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E-Marketing Performance Blog

SES San Jose – Day 4 Wrap Up

Site Clinic

The first session of the last day was site clinic, hosted by Shari Thurow and Matt Bailey. In this session, audience members’ web sites were reviewed from a usability and SEO standpoint. The site clinic brought about many good tips and ideas:

  • Always have call to actions above the fold
  • Keep higher ranking word links above the fold
  • Stay away from blue text unless using it for links
  • Give users a sense of place on every page by using breadcrumbs
  • Use benefit-oriented copy to show users what your products would do for them
  • Utilize a context rewrite module for long URL’s
  • Check your site using Yahoo! Site Explorer to discover link structure

Yahoo! Search

Meet The Crawlers

This session was moderated by Danny Sullivan and featured representatives from four major search engines to answer attendee questions. I think we were all hoping that each engine would give away their secret algorithm, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the representatives answered questions from the audience similar to that of a politician at a debate. They wouldn’t give straight answers to questions ranging from link baiting and paid links to site structure. I found this session more of a headache than anything else.

Usability & SEO: Two Wins For The Price Of One

This session was the last session of the conference. It was hosted by Shari Thurow and Matt Bailey. In this session, the two speakers presented ways to not only build a search engine friendly site, but how to fix site usability. There’s no point of having a number one ranking in Google if your site doesn’t get any conversions. The session discussed the importance of having proper information architecture, using clear, visible links, and keeping important information above the fold.

Overall, the conference has given me a greater understanding of the SEM world. I also met some neat people along the way. I would recommend SES to any search marketer wanting to learn more about their field.

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