SES San Francisco 2011 Conference Recap

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Aug. 16

I’ve been really fortunate to attend a multitude of amazing online marketing conferences over the last year. I’m talking about SMX West 2011, ad:tech San Francisco 2011, and SMX Advanced Seattle 2011. Today, I’m thrilled to write about SES San Francisco 2011 – I spent all day at this search marketing conference today and had a great time. Also, as always, I’m thrilled to share a bunch of cool pictures from the event!

It’s All About Networking at SES San Francisco

eZanga SES San Francisco

eZanga 2nd Tier Search Engine Rocks

As always, my favorite part of online marketing conferences is the amazing networking. It’s all about the networking. Today was an action-packed day of networking for sure. It all started off in the Expo Hall. I met up with my friends from eZanga (check out the picture to the right). For those that don’t know, eZanga is an awesome 2nd tier search engine. I have experienced considerable success on 2nd tiers and highly recommend them. After all, the 1st tiers get so competitive that it’s often easier to drive higher percentage margins on 2nd tier search engines such as eZanga. I was really impressed with eZanga’s jungle-themed booth.

Next, I met up with my friend Marc Poirier from Acquisio. I was thrilled to meet up with Marc because I learned earlier in the day that Acquisio Secured $12.1 Million In Series B Funding. How cool, I’m super impressed. I didn’t get a chance to get a photo with Marc and the Acquisio team because they were so busy. Honestly, I walked by their booth about 10 times and they were always completely busy (clearly shows that Acquisio has a lot of fans like me).

Kenshoo SES San Francisco

PPC Ian and The Amazing Kenshoo Team

Next, I continued to make my rounds and headed over to the Kenshoo and Marin Software booths. For those that don’t know, Kenshoo and Marin Software are two of the most amazing online marketing platforms around. (You may wish to check out my SEM Automation Whitepaper and post about PPC Automation.) Online marketing campaigns are more complex than ever. I’ve personally experienced outstanding results with platforms like Acquisio, Kenshoo, and Marin. I highly recommend checking them out – your results and productivity will skyrocket.

In addition to the Expo Hall, I attended a really exciting SEMPO Board of Directors Lunch. This invite only lunch gave SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) members the opportunity to network with SEMPO’s Board of Directors and leadership. I made some amazing connections and was truly impressed with the caliber of marketers at this lunch. If you’re not in SEMPO, I highly recommend signing up! Last, I met up with with some amazing old friends from Nextag and Stanford. It’s such a small world and always so much fun running into old friends.

My Favorite Parts of SES San Francisco

Marin Software SES San Francisco

PPC Ian and The Amazing Marin Software Team

Aside from the amazing networking, what else did I enjoy about SES San Francisco? A whole lot! While the conference was less busy than SES San Francisco 2010, it was still an amazing time. First and foremost, I had an absolute blast in the social media sessions. Everyone’s always talking about social these days, but it’s for good reason. It’s limitless and there’s so much to learn. For those of you attending days 2 and 3 of SES, make sure to go to the social media sessions – they are among the best at the conference in my opinion.

Also, it was really great to see Google promoting their new doubleclick search version 3 platform. Not only did Google promote doubleclick search via their huge booth in the Expo Hall (picture below) but also they gave a live demo of the new platform. (It was great to hear my friend Kit speak, you can see a picture of PPC Ian and Kit in my post about Networking With Google.) As mentioned earlier, it’s all about SEM tools. Now, there’s one more amazing tool to improve your marketing operations and efficiency!

Last, I felt that the free goodies were great this time. Symantec is giving away really cool remote controlled H2 Hummers. I was particularly impressed to see Symantec integrating Verisign into the Yahoo! organic search results. If a site is Verisign certified, the Verisign logo shows up there right in the Yahoo! search results – pretty cool. I’m actually done with the conference for the rest of the week (my team is sharing the pass) but will be most likely attending some of the events at night over the next few days. Are you attending SES San Francisco this year?

More Pictures From SES San Francisco

Google Booth SES San Francisco

Google Went Really Big At SES San Francisco 2011

Google Plus One SES San Francisco

I Definitely +1'd Google's Booth

Doubleclick Search SES San Francisco

doubleclick search Made a Huge Debut at SES San Francisco

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com

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My SMX Advanced 2011 Pictures and Recap

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Jun. 09

I just got back from SMX Advanced Seattle and had such an amazing time. I always have so much fun at these conferences, but must say SMX Advanced Seattle 2011 was one of the best. Why? I really took time to network more than ever, as you can see in the many pictures throughout this post. Today, I’m really excited to talk about my epic experience at SMX and share tons of pictures (thirteen of them)!

Networking With Rob Monster From Epik

SMX Advanced Epik

Rob Monster From Epik and PPC Ian

At SMX Advanced 2010, I flew in late Monday night. This was a bit difficult because the conference starts early Tuesday morning. This year, I took a different approach and flew in mid-day on Monday. This gave me some time to really enjoy Seattle and get in some extra networking.

I put my extra day to use by scheduling a meeting with my friend Rob Monster, CEO of Epik. I’ve blogged quite a bit about Epik here on PPC Ian and am a huge fan. I own a ton of Epik sites (currently 55) and highly recommend checking out my Epik Product Portal Tips.

Rob and I had drinks at the Edgewater Hotel, the official hotel of the conference. It was truly great catching up with Rob as he’s big time serial entrepreneur, investor/venture capitalist, and one of the most successful professionals around. It truly pays to have mentors and friends like Rob!

An Amazing Whirlwind First Day At SMX Advanced

SMX Advanced ClickEquations

PPC Ian and Craig Danuloff (ClickEquations)

On Tuesday, I had a truly great day at SMX Advanced. I had one of those whirlwind days where the day is packed from 8:00 am through 11:00 pm at night! My day started off going to the sessions at SMX Advanced. I must say that the first session about pay per click quality score was the best session of the entire conference.

My favorite part of the session: My friend Craig Danuloff (CEO of ClickEquations provided a multitude of insights about quality score and announced his brand new quality score book (which I purchased and plan to review here soon). Craig is the leading expert in our industry about Google’s quality score algorithm and it’s always an honor to hear him speak. While I was at the ClickEquations booth, I also caught up with my friend Alex Cohen. Alex also spoke at SMX and is truly impressive. I highly recommend his blog, Digital Alex.

SMX Advanced Kenshoo PPC Associates

Geoff Shenk, David Rodnitzky, and PPC Ian

As the day progressed, I really enjoyed walking around the expo hall (twice as many exhibits as last year) and eating the great food and snacks that SMX provided (they went all out and I feel like I ate way too much, but it’s all good). While walking around SMX, it seemed like I was always running into people I knew! Truly cool stuff! In my opinion, the biggest value of these conferences is the networking. My advice to you: Go all out and network with as many online marketers as possible. It’s amazing the connections you will build.

Right around lunch time, for example, I ran into my friends Geoff Shenk (Managing Director at Kenshoo) and David Rodnitzky (CEO of PPC Associates). Kenshoo is an amazing online marketing platform that I highly recommend. I recently blogged about their new Watchdog product. I’m friends with a lot of people at Kenshoo and they truly have an amazing company. PPC Associates is one of the hottest paid search agencies in the Bay Area.

SMX Advanced Seattle Marc Poirier

PPC Ian and My Marin Software Friends

While walking around the expo hall, I of course ran into my good friends Michael Cook and Jana Fung from Marin Software. I’m a huge fan of Marin Software and have blogged quite a bit about their SEM platform and whitepapers. One of my favorites: Marin’s Free Guide To Facebook Ads.

Later in the day, I also ran into my friend Matt Lawson, Marin’s VP of Marketing. Matt’s a real visible guy, I’m always running into him at all these conferences and he truly does a great job representing Marin Software. Marin is located in San Francisco so I enjoy having lunch with Matt from time to time.

SMX Advanced John Rampton

PPC Ian and John Rampton From TechieMania

Here’s where it starts getting really crazy! Out of the blue, I ran into John Rampton from TechieMania. I have never met John in person before but he’s a regular commentator here on PPC Ian and I truly appreciate his contribution to the comments here. John came up to me in the expo hall and recognized me from my blog! That was a real milestone for me, my blog is starting to get truly noticed thanks to all of you! It was great hanging out with John and I highly recommend checking out his blog. John is a great guy and I hope to network with him more in the future.

Later in the day, I attended more exciting sessions while diligently taking notes. Overall, I felt the SEO content from SMX was stronger than the PPC content. Don’t get me wrong, the PPC content was great. It’s just that the SEO content was unparalleled. The SEO track pulled out all stops. At the end of day one, I really enjoyed watching the You&A session with Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts. There’s always some great comedy in this session and I truly enjoyed it!

SMX Advanced Chris Guthrie

PPC Ian and Chris Guthrie (Make Money on the Internet)

At the end of the sessions, I headed over to the expo hall floor for the Expo Hall Reception sponsored by Yahoo! and Bing. It’s there that I met up with my good friend Chris Guthrie from Make Money on the Internet. Chris is an inspiration to me. He’s a big time blogger and affiliate marketer. He makes a ton of money online and works really hard to deliver value. That said, he stays humble. He’s got the best attitude around and truly enjoys helping others. I was really hoping that I’d be able to catch up with Chris at SMX Advanced like I did last year and was really happy we were able to connect two years in a row!

SMX Advanced Dinner

Awesome Dinner With Friends, Talk About Great Times

While I was hanging out with Chris Guthrie and enjoying some free drinks thanks to Yahoo! and Bing, we met up with a variety of great people including Nathaniel Broughton from Growth Partner (Nathaniel is a big time affiliate marketer, entrepreneur, and leader), Sujan Patel from Single Grain (Sujan owns an SEO agency right here in San Francisco), and Max Wellenstein and Steve Kroll from RocketClicks (these guys are truly inspirational and make an amazing name for RocketClicks). I had such a blast networking and making new friends. I learned that Sujan’s office is just down the street from mine in San Francisco and we already have lunch on the books next week. Talk about great networking and building my network with high impact professionals. We were all having so much fun at the expo hall that we decided to head out to dinner. You can see a picture to the right of us all enjoying dinner!

We really enjoyed dinner in Seattle because it stays light so late in the summer! The long days are really neat. After dinner, which ended around 10:00 pm, I caught up with my great friend from Stanford who happened to be in Seattle for Microsoft conference. We had drinks and enjoyed catching up. Like I mentioned, a true whirlwind day and a true blast!

SMX Advanced Seattle Day 2, My Time To Chill Out

SMX Advanced Acquisio

Richard Couture, PPC Ian, and Marc Poirier

Day one of SMX Advanced Seattle was amazing, but was also a bit tiring. So, I decided to take it a bit easier on day two. My day started off with a 7:30 am breakfast at the Edgewater Hotel. I truly enjoyed meeting and networking with the CFO of a local Seattle startup. After that, I checked out of my hotel and headed over to the conference. Just like day one, I enjoyed the sessions, networking with new and old friends, and eating some great food and snacks.

I had a ton of fun in particular catching up with my friend Marc Poirier CMO and co-founder of Acquisio. Acquisio is an amazing performance marketing platform for agencies. I have blogged quite a bit about Acquisio here on PPC Ian and recommend checking out their free Facebook Webinar. I learned a lot by watching this webinar. Marc is a truly impressive professional and one of the nicest people at the conference, I always enjoy catching up with him. I also enjoyed meeting Richard Couture, Acquisio’s co-founder and VP of Product Management.

I ended up leaving the conference a little bit early and flying back to San Francisco in the early evening. Next year, I’m thinking of staying another day so I can take in the parties and festivities at the end of the conference on Wednesday night. Seattle is such an amazing city and I want to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Danny Sullivan and the entire SMX team. You guys did a great job with this conference! Everyone who I networked with at SMX, it was really great meeting up with you guys! Please stay in touch.

More Amazing Pictures From SMX Advanced 2011

SMX Advanced Seattle 2011

SMX Advanced Seattle Edgewater Hotel

SMX Advanced Seattle Convention Center

SMX Advanced Seattle Marc Poirier

SMX Advanced Seattle Skyline

All images in this post © PPCIan.com

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A Day In The Life of PPC Ian

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Apr. 14

I’m the greatest proponent of the corporate online marketing career path around. That’s why I created this blog, after all. In today’s post, I wanted to photo document my exciting day today, a day in the life of PPC Ian. This post will really highlight some of the advantages of working in this amazing industry, from a corporate perspective. In short, the benefits are unparalleled. While not all of my days are this fun, I do consider this to be a typical day when I attend online marketing conferences.

I Went To ad:tech San Francisco 2011

Adknowledge ad:tech

PPC Ian and Adknowledge at ad:tech

After getting into the office this morning and powering through some important projects, I headed over to ad:tech San Francisco. Since I work in San Francisco (the online marketing capital of the world), it was super easy to grab a five minute taxi ride and head over to Moscone Center West, the location of ad:tech. ad:tech is a really great conference. While I didn’t have a full pass this time to attend all the sessions (like I did at SMX West last month), I certainly had an amazing time catching up with both old and new friends. I spent a few hours going through the exhibit hall and meeting some seriously interesting companies and individuals.

Marin Software ad:tech

PPC Ian and Marin Software at ad:tech

Above, you can see an image of yours truly with my friends from Adknowledge, an amazing advertising network that has driven stellar results for me over the years across multiple verticals. My campaign secret for the day: Give Adknowledge a try if you haven’t so far. Their unique system delivers results, period. How? They have gone on an acquisition rampage and have consolidated many of the second tier search engines (including Miva), becoming the fourth largest advertising marketplace on the Internet. Even better: They have strong roots in email marketing and offer the ability to advertise (on a PPC basis) to their email lists. AdKnowledge’s email lists truly convert, they offer some of the most premium traffic I have experienced over the years (often available at bargain basement prices).

After catching up with AdKnowledge, I headed over to the amazing Marin Software booth. I’m a huge fan of Marin Software and even interviewed one of their executives, Matt Lawson, here on PPC Ian. As you can see in the picture on the right, Marin has an incredibly impressive booth. They leveraged the same booth that debuted at SMX West last month. In my opinion, it’s one of the best looking booths around and it was no surprise that it drew some serious attention.

Acquisio ad:tech

PPC Ian and Acquisio at ad:tech

After hanging out with my friends from Marin Software, I headed over to Acquisio. As you might remember from my post about SMX West, I met up my friend Marc Poirier, CMO and co-founder of Acquisio at that conference. This time around, I did not run into Marc but thoroughly enjoyed making some new friends. I couldn’t be more impressed with the Acquisio team and software. I particularly enjoyed getting a demo of the newest Acquisio functionality.

After Acquisio, I continued to walk around the expo hall for a while and was really impressed overall. Our industry is incredibly strong, the conference was absolutely packed, and the boots were cooler and more extravagant than ever. Want to see a really neat booth? Check out the LinkedIn one at the bottom of this post. (Side note: I highly recommend checking out my LinkedIn Tips, they will supercharge your online marketing career.)

Lunch At Straits Cafe

Straits Cafe San Francisco

Lunch at Straits Cafe SF

After a while, I started losing my energy and was ready for a nice lunch. Thankfully, I ran into some of my friends from Stanford who also happen to be in the online marketing industry. I’d show a picture, but these guys just started a business that’s in super stealth mode and said not to post any pictures or links. I hope in the future that I’ll be able to review their exciting business.

Anyways, we headed over to Straits Cafe and the food was simply delicious. I had been to the Straits restaurants in Palo Alto and Santana Row before, but never SF. I was very happy with the selection and really enjoyed networking with some old friends. In this industry, your personal relationships and your network is your single largest asset in my opinion.

Giants vs. Dodgers Game From Marin Software’s Luxury Suite

Giants Stadium Luxury Suite

Marin Software Giants Luxury Suite

After lunch, I was ready to head back to work. I got back to the office and powered through several hours of concentrated work. Thankfully, I was in the zone so I got a lot done fast. Then, it was time for fun again. As mentioned above, I’m a big fan of Marin Software. Right now, I’m a bigger fan than ever because they invited me to watch the Giants game from their luxury suite.

Have you ever flown first class before? It’s kind of like that. The first time I flew first class, I was floored. The difference between first class and coach is parabolic. It’s not the step up you would think, it’s a different world. It’s a world that makes me want to earn lots of money! That’s how I like to look at the Giants experience from a luxury suite. It’s not just a step up, it’s a whole other world, and I sincerely thank my friends at Marin for allowing me to enjoy the good life.

Marin Software Giants Game

Me and Marin Friends at Giants Game

I had such an amazing time at the game. I enjoyed a limitless buffet of food, several Giants staff members catering to our every wish, amazing drinks, popcorn, an indoor lounge area, an outdoor seating area (right behind home plate), and of course great conversation with new and old friends. In short, this is the way baseball was meant to be enjoyed! It’s experiences like this that really get me excited about our great industry. After the Giants game, I headed home, chilled out with my amazing wife, and then wrote this blog post.

Oracle Suite Level

Oracle Luxury Suite Level

Now, it’s time to get some sleep and then do it all over again. While tomorrow’s going to be a bit more standard than today, one thing is for sure: This industry rocks! There is always something exciting around the corner and that’s why corporate online marketing is the ideal career path! Any of you guys visit ad:tech San Francisco this year? I’d be super curious to hear about your personal experience!

Some More Pictures From ad:tech San Francisco 2011

ad:tech San Francisco

ad:tech San Francisco 2011 Digital Marketing Conference

LinkedIn ad:tech

The Impressive LinkedIn Booth at ad:tech San Francisco 2011

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com

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SMX West 2011 Search Conference Rocked

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Mar. 09

It’s very apparent based on my wonderful experience at SMX West 2011 today that the search marketing industry is absolutely on fire. There is no time like the present, the SEM career path is the best career path in my opinion. Today, I’m looking forward to sharing with you some of my favorite SMX West 2011 conference highlights!

SMX West Had Some Great Advanced Content

Acquisio SMX West 2011

PPC Ian, Marc Poirier, and the Amazing Acquisio Team

SMX West has historically been more of an introductory conference, one geared towards those newer to digital advertising. I consistently attend each year because it’s in San Jose, just a short half hour drive from my job. By contrast, SMX Advanced has been more advanced (as the name implies).

This year, however, I was pleasantly surprised. SMX West 2011 totally delivered and included great content both for beginners and seasoned industry veterans like myself. I was definitely at the edge of my seat, taking diligent notes! In terms of advanced content, it was especially exciting hearing all about Microsoft’s adCenter quality score algorithm directly from Microsoft product managers. Moreover, I was totally floored when a panelist on the Google AdWords Extensions seminar predicted that Google will be launching sitelinks on an adgroup level (they’re currently set on a campaign level). In my opinion, this would be a tremendous opportunity to fine tune ad copy to the next level, now that sitelinks are showing up on many generic queries.

Kenshoo SMX West 2011

PPC Ian and My Great Friends From Kenshoo

A few other exciting topics from SMX:

  • I learned all about Google product feeds. I used to be in retail back in 2004-2006 when I managed SEM at comparison shopping giant NexTag. Since then, however, I’ve been in services-oriented verticals. A lot has changed over the years and it was really great to pick up some product feed insights.
  • Efficient Frontier presented some truly amazing industry trends. Basically, they compiled data across all their clients and reported it on an aggregate level. An incredibly important part of our jobs as SEM professionals is answering questions about macro industry trends. Efficient Frontier helped me out quite a bit with their data points.

SMX Is Great For Networking

Marin Software SMX West 2011

PPC Ian and My Great Friends From Marin Software

What’s my favorite part of search conferences? It really comes down to networking. Whether it’s catching up with old friends or making new friends, conferences like SMX West are ideal for networking. When it comes to your long term career within search engine marketing, a strong network is everything. It’s because of my strong network that I’ve made it this far in the world of SEM and I continue to invest in relationships each and every day.

As you can see throughout this post, I had the great opportunity to catch up with my close friends from Acquisio, Kenshoo, and Marin Software. If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you’ll know that I’m totally obsessed with SEM automation. Acquisio, Kenshoo, and Marin Software are three of the absolute top leaders when it comes to search marketing software, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to establish close relationships with all of them. It was really great catching up with my friends!

I had a real blast chatting with Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and CMO of Acquisio. I had the opportunity to chat with Marc at length about my personal career trajectory and truly enjoyed it! Also, I scored two of those amazing Acquisio t-shirts (one for myself and one for my wife). I will be highlighting them in a future post. Side note: Make sure to check out my exclusive interview with Marc Poirier.

As you can see in the image on the right, Marin Software really went all out this year. They had, in my opinion, the most impressive booth at SMX West. It was truly great catching up with Matt Lawson, VP of Marketing at Marin Software. Side note: Make sure to check out my exclusive interview with Matt Lawson. Making their booth even more enticing, they had an Xbox giveaway!

Last, I had an amazing experience chatting with Geoff Shenk, Managing Director of Kenshoo North America. Kenshoo has a new product called Watchdog that’s truly amazing and I’ll be blogging about it soon! While I don’t have a interview directly with Geoff here on PPC Ian, I recently interviewed Chad Baldwin – Kenshoo’s VP of Sales.

This Year, I Just Went To The First Day

SMX West 2011

This year, I decided to just attend day one of SMX West. Why? I’m in a leadership position and it’s my responsibility to balance conferences with my day-to-day responsibilities. As such, I decided to share the excitement and am having my team cover for me the rest of this conference. This will be a tremendous experience for my team, and I’m truly excited that I got an opportunity to enjoy day one of SMX West while still leaving myself time to get my important projects done! Did you attend SMX West this year? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com

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SES San Francisco 2010 Rocked

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Aug. 18

Search marketing conferences this year have been great! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed TRAFFIC Las Vegas, SMX West Santa Clara, SMX Advanced Seattle, and now SES (Search Engine Strategies) San Francisco. Today, I’d like to recap my experience at SES San Francisco this week and some of my exciting takeaways. SES was absolutely packed and it was a tremendous conference!

SEM Automation Is Hot
Click Equations SES San Francisco

My Friends Craig and Alex From Click Equations at SES San Francisco

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know that I’m a huge fan of pay per click automation. I even wrote a FREE 12 page SEM Automation Buyer’s Guide. SEM automation is constantly on my mind, it’s the only way to gain the leverage to succeed when you’re managing multi-million dollar PPC campaigns.

Excitingly, SEM automation was everywhere I turned in the expo hall! It was truly remarkable. SEM automation is hot! It was really great to see both old and new friends in the automation game. I got the opportunity to sync up with the Marin Software team. I met the amazing ClickEquations team for the first time in person. I even had the opportunity to learn about American Express getting in the game with their new OPEN SEM platform. I was totally floored when I learned about that!

Being a Celebrity Executive Is Cool
Marin Software SES San Francisco

PPC Ian and My Friend Dan From Marin Software

The keynote yesterday by Jeffrey Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak, was awesome! There were several takeaways around people management, especially motivation and turning organizations around. However, that’s not what impressed me the most.

What really impressed me was Jeffrey’s delivery. This guy is truly talented. He’s basically an expert presenter and actor. As my personal career progresses, I’m setting my sights high. I’d love to become a celebrity executive one day and pick up some acting skills myself. It’s really captivating stuff! It’s also a completely different skill than my Stanford Computer Science roots. I’m definitely a leader and expert people manager. I’d also call myself a stellar presenter (just check out my Stanford Graduate School of Business speech all about online Marketing). However, Jeffrey takes it to a whole other level!

I Picked Up A Few PPC, SEO, and Blogging Tips

To close out, I’d like to highlight some of my lower level notes. I was writing very quickly yesterday and jotted down some awesome stuff, a lot of it very actionable.

Yahoo SES San Francisco

It Was Great Catching Up With Mike From Yahoo

Perhaps most excitingly, I learned about the concept of citations in Google’s new organic caffeine algorithm (launched in June). Apparently, Google is now looking quite a bit at social networking sites and how many times your website or blog has been cited (mentioned or linked to). This is really great to learn from an SEO standpoint. It’s not all about links anymore, you also need to focus on citations! As a side note, I’m a big fan of blog commenting. While most comments have a nofollow tag on the link (unless you get on the top commentators), I’ve long been a believer that Google gives these nofollow comments some kind of weight. Now, I’m seriously thinking these comments could be counted as citations!

I was also really excited to learn about Google’s definition of a blog: Any website with a feed. When I typically think of a blog, I think about your typical WordPress blog like this one! It really opens doors when you start thinking about a blog as any site with a feed. Basically, you now have the option to add a feed (or feeds) to your "static" website and turn it into a blog. The speakers were making the point that this could have an SEO benefit because Google’s new caffeine algorithm is giving weight to blogs because they offer up to date information (caffeine is all about the real time). At the same time, I think this only makes sense if you update your site (and feeds) regularly. Otherwise, Google will now view your "blog" as one that doesn’t get updated frequently (which is worse than a static website that doesn’t get updated, in my opinion).

Yahoo is doing some seriously great stuff. Shashi Seth dazzled the audience with his discussion of Yahoo’s focus on the front end of search. The last 12 years, in his opinion, have been all about the back end of search. Now, Yahoo is partnering with Microsoft so Microsoft can take over the back end of things. This will allow Yahoo to focus on what they do the best: Optimizing their front end user experience. Shashi pointed out that there’s far more to the search results page than the actual results themselves. Yahoo will still be really focused on search, more from a front end perspective in terms of adding valuable experiences to search that aren’t there right now. Something else that blew me away: The "trending" topics on Yahoo’s homepage now account for 5 percent of searches on Yahoo.

All Images In This Post © PPCIan.com

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