Back in December, a few colleagues and I attended the Search Engine Strategies 2006 Conference and Expo in Chicago, IL. SES is promoted as the premier event for search engine marketing and optimization.
While there I took part in numerous presentations from search engine optimization fundamentals to working with dynamic web sites and social networks. Here is a brief rundown of the session I attended:
Search Engine Friendly Design
The first session I attended, Search Engine Friendly Design, was a good primer into the world of Search Engine Optimization. My primary job has always been to develop web sites. That entitles setting up the back-end, programming in server-side languages, connecting to databases, and generating layout. Content was always given to my by marketing folk. This session gave me a brief overview of what is important to search engines and aided me in working with marketing to create web sites. The five basic rules when developing a site are:
- Easy to Read (write in for your target audience)
- Easy to Navigate
- Easy to Find (as in having a sense of place, knowing where you are within a site)
- Quick to Download (30 seconds or less on a 56Kbps modem is ideal for most sites)
- Consistency in Layout and Design
Landing Page Testing and Tuning
With Leapfrog Online, I have been asked to run quite a few split-tests. The Landing Page Testing and Tuning session helped me out in understanding the traffic patterns and measurement techniques used to figure out split-test results. Key lesson: Measure relative to a baseline, not absolute traffic. In an A/B test, one-third of conversion hits is due to chance.
Fun With Dynamic Web Sites
Ever since I joined SPSS, my focus has been on building database-driven dynamic web sites. The main focus of the Fun With Dynamic Web Sites session was to remove indexing barriers and allow spiders to search your site efficiently. Key lesson: URL rewriting schemes can help overcome long, ugly URLs.
Successful Site Architecture
The session on Successful Site Architecture pretty much just re-enforced all the lessons I had learned so far from the conference and my work.
Images and Search Engines
The Images and Search Engines session dealt with the fact that 15% of all searches are image searches.
Key lesson: the proper use of image name, alternative text, page content, and anchor text can go a long way in boosting ranking in image search. This should be a key consideration for retail outlets and niche markets.
Flash and Search Engines
One major problem with Flash content is that Flash is difficult to index. Most site who want to utilize Flash should focus more on Flash movies, not entire Flash sites. Key lesson learned from the Flash and Search Engines session was: start with basic HTML site, then through progressive enhancement, add in Flash movies where appropriate.
CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 and Search Engines
The session entitled CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 and Search Engines talked about how to incorporate javascript techniques while not breaking expected user behavior. Most of this session was demonstration based; pulling up various AJAX-enabled web sites and examining their strengths and weaknesses. One important tip was to use anchor links to avoid breaking the back button behavior.
Blog and Feed (RSS) Search SEO
The Blog and Feed Search Engine Optimization session focused primarily on blog optimization techniques and included a short presentation from Rick Klau of FeedBurner. Key lesson: give every post a theme and stay on topic. The five basic steps to keyword rich content in blog post are:
- Write the Post
- Review Keyword Usage
- Create Appropriate Headline
- Review Body Content
- Check Anchor Tags
