All good things come to an end and so it was with great sadness that I began my last day of SES London 2011. My schedule for the day was perhaps the most structured one I had in my whole week at SES London in that it actually followed a pattern as you will see.
Video Search Optimisation
Are You Using Video? Are You Optimising for It?
First off was Video Search Optmization with Moderator: Sean Hargrave, Freelance Journalist and Speakers: Paul Carff, Sr. Developer Advocate, Google Inc. & Will Critchlow, Founder and Chief Strategist, Distilled & Jonathan Allen, Director, SearchEngineWatch
Sean had little intros for each speaker but only his one for Paul Carff was a memorable one. Which one of the following is not true:
- Did he brew his own beer
- Did he pilot a nuclear sub
- Has he fought off 3 volcanos
If you answered 3 you are partly correct he fought off only TWO volcanoes. Highlights from the rest of the session were;
- Youtube – 2nd largest site for searches in the world with 2 billion video streams per day in makes up 70% of all online viewing in US
- Video is fastest growing medium in history and 52% of people took action as a result of watching a a video online. The average person has 2.5x more attention span on video rather than tv.
- Search doesn’t work for some things. Sometimes video is better because people discover content through related videos.
A great example he gave was the recent stretch of Old Spice videos. The actor, Isaiah Mustafa also did a series of personal videos where he kept reading scripts sent to an email address and then they put them on You Tube for a personalized touch. You Tube is introducing their Lean Back experience which will be like “Pandora for video.” Search for one video and let Lean Back do the rest.
Tools like Speechpad allow you to add a transcript to your videos.
When doing an interview your subject should be framed slightly to the left or right of screen looking off camera with BOTH eyes visible and you should have a good background.
Twittering for Dollars
Ralph Tegtmeier (aka Fantomaster) and Mike Grehan at SES London 2011
Next up was Twitter Nation and Automation with Moderator: Matt McGowan, Managing Director, Americas, Incisive Media and Speakers: Ralph Tegtmeier, aka, Fantomaster, Tracy Falke, Director of Content, Search, Social Media & Emerging Technology, Powershift Media Group & Jonathan Allen, Director, SearchEngineWatch
The session started off with only two of our speakers present and they each had there own presentation style. First off was Jonathan Allen who said he was assuming the White Hat side. He stood behind the podium and gave a very visual presentation. Next up was Ralph Tegtmeier aka Fantomaster (Li: Fantomaster is a God, at least in our search industry he is!) and in taking the Black Hat side, he stayed routed in his chair and gave more of an audio presentation. It was very interesting to see the two different sides complement each other so well. By the time Tracy Falke had arrived we had already gotten a lot of info and interestingly enough she neither sat nor used the podium but rather walked back and forth across the stage to give her presentation.
Interesting points from this session were:
- Twitter is and can be narcissistic
- Make sure you are recommending other accounts to follow as they will more than likely return the favor to their followers.
- Different peaks times to tweet: lunch time in 3 or 4 different zones as an example
- Choosing right time to schedule tweets so they index faster
- Klout – use it but don’t obsess on it too much. Look for alternatives like Peer Index
- You should never automate latching on to followers. Be careful who you follow.
- Be as human as you can, stay away from using bots.
- Put only promotional tweets on autopilot, but if all your tweets are self promotion the only one left listening will be you.
- Design your twitter personality. Not everyone will read your tweets, don’t let that discourage you.
- If you want to tweets to be retweeted, make them short. 140 characters fills up pretty fast. A better way to do this is to write headlines instead of sentences.
- Tools like Socialoomph.com and Pluggio.com are very useful for spinning your tweets but if you use them wrongly you will shoot yourself in the foot.
Engaging on Facebook & Being Successful
Massimo Burgio & Liana "Li" Evans on Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics
Moving right along next up was Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics with Moderator: Lisa Buyer, President & CEO, The Buyer Group and Speakers: Liana Evans, Author and Co-Founder & CEO, Da Li Social Integrated Marketing & Massimo Burgio, Founder & Chief Strategist, Global Search Interactive
As with my colleague Eric’s post from the OMS session, I am not going to cover Li’s portion of the presentation as I too feel she would do a much better job at it. I will agree with Eric that for anyone starting an account her tips are a very valuable and highly recommended resource. As to Massimo’s presentation, he spoke about you should continue to push the envelope on facebook since since it’s rules of conduct are very broad. He also had one of the highlights of the day by showing the following video.
And entertaining session that I am sure we will be going at more depth in later posts or one you can catch at SES New York in March.
Optimizing Your Digital Assests
My last session of SES London was Digital Asset Optimisation with Moderator: Jon Myers, SES Advisory Board & Head of Account Management, Yahoo! UK & Ireland and Speakers: Paddy Moogan, SEO Consultant, Distilled & Jim Yu, Founder & CEO, BrightEdge
Digital Asset Optimisation is constantly evolving and merging. One thing SEO’s have to be aware of is how to utilize page assets offline. What this will allow is universal search can now index, rank and obtain traffic from a greater number of sources. First up was Paddy Moogan who made a point to let everyone know that his name is Paddy not “Patty” as the SES magazine stated.
Highlights from the presentation include:
- Look what you have got offline
- Make all your content crawlable
- Making your content bring you traffic
- Universal search and the integration of vertical silos has meant we have other options than just organic listings to get traffic.
- News feeds, images, videos are all channels to obtain more traffic
- Most companies don’t use offline assets
- Optimise YouTube channel. Closed caption files and use keywords in your filename
- For Images make sure you are adding watermarks and links in your images
Process on how to write and rank news pieces
- Publish brief “breaking news” article
- Promote immediately to get citations (email, social, RSS)
- Update article with full content
Make sure you are creating new content optimized for freshness. Insert news, blogs posts and twitter feeds on pages. Also refresh older pages every few months
Here we are at the end and what a ride it was. Some amazing sessions and speakers, new friends and lots of good times. A lot of information that had our, well at least my head spinning with lots of new knowledge and techniques. I actually can’t wait to put some of these to work and see how much my knowledge base will improve.
