Another great SEO conference in snowy Chicago this year. Well attended by some of the premier names in the SEO industry including Bruce Clay, Byron White, Matt Von Wagoner, Barbera Coll, Dan Siroker, Rebecca Lieb, Bryan Eisenberg and Stoney deGeyter.
 |
 |
| Bruce Clay getting interviewed on Webmaster Radio. That's not coffee they're drinking..... |
The Black Hat vs. White Hat panel. Very lively - and all the Google folks sat in the back taking notes ! |
 |
 |
| Mike The Internet Guy gave an over the top technical presentation on Local Search Analytics. |
Some of the analytics pros said that initial testing shows Bing searches are converting better. |
The themes this year included how to respond to the new 'Personalization / Customization of search results that Google just launched. (and the expectation that all the others will be following soon) This changes things quite a bit as the old fashioned Rank Checker reports will become irrelevent. Dr.Phil Mui from Google Analytics had lots of interesting comments on how this improves search results for everyone. Less overall traffic but better conversion rates. (less irrelavent traffic)
Click here for the Google topic on Search Customization.
Overall, there was a solid consensus that SEO professionals should focus on Convertability and ROI, not just page rankings. Some of the most valuable sessions focused on convertability - make the most of visitors to your site.
There was a tremendoud presentation by Dan Siroker. He manages the Obama for President website and he shared how they were able to dramatically increase online contributions just by tweaking the content and call to action buttons on the campaign website. Hint: notice how Dell and Amazon do it.....
SES presents their SEO Conferences in various locations globally and we highly recommend registering early as good discounts are usually available.
