Here are some visuals:

Refreshments

Networking

Partying at the Google Dance at Google’s Offices

Inside the Googleplex looking for ranking insider tips or Matt Cutts.

Stalking Matt Cutts.

Totally BFF with Matt Cutts now.*

TopRank Blogging Team, minus the boss.

The boss getting interviewed by NBC.

Many more photos at the TopRank Flickr account and session recaps at the Online Marketing Blog.

*No, not really.

Here’s what I have so far:

• Turn down the screen brightness as far as it can go and still be usable.
• Turn off BlueTooth
• Turn off Airport when not in use.
• Turn off any applications not in use.
• Turn Quicksliver to only re-index every day, not hour.
• Optimize the energy saver preferences.

What other thoughts do you have to share? How can I get my MacBook Pro to last all day without plugging in?

If you happen to be out at the search engine strategies conference, keep an eye out for me and say HI! You’ll be able to notice me with my shinny new MacBook Pro!

The first on was a Thai restaurant. Now if you ask me where I’d like to go eat, I’d say KFC or out for pizza. Thai however has never been on my radar but I went anyways.

My group helped me pick out something good to eat based on my likes and dislikes. Non spicy was a high priority. I ended up with something with chicken and big rice noodles and I have to say, it was very good. The table also ordered some sushi and other things that I did try. I have to say it was quite a good experience and reminded me of a Chinese restaurant.

On a separate night, and with a different group, we decided to go to a Greek restaurant. Now I’ve seen A Big Fat Greek Wedding but that’s as close to Greek food as I’ve gotten. The menu was much easier to understand and I ended up with a fantastic chicken dish with potatoes and rice. The table also shared flaming cheese which was literally on fire when it came. I’ll definitely try a Greek restaurant again.

When I’m alone, or with the wife, I think that a Thai restaurant is not something we would have really given a chance. Greek on the other hand has been on our mind, but not a high priority. Overall, I was very happy with both my experiences and am glad that I gave them a chance.

So, if I don’t get back to your blog comments, form posts or email in the next few days, you’ll know why.

Nope, it’s an art really. Figuring out how politely convince other sites to link to yours, in the correct way, for the right price takes lots of time and effort. Unless your Justilien.

I met Justilien at Search Engine Strategies in California and have been keeping in contact with him ever since. He’s supposed to be telling me his secrets but that’s not happening. However he does have a Website Marketing Strategies blog up now that may give out a few tips here and there.

Check it out, read up and let me know if you find anything useful.

While I was out at SES, the Ask people mentioned Smiley Central because it’s one of their projects. Now I wouldn’t usually trust something like this, but since it came from the Ask Jeeves company, I felt at ease.

I got Christi to download the Smiley toolbar and test it out as it only works on a PC. We first found out it didn’t work in Yahoo Mail with Firefox. With a little research we found out we had to get the eWebMail Color and Graphics Firefox extension to make it work in Firefox. Once it did we were all set to have some fun!

Lots of smilies are available and you can insert them into any email or form field that is supported by the toolbar. Some are cute, some funny, gross, animated and all are just plain fun! If you are on a PC, and a smiley fan, I suggest checking it out. It can bring a lot more fun to your emails and IM clients.

Organic Listings Forum

Email Yahoo is index issues happen
My Yahoo 2.0 blocks sites & takes notes
Search results may be influenced by others
Konatical (sp?)
Google hats pop-ups - toolbar could be reporting them
Buying links ok, schemes are wrong
301 redirect from well established site could get you out of sandbox?
Loosing rankings does not equal sandbox
Sandbox happens because of sudden link gain / unnatural happenings
Cblock, anchor text, registered name all could be looked at with unnatural happenings
Google toolbar knows everything you do, other toolbarls probably too
Duplicate = Exact copy for the most part
About.com has good directory structure
Multiple domains, same content, confuse
Links most important
Server speed also can play a part

Meet the Crawlers: Submission & Feed Edition

- Ask Jeeves
Likes robots.txt
Crawl delay can be put in robots file to slow the crawler down
Freshness - variable rate of crawling
completeness
time date stamp content (20% never changes) - HTTP last modified
Use Sitemap
Bloglines updates more than once an hour, 1Mil + feeds a day.

- Google
Use Google sitemaps to get pages updated
Better crawl coverage/ fresher results/ smarter crawl

- Yahoo
FUSE Find Use Share Expand
Deeper crawling from authority link
Site depth counts
URL submit list available
Specific titles & descriptions very important
No excessive domain cross linking
Crawl-delay:20 (seconds)
Site explorer coming soon - see what yahoo sees
my.yahoo.com/rss (48 hour delay?)
Google - keyword in URL doesn’t matter
Google site map is directory based.

My SEM Toolbox

See Mr Ploppy and the gang for a list of the tools that were discussed.

Executive Roundtable
with each major search engine

Cragg Silversteen (sp?) - Google
Gerry Campbell - AOL
Jim Lanzone - Ask Jeeves
Bradley Horwits (sp?) - Yahoo
Ken Moss - MSN Search

Google is on year 295 of it’s 300 year plan. And right on target.
Search Engines (SE’s) like tagging
Tags-
Flicker is smart by making people do it
Regular people should decide what’s important / social aspect
Flicker users keep the system clean
Flicker now has interestingness and groups
Maps-
MSN now has virtual earth
Google Maps is a great time waster
SE’s like freshness, relevance and presentation
Index size doesn’t matter.
Bigger index, more junk?
Google believes in happiness over relevancy. Just like talking to other people.
Google is trying to add new features without complexity or having instructions involved
Ask stats that SE’s don’t copy each other necessarily. You can’t make a desktop search app in two weeks. Just because Google released one doesn’t mean Yahoo didn’t have one in the works.
MSN things competition is good for users
Failure is good. Can’t succeeded if you don’t fail.
AOL like the iPod. Not innovative but packaged perfectly

Pimp My Site

Title tags important
Tracking clicks very important
Content re-wiriting
Don’t link out to often
Usability - no big images at the top
Order a product to see how it works
Put popular products at the top
3 main products on homepage
Categorize product pages with content and categories
See where people are coming from besides search engines
Google Site Map
301 other domains
Move away from Yahoo Store. They claim it’s big and unfriendly to SEs
Creative PR angle
Try new things and track results
Wordtracker
Monster Commerce vs Yahoo Store
Analitics

Site ECG

Digital Point Network Risky?
Sand box effects every site
Google Site Maps
Why your rankings change?
    Internal/External links
    Algorithms
    On Page Changes
Link internally/externally the same way each time. .htm or /
Duplicate Content - Supplemental Index Google
Slow Death - Google link that is just url?

Usability Clinic

Don’t tell user to sign up for an account or put in personal info w/o telling them why
Buttons should look clickable
Different text/message for demographics
Banner Blindness - top 60 to 100 px
Eyes go to movement or face. Yellow also
Privacy Policy linked on form pages
800×600 standard
Solutions or Products in nav is to generic
Capture internal search words
Pop-Out menus that pop out more than once to hard to use
If links are on two lines, use bullets : People are stupid
Links shouldn’t blend in
Breadcrumbs
Legends at top
In-Stock text is helpful
Add to registry is good marketing
Rollovers
Keep menu items highlighted when you are in that area
3 Column layouts
Add to cart in color and reversed out in middle of page
Call/Contact on right
Google ads in center of top is call to action
Add availability area
Bottom nav should match top.

Evening Forum with Danny Sullivan

General discussion. Tried to get a shot of Danny in a pimp hat.

Keynote Conversation
with Steve Berkowitz, CEO and Director of Ask Jeeves

Has reduced ads with acquisition
Working on new innovative products
Not just a Q&A engine
Name is probably changing
Working on evolving products
The butler is safe for now (not going away)
Smilie Central is an Ask site
Toolbar privacy important. No spyware or adware
Sponsored search program on the 15th of August
Likes Google relationship / partnerships OK
Increased innovation for 2006 / a better search and my jeeves
If you work for Ask you work with 44 different companies and you can move around in any of them.

RSS, Blogs & Search Marketing

-Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., APR, - Searching for Profit
No comments? Do you really have a blog then?
July 05 - 60 million blogs world wide
55% are still alive after 3 months
3% Updated weekly
Content is still king
Blogs are not the killer app, RSS is.
Uses for RSS:
    affiliate communication
    syndicate content
    product announcements
    security alerts
    product uses and tips/articles
    customer communications
    press room
    career / job opportunities
Write content so feed is meaningful
Keyword titles
500% more click though than emails
-Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts, LLC
RSS is better than email in your inbox, unspammable
Full text feeds are best
Watch for other stealing content
Podcast is an mp3 in RSS
Yahoo/Gator/MSN Buttons for one click subscribing
Auto discovery tag a must
You can create custom feeds
Feedburner uses 302 redirects to get back to your site
Keep feeds on your own site
-Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO PR
Blogs are outdated because they are now mainstream
11 million in US
“opinion leaders” are typically male, under 30, broadband connection, savvy
51% of journalists read blogs
They find news not found elsewhere
Blogs convey personality and basis
Blogs need to be different, not just re-transmitted info, unique content.
Needs to be something good enough to pass on to a friend
Posts should be no more than 300 words if it’s a blog article
-Nan Dawkings, Partner, RedBoots Consulting

Meet the Blog & Feed Search Engines
BlogLines Findory, Moreover Feedster Technorati

-Mark Fletcher, Vice President and General Manager, BlogLines at Ask Jeeves
600 Million blog articles, 1.4 million blog feeds
2-3 million blog articles a day
improving search with tehoma/ask
-Greg Linden, Founder and CEO, Findory
Learns and adapts to you to find you content
Learns over a short period of time, not years
-Scott Rafer, President and CEO, Feedster
Feed ads / Make money
Search engine w/ ad network
Deal w/AOL - blog search
Right blog, right message, right target
-David Sifry, Founder & CEO, Technorati
Blogosphere doubles every three months
80,000 every day, one a second
China is big on blogs
13% of people update weekly or more often
10.4 posts a second
Median time under 5 minutes
1/3 tag or categorize posts
Number of new tags has increased substantially
Cool TAG Quicktime video shown
-Jim Pitkow, CEO, Movreover
(different kind of feed engine)

Public Relations & Reputation Management

-Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO PR
Yahoo news averages 24.9 million unique visitors a month.
Google averages 7.2 Million
Topix 2 million
Most PR people can’t pitch to computer algorithms
Yahoo News has a bigger audience than MSNBC, CNN or NY TImes
Pages should be optimized for humans first
Tracking URLs are good to see where people are coming from
News quality counts. Don’t post on stupid stuff.
Ethical = Effective
-Nan Dawkings, Partner, RedBoots Consulting
Journalists are overwhelmed
200 non-spam emails a day
30 phone messages
20 press releases by mail
50% of journalists follow blogs
Voters (in last election) trusted blogs over talk radio
Clients need to respond to bad press ASAP and blogs are a good way to do that
Most sites need more than one feed
Audio/Video are a plus
-Rob Key, President & CEO, Conversion
Monitor with PubSub or Tehnorati to see who’s talking about you
Fair use comes into play
75% of people don’t go past search result page one
Look at search results +/-
Create micro sites?
Diversify
Stay transparent, don’t hide who you are if creating microsites
add new content or whitepapers to existing site to improve rankings
don’t dominate more than the top 10
police your brand

Writing for Search Engines

-Heather Lloyd-Martin, Director of Search Strategies, WebSourced, Inc.
Focus on 2-3 keywords a page
250 words a page
Title = headline. No commas or | - Like a book title
50-75 characters with spaces
Think Clickable - no keywords
headlines and sublines
zappos.com and treo 600 have good links on products
Update/Create
    FAQ
    How To’s
-Jill Whalen, Owner, High Rankings
Use wordtracker
Homepage generic, inner pages specific
Keyword content is 1/3 of SEO
Alt text unread in non-clickable images
It’s not about sprinkling keywords in
who what where
FAQ about what? Specific
Be descriptive in links. Not our services
Use longer phrases than one word
Not our office, our Minnesota office
Avoid ing or s unless you want to rank for them
Use variants if you wish
Don’t use two spellings on one page. e-mail and email
Keywords don’t need to be on the top of the page.

There was so much information floating around that it was hard not to miss some pieces here and there. From the new definition of RSS - Really Simple Stealing - go the explanation of some of Google’s patents, there was a little something for everyone.

Some of my favorite sessions were on blogs, RSS and website usability. I got to hear from people at Ask, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Technorati and many other major search engines. I even talked to people from MSN, Yahoo and Google during lunch or after sessions. It was a great opportunity to get to know a few folks.

I also got to meet some of the big SEO people in the industry. From Danny Sullivan to Stuntdubl and many many others. Even a few from places like England and Chili.

I have set up a photo gallery for SES 2005. All photos taken while I was out in San Jose. I really tried to get one of Danny Sullivan in a pimp hat, however he must have been avoiding the camera really well.

I’ll try to get all my notes up online and I thank everyone who I met and those who had a hand in the conference and expo as it was a great experience.

Technorati Tags: Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask, Technorati

I have so much information to share but the weekend is filled up with family stuff so I’ll try to post it as the week goes on. All in all it was a good conference and I learned a lot.

I also got some good information from today’s sessions. How to ‘pimp my site’ was very enjoyable and so was one on site usability. It was great to hear from all the major search engines in the keynote on where they’ve been and where they are going too. Hopefully I’ll get around to posting my notes in the next week.

One more day and then back to Minnesota.

I was expecting a lot and it didn’t disappoint. You could go dace with the live band or play volleyball, video games, get your picture taken in a photo booth, talk to Google employees or just walk around. Lots to do and lots of fun.

Pictures: (I’ll try to get better ones once I get home and back on a Mac)

• Alexia - Check stats, traffic and analyze links
• PPC - See what competitors are bidding on or optimizing or
• Market Leap to check backlinks
• Use email alerts to keep track of where competitors are getting links and who is talking about you
• Ebay - Start ups usually start here
• Compare sites load times, internal linking, homepage copy, indexed number of pages and the transaction experience.

After the first speaker it got into paid inclusion and tracking the performance history of ads for you and your competitors. Got a few good pointers here and a few websites to check out.

I may check out A9 after being at this session, however not a whole lot of knowledge taken away.

Blinks has the best service because they have software that actually listens to every Podcast and video and then uses voice recognition software to create indexable consent for that clip. This way no one can put in a description that says it’s about computers when it’s really about software. Kinda smart.

Google gives free hosing and bandwidth for videos. Just upload them and Google will do the rest. However they did say that their service was at about a 2 out of 10 right now. Lots of work left to do and it doesn’t play well with Macs. They also will have a pay service so that you can charge people $3 or something to see your video if you wish.

Aol just bought Singing Fish and they are all excited about that. Yahoo talked about the image search, photo search, movies search, Flicker and the new audio search. Nothing to breakthrough though. Yahoo loves how Flicker gets the users to do all the work though via tagging. Very smart.

iTunes was talked about. It’s really started to bring Podcasts mainstream. However, no services have any similarities in Podcast RSS feeds. Yahoo, iTuens, Singing Fish and Blinxs all have different submission standards and they are hoping to standardize something soon.

They also mentioned that Podcasts are easier than most people think. You can record them via cell phones put them up. It doesn’t matter if they are that great, just get started with something. They also said that Podcasts should have their own RSS feeds and all have their own landing pages. Video should have the meta data added in in the audio software that was used to create or optimize it. Plus you should use keyword rich file names and link names when linking to any video.