It's been a month since some of the most respected names in search engine marketing gathered in Seattle for Danny Sullivan's SMX Advanced conference. That means that the embargo on the information shared in the "Give it Up" panel is now fair game for blogging. The posts are popping up all over now, which means it's your chance to see if there was anything said that you can apply to your business.
Jordan McCollom has a recap of the session at the Marketing Pilgrim blog. You can also get coverage of the session at Search Engine Roundtable and the Bruce Clay blog.
I think my favorite advice comes from the always insightful Mike Grehan:
My current thoughts: think different.
These days, sometimes, you just have to be #1. Conventional wisdom has always said you have to write compelling title tags. When universal search happens, title tags can't compete with pictures! He gives the example of a "Shakira" SERP: who’s going to click on a boring text link when there's a sexy picture there. Another example: the American Airlines SERP: open the plus box in the results, and they're the only result above the fold.
We have to look heuristics, video: how it's all pulled together. Previously, we were just thinking about text. When you talk about content, the first thing the we talk about is copy. But there’s so much more.
For the future, don't just think about text. Think different.
Links are very important, but in the future they won’t be the most important thing. The quality of the link will be important. Look offline—a friend was starting a new restaurant in London. They found three leading food critics in London and got them to eat at the restaurant. Even if the food sucked, they’d still get the link (and press).
Jill Whalen and Todd Friesan both offered up good advice on title tags for large sites. They've suggested generating the title tag from your breadcrumb navigation, a move that makes perfect sense if you're using keywords in your navigation descriptions. This tip is especially relevant to e-com sites, though Jill smartly suggests reversing the order of the keywords in the title tag.
For titles: use last 3 phrases from bread crumbs, in reverse order + company name: The breadcrumb Travel : Cruises : Cruise Lines : Royal Caribbean : Costa Rica 7 day cruise would become: <title>Costa Rica 7 day cruise—Royal Caribbean—Cruise Lines—Company Name</title> . This way, your title tags are keyword rich and describe the page well.
While it doesn't look like anything earth-shattering was shared, there's certainly some good advice and insight in there, especially for those still figuring out how this whole search engine optimization thing works. I'd highly suggest taking the time to read coverage of the session on Marketing Pilgrim, Search Engine Roundtable and the Bruce Clay blog. You just might find something great to boost your site.
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