Day 2 is done and here are my observations/notes from today’s sessions.

Persuasive Technology Keynote by BJ Fogg

• Facebook – #1 persuasive technology.
• All about putting hot triggers in the path of motivated people.
• Cycle: Control Triggers -> Control Behavior -> Control Platform -> Control Triggers…etc.
• Behavior Model Equation – B=mat (Motivation x Ability x Trigger)
• Engaging videos to emphasize main points.
• 3 Core Motivators – Pleasure/Pain, Hope/Fear, Social Rejection/Social Acceptance
• “Use the lightest touch that works”

SEO 101

• SEO is all about increasing traffic and thus conversions. It’s not about increasing rankings.
• Black Hat = exploiting holes
• White Hat = doing the right things better then your competitors
• Best Practices (On-Page factors, expertness, copywriting, engagement objects, site architecture/siloing, server/software performance)
• Using “clarification words” can help SE know the meaning of your content.
• Write in a natural way and localize if its appropriate.
• SEO is all about being the “least imperfect” (i.e., just be better than your competitors).
• Searching with “~” will bold related words to the search term. Should incorporate those terms in your page copy if you want to rank for the search term.
• SE likes theme sites. Themes are multiple pages interconnected on the same topic.
• Linking: (1) Inbound links get PR; (2) Outbound links demonstrate the reference site aspect of being an expert; (3) Internal links help give “votes” to the most important pages on your site.
• Minimize links on high PR pages.
• NoFollow works in moderation.
• Video sound tracks are now being indexed and so will text on images in the future.
• 302 redirects are bad.
• Future of SEO – behavioral search, intent-based search, localized search, engagement objects.

Search, PR + Social Butterfly

• Be a content producer and think about yourself as a publisher
• The key is to create unique/valuable content and deliver it to platforms effectively.
• Blogs should post often and syndicate content.
• Hive and Hub. Publish content externally and aggregate all social touch points internally as well.
• Need FB, Twitter, YouTube, etc. links on your website.
• Getting placement on larger blogs might be less important than smaller, more qualified ones.
• “Publicize, Optimize, Socialize”
• Majority of journalists depend on social media for ideas.
• 89% of reporters/editors go to blogs. 100% use Google.
• Make sure you add social media network links on your press releases.
• Sites to help you publicize – pressfeed.com, prweb.com, Huck Rack, Pitch Engine.
• Should distribute press releases every 30 days.
• Only use one service to distribute PR.
• Foursquare will be next big thing – add tips, promote specials, claim business listings.
• Optimize everything.
• 70% of RTs contain links.
• RT a few times during the day.
• Monday & Wednesday are the top RT days. 2:15-3:00pm ET are the best times for RTs.
• Follow everyone that follows your competitors.
• Klout is a good tool to identify influentials.
• 70% of trackbacks happen within the same day. Another 27% will trackback within 2 days.
• Google News picks up within 2-5 minutes.

Competitor Research

• Paid Search tools – Ad Gooroo, Spy Fu, The Search Monitor
• Organic Search tools – Conductor, Covario, Rank Above
• Competitive (Search) Click tools – comScore, Hitwise, Compete, Trellian, Alexa
• Linkscape/Open Site Explorer is also a good tool to explore.
• eClerx can look at competitor pricing.
• SEOBook FF Toolbar can be useful.
• Other free tools – SEOMoz, Keyword Spy, SEMRush, SEO Digger, Key Compete, Google Alerts.
• Some lively discussion on serving “different” content to your competitors based on IP address.

Twitternation & Automation

• Jeff Pulver joined the panel. Very passionate about Twitter and the human element of connection and conversation.
• Listening and connecting is important for Jeff. A few good stories about Haiti, 911.
• Ham Radio analogy.
• Tracy Falke discussed automating twitter to solve the resource problem.
• Believes that sentiment is “bullsh*t”. Doesn’t do an accurate job of measurement.
• Believes in 80/20 rule. Push out content automatically for 80% of time and check-in to respond/engage for remaining 20%.
• Jeff constantly challenging Tracy during her presentation – a bit awkward and tense to watch. Definite differences in opinion on proper use of Twitter.
• Paul Madden is on the opposite spectrum to Jeff Pulver.
• Company sells services to create Bots to automate/act like real people.
• Uses these fake profiles to help mold/steer conversations.
• Believes Follow/NoFollow game still works.
• Should tweet when people are listening. Match with traffic patterns based on analytics.
• Jeff – White Hat Twitter, Paul – Black Hat, Tracy – Gray

Last day is tomorrow. Should be a good mix of both search and social sessions. Then off to catching my flight at OAK. Going to be great to sleep in my own bed tomorrow night…

Here’s a few notes/observations from the first day of the SES SF Conference.

Opening Keynote byJeffrey Hayzlett

• Very dynamic speaker w/ a lively presentation style.
• Kodak has gone through a tremendous cultural transformation.
• 118 Elevator Pitch – 8 seconds to hook and 110 seconds to pitch.
• To lead you need to have (1) clear conditions of satisfaction and (2) creation of tension to encourage debate.
• The 4 Es of Social – Engage, Educate, Excite, and Evangelize.
• Engagement is more important than ROI.

Search: Where to Next?

• Analytical skills will become increasingly important as more and more data is available.
• Search will turn to “performance” marketing.
• More real time results.
• Non PCs will begin to dominate search (e.g., mobile).
• Search will evolve to answering queries faster and more efficiently.
• Yahoo! is focusing on the front end of search and will let MSN develop the back end.
• Yahoo! is betting on personalization.

Digital Asset Optimization (DAO)

• SEO – 3 areas of focus – technical, onsite optimization, offsite optimization.
• Optimization of assets like photos and videos will become more important in Universal Search.
• Quick tips for optimizing images – keywords in image name, alt, and URL; keywords around the image; linking to images w/ anchor text.
• Video is similar but can also focus on video sitemap and tags (esp. content location and publication date).
• If its unique content you should keep on site. If you need something up quickly then post offsite (e.g., YouTube).
• Yahoo! Analytics – real time and can see individual visitor data.
• www.se-flash.com
• “Tune, Test, Measure”

PPC Primer

• Paid advertising seems to increase clicks to organic traffic.
• Negative Exact keywords for broad match terms to ensure all traffic flowing to exact match.
• Account I work on seem to be super clean and utilizes a lot of current best practices.

21 Secrets to Top Converting Websites

• Bryan Eisenberg – good speaker even w/ tech difficulties.
• No one has a Mac Pro and Keynote.
• Internet speed slowness is extra painful during a conference about the Internet.
• PPCRECOVERY – promo code for 3 free tests for usertesting.com
• Can go to Market Motive to watch same presentation for free
• 3 important things to focus on – relevance, credibility, navigation.
• Unique Value Proposition should ideally be on every page.
• Reinforce offers sitewide.
• Use top rated products in promos.
• Allow for sort by reviews.
• Thank you page can be used to up sell.
• Steps to improve site – hypothesize, create to-do list, document efforts, determine resources, start working on list.

Ok, that’s all for tonight. Looking forward to day 2 where I’ll be hitting up more Social Media related sessions…

Packing up my suitcase and getting ready to head up to SF for the SES conference. I’m looking forward to several of the sessions and getting immersed in some new concepts. It’s going to be a nice break from the day-to-day challenges of work and feel more like b-school again. I’m curious to hear more about about the future of search, social, and how they’ll overlap in the future. If you’re heading to the conference, drop me a line or comment….

Just installed the WordPress app on my iPhone to test out it’s posting functionality. If you can read this then it worked!

Today Google announced that it was enhancing it’s search results with more options to pare down your results. The options are definitely quite interesting. You can now…

• …filter results by videos, forum-mentions, and reviews.
• …filter  results by recency.
• …show more text and pictures along with their normal search listings.
• …see related searches more easily through text links and their “Wonder Wheel”.
• …and filter results by a timeline of news.

Phew! A lot changes for the dominant search player. It seems like they are trying to get ahead of the search game before real time searches (like Twitter) and natural-language searches (Wolfram Alpha) become more popular? Perhaps their recency filter might eventually incorporate real-time conversation like Twitter or Facebook’s feed or their Wonder Wheel will help people find what they are looking for faster.

One thing is for certain is that web developers might have to think in different ways in order to get as many eyeballs still on their site. If you can filter by results that have been indexed or changed within the past 24 hours, will your first result first page search result still always be number one? Will you need to manage your forum mentions more closely in order to protect your brand now that its conveniently packaged with the touch of a link?

Would love to hear your thoughts on how this might impact the future of natural search listings and how you might design things differently going forward.