seojealous

earlier this year, the number of clients asking questions about local search started to skyrocket. that funny little map kept showing up in search results, and new blog posts and articles sprang up everywhere. this baseline awareness is a start, but so much confusion still surrounds local search optimization and how it functions as a marketing tool. to people absorbed in the search sphere, most local search concepts and techniques seem fairly straightforward. but after numerous conversations with non-search humans, i can confirm that they must be tricky enough. a few pesky client misconceptions:

1. there are only three local results. obsession with the one-box runs rampant! many people are blown away when you demonstrate that google maps, yahoo local, and live search local can actually produce whole pages full of local business results. it’s no wonder google has pushed so hard to integrate local results into their traditional serps. so many typical search users don’t realize they have a choice.

2. google is sending me junk mail. the post card verification requirement gets them every time. stop throwing that away!

3. faking client testimonials on 3rd-party review sites is a great idea. people, don’t fake it (i’m sure numerous articles in back-issues of cosmo would back me up). gaming user-generated content may be tempting, but readers have a knack for sniffing out insincerity, and they don’t have a high-tolerance for thinly-veiled attempts at manipulation. positive reviews in citysearch, insider pages and other sources can be great conversion tools; don’t turn them into big turnoffs. try encouraging real, live customers to spread some goodwill if they’ve had a good experience.

it’s always an adventure.

though you’ve spent the better part of a couple days revelling in utterly thorough live-coverage provided by the lovely lisa barone and susan esparza at bruce clay blog, jane copeland and rebecca kelly at seomoz, and others, i wanted to share some impressions after the wrap of the first smx conference.

first report: not a box lunch in sight. if you win over the stomachs, hearts and minds follow closely behind. clever planning by danny and company.

networking events: excellent. microsoft threw a great kickoff party with live music. the dj at the google dance played a mix of the 80s’ greatest hits (journey + bangles mash up = awesome). yahoo fed us proscuitto. free drinks all around. i met a bunch of great search marketers, including a few from my neighborhood back home.

the sessions: i attended the organic track. in many cases, session q & a’s led to the most interesting discussions. day 1 reflected the strongest programming - you&a with matt cutts (featuring a danny sullivan strip tease - no lie), seo meet smm, and personalized search: fear or not? were all pretty fruitful. on day 2, the session-of-which-i-swore-not-to-speak produced some, er… stuff, but i dare not speak of it.

was it “advanced?”: attendees expressed some mixed feelings about this. the speakers for this debut conference faced a significant challenge in creating high level presentations. who or what is advanced, and what meaning does that word carry as we discuss an industry of professionals with widely varied practical experience and fractured specialties? the lack of definition creates a fundamental problem. you may be a pro at exploiting social media, that doesn’t preclude your status a technical guru. you may be a cloaking superstar, but that may not make you a usability specialist. when danny sullivan mentions Universal Search, then pauses and asks the question, “does everyone in the room know about Universal Search?” some hands raise up.

overall, the speakers were up to the task. some material erred on the side of caution, but each session at search marketing expo produced something worth the time.

for tonight, that’s the quick summary. more to come tomorrow from minneapolis.

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.

early last week i returned from my first trip to europe since college. and let me preface this - i had a great time. what follows is not a complaint, but i couldn’t help but be taken aback by some of the contrasts.

then: me, backpack, railpass, catching the next train out of town (wherever it was headed), finding someplace to ’sleep’ after i arrived.

now: me, husband, one of those awful rolling suitcases, train tickets purchased well in advance on the RENFE website, emails back and forth with the proprietress of a charming hostal, and hotel reservations made ahead of time online. 

maybe i was braver and more spontaneous back then (and probably stupider - i don’t necessarily advocate travelling alone in italy if you’re a 20-year-old woman).  but it’s become so easy to take care of every detail from your desk without making a single international phone call. the internet has helped foster so many of my lazier tendencies.

among the highlights: a trip to the museo nacional centro de arte reina sofia in madrid to see picasso’s guernica. rolling through thousands and thousands of acres of olive trees near the sierra nevada foothills. jamón. watching from the beach as a naval ship left port in the mediterranean while blaring darth vader’s theme march from star wars. a spanish version of the daily show. sun (sun!). and the best calamari i have ever eaten, expertly prepared by a bartender.

until today, i never fully understood what inspired seofangirl and co. to gush over the resident god-of-search at google. on his blog, matt cutts shared a revelation that made me weak in the knees: he really digs neil gaiman.

and if you don’t know who neil gaiman is, you’d  best  get  reading.

unless your computer’s been broken for the past eighteen months, you’ve been beaten over the head by scads of helpful individuals reminding you that social search is the current it-thing in online marketing. so why are so many search marketers so far behind the curve on social media? for starters, we’ve got two primary disadvantages:

1.) we’re really good at non-social search. anti-social search, even. the kind where all we had to worry about was some guy sitting in front of his computer all alone (possibly in the dark), keying mundane queries into a search engine. he wanted to buy stuff, and maybe find some porn. easy enough, right? but here in the myfriendsterspace world of social media, he who has the most friends wins. and let’s face it: we were the kids who liked to read, act in drama club plays and do math problems for extra credit.

2.) by the time we’ve finally heard of something, it’s probably not happening anymore. back in the winter of 2004 (before it was swallowed by murdoch & friends), i knew a group of students/unemployed twentysomethings who spent nearly all of their daylight hours on myspace. at night, they all got together to discuss what had happened that day on myspace. talk about a captive audience. three years later, most people who maintain their myspace pages do little more than check for new messages, and immediately leave. that initial allure is gone; it’s no longer a cool thing to do on friday night. and though the audience for social networking sites has grown exponentially, that audience is now fractured across dozens of different outlets.

today a new york times article discusses the migration of young web users away from structured, regulated destinations like youtube and myspace, toward web sites without restrictions, standards and rules. sure, the various focus groups cited in the article attribute this phenomenon to decaying moral values. but the real objection of google, cbs, nbc and the other corporations mentioned? copyright issues, sure - but when you get down to it, the fact is it’s a hell of a lot harder to market to users on a web without rules.

the 16-24 crowd is no longer satisfied with simply watching XTREEEME snowboarders chug mountain dew brand soda and blast down the hill on tv. instead they flock to watch videos of themselves getting out of the driver’s seat and dancing around/on top of their still-moving vehicles. they write their own content, they sell their own messages, and they push their own favorite products. and even though a steady stream of internet marketers are trickling in to the party, most of us are still huddled together in the corner trying to think of something cool to say.

amazing - my humble beginnings have been live for less than a week, and already i’ve been hassled by David Temple and mistaken for Ward Tongen. is this what success feels like?? after spending my holiday vacation gorging on sugar and pursuing some horrifyingly domestic activities around the house, i’m back to work (and frankly not that upset about it). i’ve got a new post in the works for later tonight.

everybody has a blog, and now thanks to the near-constant pestering of family and coworkers, so do i. i’ll be discussing topics related to search marketing in all its various forms and initialisms. since i’m easily amused and easily distracted, expect the occasional off-topic post.