seojealous

i’m headed to seattle this weekend to attend what promises to be one of the best conferences in recent years. danny sullivan’s first smx agenda raises the bar: duplicate content issues, social media marketing, better ways to do boring stuff, and an early morning group interrogation of matt cutts. let’s hope he’s still in that sleepy, lucid-dream state: able to tell us everything he knows, but too groggy to realize he shouldn’t.

among these session topics, one stands out: personalized search: fear or not? i can’t wait to hear some perspectives on this one, especially since i’ve been going around the country for the last few weeks (both physically and webinar-ly. ever been in the hartford, ct airport? not pretty) in attempts to smite the fear out of some concerned parties. isn’t it a good thing that search engines serve relevant content to individual users based on their behaviors, patterns and preferrences? don’t advanced targeting tactics mean the users who see my clients’ sites in the search results will be even better-qualified?

the real problem? while things like personalization, geo-targeting, and google’s universal search get us all ’cited, they throw a big wrench our clients’ pre-conceived concept of search engine success: you get a medal and a gold star and the number 1 (or 3…or 8 ) pinned to your vest. in a climate where rank is relative and fluid, it can be quite a challenge to convince clients that their sites aren’t ‘broken’ if they don’t appear in the serp slot on every computer.

rank re-education camp, anyone? it’s summer - all we need is a lake, some tents, and canoes. and a bunch of laptops. and a very powerful wifi signal.