Some say that “black hat” search marketers will do anything to gain a top ranking and others argue that even “white hat” marketers who embrace ethical search engine optimization practices are ultimately trying to game the search ranking system. Are white hats being naive? Are black hats failing to see the long-term picture? This session will include an exploration of the latest black and white issues, with lots of time for dialog and discussion.
Moderator:
Speakers:
- Greg Boser, President, WebGuerrilla LLC
- Todd Friesen, Director of Search Engine Optimization, Range Online
- Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
- David Naylor, SEO, Bronco
- Jill Whalen, CEO, High Rankings
Notes:
- No Presentations will be given. It is a packed session here at SES. Quite a rowdy crowd. The discussion will be town hall format.
- Definition of Black Hat -
- Bruce Clay: The search engines define what it is. Most white hats play in the middle; gray hats play on the edge; black hats focus out of bounds
- Jill Whalen: Attempting to deceive the search engines
- Definition of White Hat -
- Todd Friesen: He agrees with Jill’s assessment but brings up the verticals differences
- Greg Boser: White hat is defined as SEO with no game
- Dave Naylor: Black Hat is like driving a Porsche in competitive industries
- Is there risk in both white and black hat techniques?
- Jill says work hard to make a great website
- Bruce says if you are working on your site and Matt Cutts comes up behind you, you close your notebook- you are at risk. White Hats color within the lines. Since search engines don’t publish the rules some white hat techniques can appear as black hat even though legitimate.
- Todd agrees.
- Greg indicates that most of the black hat techniques are server on his personal site not clients.
- Jill brings up the idea of incompetent SEOs and the fact that they are the worse group. The crowd agrees!
- The topic has turned to buying links and what that really means to the search engines. Dave says what does the footprint of a specific tactic look like. Black hats are always testing the limits of link building.
- Bruce agrees if we spend time working on a project we need to know what the rules are. The question becomes do we take the time or do we buy links.
- Jill chimes in on the rules…don’t read Google’s guidelines she says it’s common sense. We are all adults. Todd disagrees…this is not common sense.
Questions now coming from the floor.
- Will links in RSS feeds help?
The panel defines it as really simple spam (LOL) This could be a dangerous technique.
- Using widgets effectively could be helpful.
- The owner of SEOChamp.com chimes in about how black hat techniques are coming from overseas. He really is passionate about how there are 70 parts to the Google algorithm. Matt chimes in at over 200.
- The challenges between a 1 month vs long term plan. Ticket brokers buy links and it is a tough space.
- Greg says look at the competitive research and then explain what can be dome and what is the risk tolerance.
- Affiliate marketing does get a bad rap sometimes. Todd is a big fan of making money. Certain verticals have a hard time following the rules to compete.
- Bruce says you should take time to build credibility over time and that an aggressive link building techniques can be risky.
- The BMW brand who was penalized for 72 hours shows that the bigger the brand the easier it is to ask for forgiveness. The interesting fact was they got tons of blog links fro the PR. The BMW SEO work was amateur at best.
- Now Matt Cutts has asked for the mic: His disclaimer is when we remove sites, they are removed based on the facts not the name. Matt indicates that there is a large subsection of a major newspaper that is currently banned and has been banned for some time. Google does not talk about what sites big or small that they take out. Matt says don’t take the risk.
- If you are banned you can ask for re-inclusion. Greg says look at the entire space when you choose to ban sites.
Social Media Optimization Session at SES San Jose
Community-built websites like Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft Tagspace, and Wikipedia, and new sites allowing content to be shared through “tagging” can be a great way to tap into links and search-driven traffic. This session looks at some social media services and strategies to tap into them in an appropriate manner. Hear how-to’s and tips from search marketers who have discovered what works today and what to avoid.
Moderator:
Speakers:
- Kendall opens talking about how we should be looking at Integration vs. Synchronization.
- “Digital” is a trend that means more today than ever. Creativity flows into great ideas.
- Social Media come of Age: Consumers voice is now heard. Smart marketers are planning to tap into this buzz. Consumers are big time influencers and smart marketers are giving them tools to use. Today blogs are showing up in integrated media plans as well.
- Integration and Social Media Case Study from Special K - Various media distribution with a call to action focused on search. Search the Special K Challenge for more details.
- Ning.com is a new creative social network creation tool with tons of customization
- sCRM - a new term integrating Social Media and CRM collaboration; surveys, polls, storytelling and the propagation of brand
- SocialSpark: Blog network - A Social Marketing Network that provides blog marketing, social media marketing, word of mouth marketing, conversational marketing through an online blog advertising service.
- She has a focus on Social Media from a SEO perspective
- Liana says make sure you are talking to the audience in a way that connects you as friends. If you look like a marketer you will be outed.
- Share in a way that is conversational. They will spread the word for you if your conversation is positive.
- Social Media gives the consumer the control and is huge.
- Key understanding include who is in your target market and what are they doing
- Liana tells us to read “Groundswell” by Charlene Li
- The 2 biggest areas in social media are video and photo sharing
- Other areas include social bookmarking, social sharing, etc…
Many companies find it difficult to use web analytics for more than reporting and ad-hoc investigations. By defining requirements, roles, tasks, and benchmarks, an efficient process replaces one-off requests. This session covers practical work flows that you can quickly implement to see improved, consistent returns from your data. This sets a platform for experience-based learning that helps a company to set standards, anticipate a build-cycle or campaign refresh, and prioritize search marketing efforts.
Moderator:
Speakers:
- Craig Danuloff, Founder & President, Commerce360, Inc.
- Brian Cosgrove, Site-Side Analytics Engineer, AvenueA / Razorfish
- Heather Dougherty, Analyst, Hitwise
- Michael Stebbins, CEO & Founder, Market Motive
- Brett Crosby, Senior Manager, Google Analytics, Google
- One SEO implementation idea is to categorize areas of your website pages to analyze by sectional intent
- Filtering is also a great way to look through statistics
- Requests today are almost all data-driven. How do we make sure the data is relevant? Web analysts are good at what they do…let them do it. Analyst insights are funneled throughout organizations and various roles. The key role that seems to be missing in the operations/project manager. This person is key in allowing the time and place to install process. Here is an example of a process: 4 weeks of analysis > 2 weeks in business requirements > then the project manager takes over > analyst waits for the data usually focusing on other projects.
- Specific Reports
- How many pages on my site are paid landing pages?
- Make sure your SEO pages are also effective in conversion
- Create user bench marks
- Install platforms correctly to ensure great data
- Identify actions you can take
- Coordinate resources
- Separate analytics cycles
- She indicates that she will be focusing on some of HitWise’s new tools
- Her first point is to stay ahead of trends
- Understanding reliance on paid vs. organic search within specific industries
- Also understanding the same for any competitor websites
- Determine which search engines are sending traffic to competitors
- Measure the impact of brand awareness upon competitors organic traffic
- Compare where people are searching to where they are clicking
- Improve keyword list
- Identify who is doing well in sponsored listings and learn from their copy
- Learn from the best optimizers (or partners)
- Determine user intent - purchase or news?
- Integrate search findings across your organization
Notes from Michael Stebbins
- What’s in your data - Make sure you are collecting the right data - look at the trends
- Bounce Rate
- Average Time
- Page Views
- Conversion Ratio
- Cost of Visitor
- Revenue per Visitor
- What is your process - The Grim Reaper
- Tactical Question: Which 10% are my ads not performing
- Possible Answers: High cost, bad roi, low engagement, low conversion
- If yes, then discontinue
- pull data - look at ROI or ROAS
- look at the highest cost campaign - start at the bottom
- check sample size
- and review the data points above
- review and create action plan
- Look at www.customerintent.com
- Tools
- Check commercial intent tool: adCenter labs by Microsoft
- Google adWords keyword tool
- Back to Adcenter to look at demographic and seasonal data - Messaging (See Persuasion Architecture from Bryan Eisenberg)
- Look at Google Ad Planner tool
- Create 3 copies of ads to rotate evenly - 1 copy of the challenger
- 4 years ago today Google approached Urchin at the Google Dance about acquiring them
- Check the book “a/b Always Be Testing”
- What is the history of Web Analytics
- Today analytics is in the forefront of business thought leadership wanting their own report.
Eastern and Western companies are rushing to get a piece of the action internationally, but does anyone really understand the marketplace? In this session, we are learning how to separate hype from actionable activity. Leading experts with “feet on the street” in the U.K. and the rest of Europe discuss the marketplace and its impact on the world.
Moderator:
Speakers:
- David Radicke, Consultant, SEO, SEM, Web Analytics, Radicke eCommerce
- Anders Hjorth, Research & Production Director, Relevant Traffic Europe
- Marie Dumesnil, Co-chair, SES Paris, Director of E-Commerce, Viking River Cruises
- Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Notes:
- Google is the only player in Germany dominating the market with 96% of all search traffic
- In polling the audience, most marketers indicated that it was relatively straight forward to optimize search for the International market
- Cross reference the primary search language by country
- Google, MSN Live number 2 followed by Yahoo across all of Europe
- There are a few local search engines that are specific to each country. very low % of traffic
- It is critical to do accurate translations!
- Use an international hosting provider with a top level domain
