PubCon South Day 1 Recap

Jack Leblond — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:42:03 +0000

I may be the world’s worst note taker – I always have good intentions, and as the speakers are talking everything seems so clear to me, I just jot down a few words and phrases…thinking that later I’ll remember what the hell was going on when I wrote it down. I never can remember, I should by a recorder. This is a very brief, quick & dirty recap. If you want more info, well – fly to Austin next time. Just kidding – there are about 400 people in attendance, finding a detailed review should not be a problem.

Here a tweet, there a tweet, everywhere a tweet tweet

Day one of PubCon was like a huge Tweet-up. Every session I was in somehow managed to bring it. If the presenters didn’t then an attendee or two would ask a question about how it would apply to whatever was being discussed. I don’t know how many people were tweeting from the crowd, but #PubCon was trending on Twitter for a good part of the day, and mid afternoon the two T-1s feeding the data to the show were overwhelmed and people had a hard time getting a good connection.

Opening Remarks

Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki kicked things off with a fireside chat – complete with a virtual fireplace courtesy of Chris’ laptop. Chris started out asking about Guy’s blogging and past jobs – Guy would have none of that and quickly was pronouncing his love of Twitter. Guy said he wishes that email would be limited to 140 characters (yikes! inbox zero might never happen again). Twitter is a weapon. Guys big thing these days is AllTop, he uses twitter to drive tons of traffic to it. Uses tools like TweetDeck and TwitterHawk he is able to track down people talking about things he has covered at Alltop and send them a link to it – it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it is pretty cool. [side note: I need to investigate this tool more and tell you all about it]. Guy is a very entertaining speaker. If you want more details, check out the OutSpoken Media pages Guy Kawasaki Fireside Chat With Chris Brogan

In Houes SEO – Working within the walls

The session got off to a rough start, 2 of the 3 panelists took ill. Thankfully, some quick work by the PubCon folks filled the slots just as the opening bell rang. I wish I could remember names – sorry.

Informal poll of the crowd showed that most just wanted to know what to do and how to start – presenters obliged and modified slides on the fly. Nice.

First presenter gave three quick tips

Keep reports simple.
She suggested using colors; red, green & yellow. This allows execs to quickly scan and pause on are they want more information on, helps to not bog them down with overload.
Be consistent in your reporting, good or bad.
If things are going great, everyone will be happy. If not going well, honesty will build your credibility, especially when your corrective actions fix whatever happened.
Make your tasks actionable.
Set goals that can be achieved, make progress

When beginning an in house SEO program, many think you need buy in from top down, presenters say the opposite is needed. When you start making changes and “monkeying” with pages, the front-line troops will be with you or against you and either way the bosses will hear about it.

Plan of attack should be 1) make a list of changes, 2) implement quick fixes, 3) audit results and 4) repeat as needed.

You need to know where traffic comes from, and what are searches looking for; brand terms, or generic terms – determine which to work on first. Some sites do well for brand and not generic, and visa-versa.

SEO Landscape

Brett Tabke and others painted an interesting picture of the future of SEO. It certainly is not dead. Nobody went into the how/where but it was clear that mobile search will be huge and we better get it figured out, and soon. Geo-targeting will be an issue to contend with, even regionally. Brett showed two google results pages, one from Dallas, the other for Austin. The search for “longhorn” place the University of Texas at #1 in Austin, but further down in Dallas. Lastly, SERP Data Extraction is something that google is doing that we just can’t decode. Larger sites are ranking well for date buried deep inside – just because google thinks it should.

Conversion Optimization Testing

Great session by Taylor Pratt, Bill Leake and Brian Massey how what and how to test on your pages. Before you can test, you must know what your call to action is – what do you want them to do? Figuring out WHO your visitors are will make it easier to know what types of things will work best for them. However, be prepared to test everything. Background & font colors, link text, buttons shapes & sizes – everything.

Twitter Landscape

This session was paneled by Chris Winfield, Michael Gray and Ricardo Guerrero. It’s twitter, what is there to know, right? Interesting that attendee poll only showed about 4 people that were not on twitter. Chris showed screen shots of twitter replies to his questions about what to cover. Um, OK. Michael told us about the rules (then that he rarely follows them). Ricardo had some great slides on good ways he has used Twitter at Dell. He asked us (too late) to not call him “the dell guy”. The best part (to me anyway) of Ricardo’s presentation was when the slide came up that said “don’t be vulgar”, I heard several people all mutter at the same time “surgarrae”. I know Rae could care less about rules – nor do her 4000+ followers. I had a chuckle as I was walking out of the room, I overheard the moderator comment that he was not happy that people are not asking questions in the sessions…they are all asking them on twitter. Can you say Irony? The Outspoken media gals were in this session as well, get more info on their blog: Twitter Landscape

Keyword research and selection

I didn’t attend this session, but since the Twitter session ended early (no questions) I just slipped in for the Q & A. Kate Morris fid a great job of explaining the process, she even fielded a question about how Twitter might be used to find keywords. I told you, Twitter was everywhere.

Organic keyword research and selection

I hate to say it, but it’s getting late and this session had a ton of material – a recap won’t cut it – go read Lisa’s post Organic Keyword Research. I will say they did mention a couple tools I’ll have to look into because they looke pretty handy. SpyFu.com and Keywordspy.com. These tools will let you find out what key words you r competion is ranking for. Nice.

Interesting day

It was a good day, despite the rain, traffic and occasional wifi issues. I was happy to finally meet some of my twitter pals: @kennyhyder, @davesnyder, @graywolf, @lisabarone (who says I look younger in person than I do online – thanks, I think) and @rhea…who *still* does not follow me. Looking forward to day two.

If you are there, look me up – shoot me a tweet @JackLeblond so we can connect – love to meet you too!

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

PubCon South Day 1 Recap

PubCon South Day 2 – Matt Cutts Opening Comments

Finding Your BEST + and – Keywords

Kate Morris — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:30:34 +0000

Keywords are the core of every search marketing campaign, paid and natural. Knowing which word combinations to focus on is like getting the perfect site for a new store, it’s all about the location. There are some locations that you need to be in and others that you need to stay far away from. Positive and negative keywords act as your locators and you want them to be as precise as possible. They are the key to the best performing online campaigns.

Positive Keywords

The first step in identifying the best positive keywords is keyword research using the tool of your choice. I personally like the free Google Keyword Tool, but some people swear by other tools. Use the terms are found on your site (Google has an option to just enter a URL and it returns related keywords) and terms you (or your client) use internally. This is the best place to START, but by far not the only thing you should do. If you have access to your clients, ask a few of them. Sometimes what is used in-house is not what real people use to search. Keep an open mind.

Competitors are the next place to go for a good idea of what to target for and what not. Some may have done research already and you can tell what they are targeting by their title tags, keywords meta tag (if they have one), and copy on the site. Look at what you would optimize, see if they have done the same.

Once you have your positive keywords to start with and your site has been running for a while, you can locate the negative keywords to be used in your campaigns.

Negative Keywords

Finding your best negative keywords is a four-pronged attack. It starts with your analytics package. Take the time to look at what keywords users are searching with to find your site. Most should be right on track, but some might be just slightly off what your company or client offers. You might need help from the client to identify these, but common sense can help you identify most. If all else fails, ask!

There are two metrics you should pay attention to in addition to visits; conversions and bounce rate. Visits only tells you part of the story, your analytics should also be able to tell you what those keywords did for the company. Traffic is useless if it doesn’t bring any business over time (pay attention to that, you should not check this after a few weeks, you have got to give it time).

If you are unsure about a keyword, take a look at the number of conversions on those keywords that don’t match up with what you are selling. Is it long tail or are people not buying anything? The other metric to look at is bounce rate. This will be able to tell you if a certain term is sending people running. Bounce rate is one of the best metrics to determine which keywords aren’t working for you. If the bounce rate is over 70%, you need to rethink that word.

Take what you have learned in your analytics, modify your site copy and apply these negative terms to your paid campaigns. Conversions will increase and spend will decrease in paid search. It’s a win-win situation!

Kate Morris is the Director of Client Strategies at New Edge Media and a fellow Austinite.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Finding Your BEST + and – Keywords

Should I use the keywords meta tag?

Jack Leblond » Pay Per Click