SMX Summary
The Search Marketing Expo in California last week was a very insightful experience. Now that it’s snowing and freezing, I’d like to go back and do it all again. I guess the next best thing is to summarize my week at SMX and dream of warmer days.
The main topics of the sessions I attended were blended search, video and images, local search, link building, social media, and blogging. Although all of these topics might not apply to your site, there was at least something that we can apply to every one of our client’s programs.
In my blog from day one on blended search and link building strategies, I explained blended search in more detail. This certainly applies to every client because blended search affects the search results. No longer are the results just organic listings to pages on the web. Now you see links to video, images, blogs, news articles, maps for local businesses, and more. This change in how the major engines display their results will cause an evolution in how we market your site. Be ready for exciting new ideas on creating blogs, optimizing video and images, writing news stories, and more to help get more exposure for your site and bring that great targeted traffic that turns into customers!
I learned more about video and images, and how they can be beneficial in bringing qualified traffic to your site. If you’ve considered a video that you’d like to post on your site, or if you already have video, let’s talk about ways to get that video to rank better so your potential clients and customers have a better chance of finding your site and not your competition. Behind the scenes, we will be optimizing your images to better position your site as well. Some of our clients will notice an increase in traffic as a result. Video and images are a great way to bring traffic that you might not have considered before.
When it comes to local search, this is a hot topic. Did you know that 1/3 of all search queries are local in intention? If you have a physical location, you can’t overlook having your site listed in all the local search engines and data aggregators. Even if you do business nationally or internationally, you’d be surprised how a local listing may still help increase your sites rankings, traffic, and visibility. If you don’t already have a local search program with us, ask us how we can improve your visibility and traffic through local search.
Link building was probably the most discussed topic of the week. I also mentioned some key points in my blog from day one on link building. This is one of those strategies that is always evolving as search engines, users, and marketers all try to find and deliver the highest quality information possible. It is conferences like this that keep us up to date with the most recent developments and techniques used for research and link building. As with everything else search and internet related, what we did 2 years ago, or even a few months ago may not be as effective today. New theories of what a good link is will help us to find better links for our client’s sites and bring them more qualified traffic.
When someone mentions social media, the typical mixed emotions about Facebook, MySpace, and similar sites surface. But social media is more than just a bunch of teenagers gabbing on their MySpace page about nonsense. It’s the idea that you are more likely to visit a site based on a recommendation of a “friend” or someone who has similar interests. So social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Furl, StumbleUpon, and many more are something to be aware of.
Lastly, blogging was also an interesting topic. It seems that more people are blogging every day, and with that, a lot of theories, tips and tricks have popped up regarding how to blog to improve your site rankings. The bottom line is, create a blog on your site only if it is something your users want to see. Blogging should be done on other sites to share valuable information and link back to your site with the main focus in driving more traffic.
All in all, the conference was a great success in terms of gaining new knowledge and keeping on the cutting edge of our industry. We look forward to bringing our clients continued success.
And I talked to the Google engineers personally and they promised that all your rankings will be boosted to #1 immediately. ;o)