SEMpdx.org Portland based Search Engine Marketing Association

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Search Engine Marketers of Portland - SEMpdx

About Us

Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland (SEMpdx) was created to provide a resource for both local SEM professionals and area businesses. To elevate Portland’s profile on a national scale, as well as improve the quality of work and life for SEM professionals, SEMpdx has developed a vision, mission and code of ethics. The board of directors will ensure all aspects of the organization fall within the guidelines provided below.

Special Offer

SEMpdx members receive 25% off the SpotlightUs article writing service from AboutUs.org.

Address

2189 NW Wilson St.

Portland, OR 97210

SearchFest 2007 Notes

Ray and Mark from AboutUs.org Attending today

Keynote by Jeff Pruitt of SEMPO and ICrossing -- Good overall presentation (walking through the ages kinda thing)
Web 2.0 / RSS Session
- Janet's comments were great:
  - Consumers are less brand loyal / Individuals are less trusting
  - 67% consumers rely on WOM vs. other marketing methods to make purchasing decisions
  - Marketers are afraid, especially the older ones, because they don't understand
  - With RSS, we've come full circle, back to white background, black text, blue links
  - Writing well is very very important as a result
  - domain names are important, direct type in traffic (check SnapNames.com to pick up names in the drop) - this is a blatent plug :-)
- John Hartman (Feedia.net)
  - 2007 - possible problem - too many people trying to develop social networks
  - 2007 - Social Media / Mobile / IPTV
- Q&A Notes
  - blogging / always tell the truth and be transparent
  - backlinks are really important - especially with Google
  - start with Google, the watch Yahoo and MSN
Advanced SEO
- Personalization - it used to be that you had to turn ON personalization, now it's the default - Google made this change in the past few weeks. This may hurt the blackhat and greyhat guys.
- Wikipedia is so successful in SERPs. Their URL structure is incredibly clean and well structured. Internal link structure is great. Titles, header tags, etc. are great. They have "unwritten articles that are generating traffic" and ask their editors to make those pages. Consistent content format, no ads, easy to find a page on any subject.
- Members of social communities think SEO = Spam
  - Where to be cautious - Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Slashdot, tech bloggers
  - Safe havens - Techmeme, Newsvine, Squidoo
- The power of the Widget, best are interactive, give links, customizable and easy to use. 2007 will be the year of the widget.
- The biggest mistake in LinkBaiting
- Freemium - Give away soem content / services for free and offer upgraded items for a fee. e.g. Wufoo.com, Skype, WordTracker, FeedBurner, Last.fm and SEOmoz.
LocalSearch beyond the basics / Matt McGee, SEO Manager of Marchex.com
- The Basics, but you can do better!
- make your page "more local" put your address on every page and a LOCAL phone number, Search Engines will use this to figure out where you are located
- write out a "location / directions" page - SE spider can't read a map, use landmarks, neighborhoods, etc. Use these in your page titles and Anchor Text
- PPC, not just about bidding on keywords like "Portland Dentist" but also geo-targetting. Google.com, Yahoo.com and MSN.com support this.
- Add, fix listings at internet yellow pages
- Encourage user reviews, algorithyms likely consider them
Pole Positioning - Stoney deGeyter, (PolePositionMarketing.com, EMarketingPerformance.com)
- Keyword research very important, it's the foundation for all online marketing
  - KWR is time consuming and difficult
  - Gathering "Core Terms", unique 2-3 word phrases
  - Brainstorm Session / pour through your own website, content, title, navigation, products
  - WordTracker & other tools
- Sorting Core Terms
  - Search Volume / too specific, no volume, Long Tail ok if volume, 2-4 word phrases
  - Target Audience / more targetted, less traffic
  - Profit / ROI zone
  - Ability to meet demand
- Search Phrases - phrases that contain the core term / don't analyze, just gather, 100's to 1000's
- Sorting and selecting keywords / keywords that convert
  - Draw targetted visitors
  - Applies directly to your site
  - No broad phrases ("shoes", "bags")
  - Informational queries later / product reviews, how to articles
- Organizing Keywords / short and longtail are both good / each page has specific focus / not enough pages? create them
- Conclusion, don't rush, build your foundation properly, create a high performance SEO Campaign

2nd half of the day

Lunchtime presentation by Leo Chung of event sponsor OverlandAgency.com

Eric Facas, SEM channel manager of Google
- Search results have gotten quite a bit more complex / targetted results vs. natural results. Desktop results also now built into search query.
- Google One-Box (get users to what they're really looking for
- Image / Video, etc. to help users hone down then search
- if someone searches "Apple Mac Commercial" they may be looking for a video, they're going to serve that up.
David Roth, Director SEM at Yahoo
- In a Google centric world, you should also advertise at Yahoo
- Close the gap in search monetization Bid Management -> Portfolio Optimization -> Dynamic Optimization
- the more keywords you track, the harder it is to do manually
Omniture.com (I didn't get the name either) / Omniture just bought TouchClarity.com
- Website real estate varies (where on the page)
- Optimize for click-through, revenue or profit
- Realtime learning and optimization