Moderator: Detlev Johnson, CEO, SearchReturn
Larry Cornett, VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! is first up to talk about Search Monkeys.
Search today is limited choice, personalization, visibility, influence and limited innovation. But the web is evolving and search must also evolve.
Search Monkey: - Publishers Collaborate - Meaning behind the link - Richer experience - Relevant and personal - Faster task completion
He then shows Yelp and how the search monkey relates to that.
Monkey breaks down into a media portion, task links, structured data and sharing.
Two types of search monkey apps: (1) Abstract results, like Yelp (2) Infobar, a bar of info below the result. The infobar can be for any site, not just urs (such as wikipedia).
SearchMonkey Template evolves to a new template.
How it works? - Structure data - Tell users about it - Build the app (he explains how, but if your a developer go to http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/.
He then shows a few more examples of those Monkeys.
Here is the gallery of Monkeys: gallery.search.yahoo.com
Why should you care? - More control over your results - Help you users find you - Higher quality traffic - CTR lift as high as 15% - Competitors are doing it already
Eric Lander, Associate Editor, Search Engine Journal is next up to talk about Google Sitelinks.
What are sitelinks? Enhanced links under the first search result.
Google does this because they want to improve the user experience, help users navigate to your site and refine results.
When do they show up? company brands, important names, proprietary phrases. Also for reptitive behavior searches and Google Analytics.
Sitelinks are showing up more often for more queries all the time.
Fundamentals: - They are totally automated - Sitelinks use an independent algorithm - Always appear in same order - You'll want to use webmaster tools - Keep the right mind and set or you'll go crazy
In Webmaster Tools you can control Sitelinks by tell them why you want a link to be removed.
Blocking Sitelinks: - 90 day blocking period -- You can block unblock easily -- Count resets if viewing sitelinks page -- Problem with multiple user accounts -- About two week turnaround - Google will show 4 or more, so you need more than 3
Case Sensitivity & Sitelinks: - Apple is a good example
Timing: - Sitelinks and Current Events -- They dont get along -- But you can work some angles to get it working -- His tests are about 60 days old, so add a "current events" sitelinks so you can work with it over time
Best Practices: - SEO basics - Internal page strength - Use webmaster tools to learn the reports and export links - Sitelinks are Spider based and robots.txt apply and careful with your 301 use. - XML Sitemaps Tests -- Kate Morris' test with Rate Genius -- Using the priority level had an impact - Tagging and Social -- Technorati -- FriendFeed -- Twitter -- MyBlogLog
Order of Importance: - Internal links (your navigation) - External links (do tagging) - Webmaster Tools
Benu Aggarwal, President and Founder, Milestone Internet Marketing is last up.
She starts off showing universal search examples. She then shows Sitelinks. Moves into local results. She recommends you own your business in Google Local, so you get your direct link in Google universal search.
Social Media is impacting your SERPs from UGC, blogs, videos, Twitter, etc.
Define your web site taxonomy, architecture and foundation.
Optimize your pages for local search.
Go after those video results.
Flickr is great she said.
Social bookmarking sites, digg, etc.
Sorry, market spiking down to under 500, a bit distracted now...
