There is an entrance fee of $40 that will go, in its entirety to charity. The drinks are free and are being sponsored by Best of the Web.
SMX West Conference Recap:
- SEO & User Generated Content
Search engines love good content, but good content can take a lot of time to prepare. So why not turn to your users and visitors? User Generated Content -- UGC -- has the advantage of often being full of passion plus the "authors" who create it in turn may turn into marketers for your site. Learn more in this session. Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land Q&A Moderator: Chris Winfield, President and Co-Founder, - Search Engineers Q&A
Moderated by Danny Sullivan, the conference chairman. This will be primarily QA, so not everything will get covered as this format is more difficult to love blog than a traditional session. Nathan Buggia from Live Search makes a short presentation announce a new improvement to sitemaps. How they work today: strict hierarchy based. He uses MSN as an example and shows how the engines have come together to extend the protocol (sitemaps.org) to allow cross - Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior
Moderator: Gord Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro Q&A Moderator: Gillian Muessig, President, SEOmoz Short presentations from each panelists and then some panel discussion and mostly Q&A. Well, I am not covering the Q&A, so I guess this will be quick. First, Gord started. How do we use search as an extension of our working memory? Working memory is.... We have different types of memory. Long term memory, etc. Working memory is not unlimited, we only - In Depth with SEOmoz PRO
Session Summary Rand Fishkin leads a thorough walkthrough of more than 30 unique SEOmoz tools & services and how to leverage them for search engine marketing success. From Page Strength, to the Link Directories, to the brand new SEO Analytics Tool and beyond, Rand shows you how to get the most from all of the features inside the new SEOmoz PRO (formerly "Premium"). Speaker This is a sponsored session with Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder - Keyword Research Tools & Techniques
Speaker Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance.comModerator Detlev Johnson, Search ReturnWhat is keyword research? The processes of selecting keywords which are relevant to your site and are used by potential customers as query terms. Keyword research for paid and SEO are done differently.Find new concepts by using keyword terms when looking for keywordsThere are 3 stages of keyword research, start with brainstorming.Keyword brainstorming and discovery phase using multiple sources and toolsBrainstorming. When brainstorming, don't judge your words, - The Online Offline Synergy of Search
Moderated by Jeff Rohrs of Exact Target. First speaker is David Feldman from iProspect. He describes a study done by iProspect and Jupiter research of how Offline Channels influence search. 67% of searchers are influenced by offline advertising. The first step is to “walk down the hall†and plan together with the offline marketing folks. Of the 67% of the searchers that were influenced, 39% ended up main a purchase. Knowing this, you should “walk - SEO and Blogging
SEO & Blogging - Blogging can help SEO in a variety of ways. Blog posts are "syndicated," meaning your content -- and your links -- spread across the web. There are also dedicated blog search engines with readers you might be missing, if you're not blogging. This session introduces you to blogging and the SEO advantages it offers. Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land Q&A Moderator: Chris Winfield, President and Co-Founder, 10e20 Speakers: - SEO 2.0 For Web 2.0 Sites
Moderator: Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts Q&A Moderator: Rob Kerry, Editor, Sphinn.com Very large room making it seem like we are empty. First up is Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive. CSS is html addition that allows webmasters to control design parameters such as margins, fonts, links, colors and placement. CSS Advantages: - Speed - Decreases download time - Easier to control positioning element - CSS can easily communicate visited and unvisited links - Unraveling URLs & Demystifying Domains
Can you find the same page on your site using different URLs? That might cause you duplicate content issues. Does your content management system put out parameters that block crawling? Own multiple domains pointing at the same site? Are you 301 redirecting them or leaving canonicalization to chance? Confused on even how to pronounce canonicalization, in addition to now being worried about it? Moderator: Detlev Johnson, CEO, Search Return Q&A Moderator: John Marshall, CTO and - Reputation Monitoring and Management Through Search
Moderated by Jeff Rohrs of Exact Target, with Mike McDonald of Web Pro News doing the QA moderating. He introduces the panelists and hands it off to the first speaker. Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com will do a basic intro of what online reputation management is. Realizing that the perceived value of your brand is defined by information found on the internet, therefore requiring constant monitoring…†Why do it? 52% of individuals put their trust in - Will The Social Graph Change Search?
Will The Social Graph Change Search?- All eyes seem to be on the growth of Facebook and how it is using the "social graph" -- i.e., the social data showing who is connected with whom -- to build a business. Can social data be applied to improve search? If so, would it shake up the current search space? And what impact might it have on SEO? This session explores the hype, reality and possibilities. Moderator: - SEO & Social Media Marketing
Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land Q&A Moderator: Brent Csutoras, Online Marketing Specialist, BrentCsutoras.com Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz, Inc. is up first. Most the audience knows who SEOmoz is before coming to the conference. SEOmoz does a lot of social media, and the company has been built up on this model. He has 55 slides in nine minutes... What is social media marketing? Before we ask that, what are the goals of online - Search Engine Friendly Web Design
"I'm not designing my site for search engines," is a common designer objection to SEO suggestions. But when search engines collectively have more users than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, how can you afford to ignore how they interact with your site. Search engines are like the third major browser, and if your site breaks for them, it breaks for all those potential visitors from search engines. Search engine friendly sites aren't hard to create - The Personalized Search Revolution
Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land Q&A Moderator: Fionn Downhill, CEO and President, Elixir Systems Yahoo had to go, family emergency. So first up is... Phil McDonnell, Software Engineer, Google, Inc. is first up. Google uses web history, it is great at disambiguating what the searcher wants. It finds results most relevant for a user and provides subtle ranking changes. He explains they are not going to drastically change the search results, it - Keynote: Louis Monier - Past, Present & Future of Search
Louis Monier: Past, Present & Future Of Search - Cuill Vice President of Products Monier (formerly with Google, eBay and AltaVista) will describe efforts at Cuill to set new standards in search, in addition to providing perspective on developments in the field. The primary thing is that people need to find information on the web. Let's look at the past. Human activities linked to one network that has never been achieved before. This is on - SMX Search Bowl Pictures & Videos
Right now, underway is the SMX Search Bowl. Where you have Danny asking questions created by the Search Engine Land team to the various teams. The teams include Ask.com, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and the SEM All Star team. Here are those images and videos: Hope to post the list of questions later. FYI - Google won by a landslide. Update, the questions have been posted at Search Engine Land.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- How Depending on Quality Content Can Actually Cost You Links, Sphinn
- A Thumbs Down Kills Stumble Traffic, Sphinn
- EFT Option Now Available for Hong Kong AdSense Publishers, WebmasterWorld
- Google Showing weather.com's ODP description (ignoring NO ODP tag), Search Engine Watch Forums
- Selecting Your SEO Competition : Thinking Young, Sphinn
- Yahoo Buzz - think it will succeed?, DigitalPoint Forums
