The SESpys – Day One!

Search Engine Strategies (SES) has got to be one of the most intense and prolific conferences out there, with three full days of over 80 different sessions, daily keynotes, an expo with 100+ plus vendors (and even more presenters on the floor), forums, labs and social events, plus specialized training days before and after the conference. Whew!

So in order to synthesize some of the hottest topics and trends in search and online marketing, we present to you, the SESpys (es-eee-es-pees)!! Of course, these take into consideration only the relatively few sessions the two of us could attend in the grand scheme of the conference. Outcomes may have also been affected by the amount of coffee and/or free expo candy consumed at various points of the day. So the SESpy winners for day one – Tuesday,  August 18th – are as follows. Drumroll please …

Best Pay Per Click Insight: Test everything on your landing pages. A slight image, phrase or button adjustment can make a double digit change in conversion percentage.

Best News for Math Geeks: The general theme of the “What’s Next in Search” session was data, data, data. The liberal arts and poli sci majors who have found their way into search marketing in the last decade may have to make some room for expert analysts who can look at ever-growing mountains of online data and pull out the key trends.

Best Schwag at the Expo: Rubix cube keychains from the Google booth.

Best Search Engine Optimization Insight: There were some great ones on link building. One was to give something of value to other blogs/sites so they link back to you without thinking too hard about it – create cool infographs that illustrate a hot event or trend, create badges that can easily be embedded on other sites, etc. And make sure you look at low hanging fruit to build links. Who are your vendors, partners, friends and customers? Ask them to link to your site, they’ll likely be happy to do it. And that’ll boost your rankings on search engine results pages.

The Party Like It’s 1999 Award: Linkbuilding. Still as important as ever, the search engines are still looking at which sites link to your site to determine relevancy. Every relevant session we attended reiterated that linkbuilding should continue to be an important part of any SEO strategy.

Best Site Content Insight: Don’t tell customers about what you sell on your website. Tell them what SOLUTIONS you can provide for them.

Most Embarrassing Proudest Moment: Being called out as the only two attendees from South Dakota in front the entire conference population by keynote speaker Jeff Hayzlett. And for the record we have to politely disagree, Jeff, the Spearfish Spartans do NOT suck.

Best Ecommerce Insight: If you can increase the number of people who make it through your site’s sales funnel by even 1/10 of a percent, your return on investment is going to be exponentially greater than any marketing effort to generate new leads. Plus, then any lead that comes to your funnel from social media, email, print, whatever, is going to be immediately more valuable because they are more likely to convert.

Best Tool You’re Probably Not Using: Google Insights – like a more robust version of Google Trends, you can dive into search trends and filter by type of search, geographic area, timeframe, product type and more, so you can really see how and where people are searching for the type of product you’re offering.

Stay tuned for SESpy day two results!