- 12
- Apr
The mental and physical fatigue was very apparent on the group as a whole today. Those I witnessed in earlier breakouts engaging in intense question and answer sessions remained rather quiet today. As a collective group, everyone was quietly absorbing the material being presented. It might also have something to do with the scheduled 6-7p Networking Cocktail Reception in the Exhibit Hall from last night; doubtful though.
Choice sessions I was able to attend include Images & Search Engines, Organic Listings Forum (which turned into a White-Hat Vs. Black-Hat Q&A) and Wikipedia & SEO. Wait, that’s only 3 sessions? What about the 4th session? Well unfortunately I didn’t pack my magic “all-work-will-be-put-on-hold-for-a-week” orb, so I was detained for the first set of offerings. I will be getting notes from all my colleagues to cover additional sessions in future posts, worry not.
So what was learned in todays presentations? A lot of material I wasn’t expecting. TMP Directional Marketing practices White-Hat methods. Period. We do not suggest Black-Hat, we do not consider Black-Hat as a potential options in any case, and we most definitely do not ever want to be considered a Black-Hat house. That being said, it was fascinating to listen to the panel in the 2p session. I am fully aware of the tactics used in the space, but to hear it from individuals who have since come back into the White-Hat side of the camp was eye opening. The most frank, point blank group conversation I have been part of here at SES 2007 NY.
Aside from being very entertained by the “dark-side” of seo, I did also take away some useful information:
- Image search is in it’s infancy (just like mobile). 15%-16% of online users searching are searching for images. Results are patchy at best, but tactics can be used to clean up the space and make qualified results a reality.
- It was stated by a panel member that alt tag’s are obviously very important when using images on your sites; very true. A question arose “Do engines recognize and qualify the use of the title parameter?” This same panel member made the statement, as told to her by “every engine she’d asked” the same question - “huh?” Now we all know that FireFox uses the title parameter, but apparently the engines do not. For some reason I can’t totally believe that; my head just won’t let me. More on this to come.
- Image search is one of the fastest growing verticals, and a shocker here - Google is once again dominating the space. And for those that want to have images in the game, do not block your images folder. Check your robots.txt file, unless you want to have your images not get indexed, which is totally up to you and your clients for any number of reasons.
- Flickr. It’s been on my list of sites to delve into. I played with it a bit during a break. Absolutely check back here for a complete analysis and user study once I get back from the Big Apple.
- Great point was made by the Live Search (MSN) representative in reference to a question as to how to find out if images are driving traffic to your site “… check your analytics to see if any referrer traffic is coming from image search …” (insert smile here).
- What can I say about the Organic Listings Forum that is appropriate? Not much. What I can say is todays quote is not just one… keep reading.
- We all know Wikipedia uses nofollow. That being said, have you made a search recently and NOT seen Wikipedia results on the first page? If you are interested in joining the Wikipedia masses of contributing non-biased content, check out their Help Section. Including relevant information into Wikipedia about a particular subject that might just happen to link out to your site will potentially drive traffic. Once again, read as much as possible on Wikipedia’s site, because if you consistently break the “rules” or (do I even need to mention it) attempt to spam Wikipedia you can potentially become blacklisted. Blacklisted is bad. You do not want to be blacklisted from Wikipedia. They will come find you and… they won’t come find you, come-on. Be respectful of the accurate content contributors are trying to both create and manage. You (and me, and them) have the power to inform, educate, and provide content on every South Park episode ever made (Comedy Central presented during this session and used that as an example. And you thought I was just being random to be humorous).
- Wikipedia isn’t the only game in town. There are many Wiki’s out there, and not all of them use the nofollow, and some are very robust. Search, read, explore.
Another great day at SES NY. I am sad to say that tomorrow is the last day for the 2007 NY conference. Fret not (who says “Fret?”) loyal readers, as stated in all SES 2007 NY posts we will regroup to cover many of these topics in greater detail in the very near future. So what about all these really good quotes?
Panel member one says “I’ve always stayed the White-Hat route…”
Panel member two replies “Yeah right…”
Panel member one says “Let’s do our duty; should we tell them all to cloak… cloaking is ok…???”
Panel member two says “Yes… ok, not really…”
And lastly:
“You ever see that Star Trek when the Klingons de-cloak and get blown up right away!?…” in reference to a Black-Hatter wanting to mend the errors of his ways.
Check back tomorrow for the final wrap-up.