Ever wanted to get rid of pesky competitors without having to get your hands dirty trying to figure out if they are or are not doing anything that violates Google’s guidelines? Now you can!! Why bother actually reporting them? That takes time, and you could be wrong. Don’t take that risk.

Eliminate the competition using the following three safe methods:

1. The Friendly Email
See a site ahead of you in the rankings? Well get a contact email and send something like the following…

“Hi Bob.

Just wanted to reach out and give you a friendly reminder to make sure that you know EXACTLY what your SEO company is doing. I’ve been reading a lot about how underhanded some of them are, so just ask yours a few questions and make sure that they’re being totally upfront with you. I know a guy who just got his site banned and he had no clue that his SEO was doing some shady stuff.

Have a great day!
Jim”

Key takeaways:

This tends to work best with webmasters who:

2. The Gentle Threat
If you’re exhausted from sending the Friendly Email and nothing’s happening, move on to the Gentle Threat. Just remember to be gentle. There’s no need for tacky behavior here.

The Gentle Threat works something like this…and feel free to alter the tone if you think you need to be a bit nastier. Some of these assholes don’t listen.

“Hi Bob.

It’s Jim again. I really hate to be the one to scare you but a lot of guys in our industry are getting really upset about people using spammy SEO techniques to rank well. I don’t want you to get caught up in this, so you may want to watch out. I wouldn’t bother asking your SEO what he’s doing though. He’ll just make something up and keep taking your money. Just be careful, and watch your back. Even if you aren’t doing anything unethical, getting turned into Google won’t be pretty. I know a guy who had that happen and it took him 2 years to get his site back in.

Best of luck!
Jim”

Key takeaways:

This tends to work best with webmasters who:

3. The Link To Reporting A Site
If nothing else works, this will. Just send the webmaster an email linking to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks. There’s no need to bother with trying to report any of the other violations since this one will work. Everyone worries about their links you know.

Key takeaways:

This tends to work best with webmasters who:

The 2nd annual Social Media World Forum takes place next week at London’s Olympia; and the schedule looks extremely juicy. The two-day forum starts Monday 15th and attracts some of the true thought- leaders in social media, who should be sharing their knowledge on some of the meatier issues faced by social media practictioners and participants today including; monetization, future technologies, engaging with brands and managing social/business metworks. (Like there’s a difference???)

I’m in the midst of a hardcore liveblog training- regime, which involves a timed laptop bootup, which is more impressive than a rifle assembly drill. Plus a steamed fish and wheatgrass diet (concentration levels) and bionic occular implants (for the slides).

Actually, that is a bit of an exaggeration. I am keeping my nails rather short, and I’m laying off the pork scratchings, but that’s only going to get me so far.

I really need your help!

Let’s have some social media dotcommunism here. This is the jam-packed big-name schedule. I hope to liveblog two or three of the biggest sessions and the rest will be featured in roundup posts, so let me know if there is anything you really want to know about!

Day 1.

9:20 a.m. OPENING KEYNOTE

Kevin Eyres of Linkedin Europe

9:50 a.m. DEVELOPMENTS OF THE WORLDWIDE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKET IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS

It doesn’t make it clear who is speaking here – or perhaps it is still Kevin Eyres?!:

10:10 FACEBOOK PLATFORM AND FUTURE STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS AT FACEBOOK

Trever Johnson: Head of Strategy and Planning, EMEA, facebook.

10:30 PANEL: THE CHANGING ROLE OF SOCIAL METWORKING AS AN INFLUENCER OF WORLDWIDE MEDIA

• Allison Wightman, Head of Marketing, Virgin Atlantic Airways
• Sienne Veit, Social/Mobile Commerce Director, M&S Direct
• Igor Beuker, Founder, SocialMedia8
• Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy, SapientNitro

11:00 (break)

11:40 WHAT ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS OF MONITORING & MEASURING A SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN?

Muhammed karim, Senior Brand Manager, Mars

12:00 BUILDING COMMUNITY BASED ENGAGEMENT IN YOUR BRAND

David Henry, VP Digital marketing (Europe), Monster.

12:20 PANEL: INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO TRADITIONAL MARKETING STRATEGY

• Mark Watts-Jones, Head of Development & Innovation, Orange UK
• Dr. Torsten Wingenter, Head of Social Media, Lufthansa
• Lisa Mane, Head of Social Media, COI
• Tom Nixon, Co-Founder & Director, NixonMcinnes

13:00 (Lunch)

14:00 DEFINING THE BRAND EXPERIENCE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy, SapientNitro

14:10 HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO POWER GLOBAL INITIATIVES

Lucas Herscovici, Global Head of Digital & Innovation, Stella Artois & Becks

14:30 SOCIAL MEDIA IS OUT OF CONTROL

Alex Miller, Head of Jam (i-Level Social Media Unit) and Olivia Newton, Head of Emerging Platforms, i-Level.

14:50 PANEL: PRACTICAL TIPS TO LAUNCHING BUILDING & MANAGING YOUR BRAND WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

• Martine Edgell, CRM Specialist, Mercedes Benz
• John Hughes, Insights & Research Manager, Yomoego
• Muhammed Karim, Senior Brand Manager, Mars
• Paul Cowan, VP New Ventures, Syncapse

15:30 (Break)

16:00 PANEL: MONETIZING SOCIAL GAMES & VIRTUAL CURRENCY

• Michael Caselli, Editor, Online casino News (Chair)
• Adam Caplan, VP, Virtual Currency (Super Rewards), Adknowledge
• Oliver Lo, Senior Marketing Manager, Mojo World
• David Wang, CMO, Sega

16:20 SOCIAL VIDEO. CONVERSATIONS ON FACEBOOK GET REAL, LIVE, INTERACTIVE AND IN THE CLOUD!

Arnold Waldstein, CMO, Vpype

16:40 PANEL: USING APPLICATIONS TO REACH NEW AUDIENCES – THE LATEST IN APP DEVELOPMENT

• Neil Sato, CTO, mixi
• Fred McIntyre, VP Product, CBS Interactive
• Shoieb Yunus, CEO, Vpype

17:15 (Day 1 Wrap)

Day Two. (I can only make the first section today)

9:50 HOW CAN ADVERTISERS INTEGRATE SOCIAL NETWORKS INTO THEIR ADVERTISING STRATEGY?

Michael Smith, Deputy Director of Interactive Services, COI

10:10 MONETIZING SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIAL NETWORKS
Chris Tradgett FIDM, Partnerships, buy.at

1030 PANEL: BENCHMANRKING ADVERTISING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

• Ricky Chopra, Digital Marketing Manager, Speedo International Limited

• Jason Baker, Head of CRM and Digital Media, Ikea UK

• Alex Miller, Head of Jam, i-level’s Social Media Unit
• Marco Corsaro, Managing Director, 77 Agency
• Adam Fields, Head of Social Media, Media Contacts

I’ve got to call it a day there; but do check out the full schedule and I’ll try to find anyone else that might be liveblogging!

So I woke up this morning, wondering what to write about for SEO chicks this week, and wouldn’t ya know Google has launched yet another thing that no-one needs. Perfect, this post will practically write itself!

The first I knew of Google starred results, was seeing the Search engine land post on the subject, so I did a quick check, and found that I still had search wiki, in fact as of writing this post, I still haven’t been moved over to the new system, and from what I’m hearing, I kind of hope that I get left out of the update all together.

@Seobegincom has been keeping me updated on his initial experiences of stared results for much of the morning, and it seems that Google is continuing it’s trend of giving us things that we never wanted, can’t switch off, and make life more difficult than it was before. So far some of the issues that seem to be appearing are:

• Google adding things to your google bookmarks, based on search history & auto categorising them
• Auto bookmarking sites from your public profile
• In order to prevent it tracking trends you have to turn your history off

This raises so many questions for me, especially as I have over 100 google bookmarks stored, and keeping them organised and findable is hard enough at the best of times, the last thing I want is Google coming in and messing with my system.

Secondly, with social search in place, as well as buzz, is there a risk here that people I’m connected to will see things I have bookmarked…eek, there are things in my bookmarks I do not want the world to see.

I just can’t see the point in this really, I think most of us are more than capable of bookmarking a site if we really want to, do we really need Google deciding what we should bookmark for us? There is little benefit to this over search wiki from what I can see so far, although having not tried it, there is still the chance that I will change my mind.

For now though, I just have to wonder why Google has adopted this throw mud at the wall approach of late, if it’s frustrating and confusing for those of us who spend their lives stalking everything that Google does, I can’t imagine how the less savvy Google account users must see this, or do they just not notice and let Google carry on with whatever they want to do with their accounts? Now there’s a scary thought.

Moderated by Mel Carson, this panel of presenters and social media marketers will be taking us through their approach to integrating social media.

Panelists are Bas van den Beld of NetTraject and www.stateofsearch.com, Crispin Sheridan of SAP Marketing, Marco Cosaro Amadeo Guffanti of 77 Agency Ltd and Anders Hjorth of Outrider.

Lisa’s lunch is still on the press table just next to me; and it’s actually looking better now than it did three hours ago. I’m trying not to look at it. Hope Mel starts soon.

And we’re off…

The room is looking a little sparsely populated, which is a shame as this morning’s session was packed.

Mel sets the scene by talking about how marketing strategies incorporate more than just search and more than just

Mel asked Tamar Weinberg for a definition to focus our understanding, which I’ve paraphrased. “Collarabative tools for communication; the mechanism to get your message across.”

Crispin is up first with a case study.

Why did SAP find social media to be important?

Start by looking at products which are B2B with long lead times and multi-decision makers. Process itself was already social, however SAP were not participating in this conversation.

Path

Business goals were set in conversation with agencies, Outrider, other consultants etc.

• Traffic
• Micro and macro conversions
• Influence and sentiment (analysis)

Consolidate Learnings

• Many SAP teams were testing social media without top down influence
• Need to connect dots with this rogue behaviour

Tracking Reporting & Listening

• Reacting
• Staffing

Learnings

• Not just another channel
• Content production is challengine
• Communities deliver value
• No standard metrics plan
• More and better information needed
• Need for governance

Breadth: 25k fans 4 groups and 30k active members, 20K + Twitter followers

355,766 visits in 09 from social media, with surprisingly high conversion.

They developed policies and guidelines in consultation with lawyers.

Altimeter included SAP in the top 10 most socially active brands, which Crispin puts down to their approach starting early with employees as social media advocates.

Key Take-aways

Audience, Objectives, stuff like that.

Q from Mel – as a large company, what kind of language do the lawyers and late adopters need? Crispin – sales and leads.

We have a stand-in from 77, Amadeo Guffanti. But anyway we’re looking at a FB case study.

Their advice is “have a fan page on Facebook”. Most effective way to promote is to integrate on your website and do some “highly targetted PPC advertising”. (I’ve been doing a lot of vaguely irrelevent PPC myself – must be where I’m going wrong.) Oh.. I get it. Its the demographic targetting facilities you get with FB -

Lots of different types of ad formats to chosse from. Fan Ad, Event Ads, Comment Ad, Polling Ad and Gifting Ad.

Tools – including Facebook Connect, which allows for push integration, which is nice.

Apps – e.g. Mafia Wars, Farmville. Drives a lot of revenue.

Takeaways: SM 1st point of reference for product feedback. SM brings in many elements of mktg mix; and finally, can be highly targetted (with all that juicy user data ) my paraphrase.

Next up is Anders, who leads with a neat segueway from previous topic to point out there is an ad in the conference brochure for FB ads “Find your customer before they search”.

Three forms of media today – earned, paid and owned.

Outrider are very focused on paid media, as it’s quick and results driven.

We’re looking at a GroupM, ComScore and M80: which behaviour of 6 segmented user groups. I’m not really sure what this slide is showing me, but there’s an area of overlap on a pie chart, and I think we’re looking at paid search behaviour for people pre-exposed to the brand through social media. Basically the more social media activity taking place the greater paid search activity and interaction.

Social media drives more search.

Search terms change and are more refined and with greater product detail.

Social and search work together.

Q – Mel “I’m so glad you brought up the concept of earned media, as in working with the Windows consumer brand, Windows set up loads of social feedback points and social touch points. They looked at RTs FB impressions, video impressions etc and in last four days of W7 launch, the team created over 220,000,000 impressions (including comments, interactions).

Our final panellist is Bas van den Beld

Building a personal brand through social media is the topic of this case study.

Bas – quick lowdown. Known for Search Cowboys, just started State of Search, as a boy – wanted to be a football player and around the age of 30 realised this wan’t going to happen…. so decided to become a famous football journalist.

Ok,.. so Bas isn’t a football journo (our gain) but because of the tools available, became famous in our industry.

Note: – it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it (my paraphrase).

We’re looking at the four elemental componants of the social mix.

Earth is the web (content, renew content, be present, share)

Fire is social media (be real, nurture, use right tools for right job, connect, interact, be everywhere, focus outside and be helpful)

Water is offline (help, interact, speak, make friends)

Air is search (do your SEO.) Bas gives the example of being in a car and hearing a radio ad. When the passenger gets home there’s a chance they will try to find you based on ad content – therefore consider search in everything).

Utilise all these four elements and most importantly don’t “silo” them. Bring the mix togther.  Cross-reference everything.

Also – another great value of this is social content is rich, and constitutes your universal search results.

Take-aways: Share… really share. Make friends by finding them first. Be recognisable, and consistent with your brand image (don’t confuse with too many picture versions.)

Mel wraps up by talking about the link between search and social and that it is very important, but does give an anecdote about a mobile company that urged people in an offline campaign to “search for I AM”, and they have to take out a huge paid campaign, as number 1 algo listing was a rather amusing, yet irreverant site something like iambored.com

Q from audience about digg Sphinn etc to Bas: how do we socialise this stuff? – Bas, same principles apply. Grab your mates! IM works well here.

Mel – reminds us of this mornings FB stat from social 101. 21% of FB traffic comes from IM. IM is a social media tool, as is email.

#SESKey

I must admit, some of the sessions thus far have been a little bit “SEO-lite”. Knowing (some of) this next bunch, we should get some great insight and direction. I’ve put out a rallying tweet for some mobile questions, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about Universal and Personalised search without prompt.

Moderator: Dixon Jones, Receptional LTD.

Panellists: Lisa Myers, Verve Search & SEO Chicks. Maile Ohye, Google. Dan Cohen, MSN and Julian Shambles, Telegraph.

(The panel all have head-set mics, which from the front row, looks a bit ‘Steps’.)

Dixon starts with an intro, and a reminder of the hashtag – so that we can tweet questions to him for the panel (so I have)…(mobile)… (since y’asked).

The panel intro themselves.

Dan – nothing to do with Bing, but will be emailing questions to them. Dan is monitoring the #SESKey as Dixon’s iPhone iFailed.

Maile – works with search on WMT API and represents organic search for Google.

Julian – audience development for Telegraph, with responsibilities for driving traffic.

Lisa – CEO of Verve Search and SEO Chicks blogger and State of Search Blogger.

Dixon – founder of Receptional and representing Majestic SEO.

===========================================

Dixon – starts by asking the panel “what is the ONE thing you’re focusing on and the ONE thing we need to get right?”

Dan – MSN is a massive SEO challenge due to number of properties, languages, 3rd party content and other complexities. Top one is content. Quality is always the most important thing, though it sounds hackneyed, it is definitely true and for MSN, never more so than now.

Dixon – why is this so difficult then? Julian why? Julian says the Tele stands for content.. and quality content. Training journo’s for content writing for the web; using personalities like Norman Tebbit.

Dixon – how difficult, Lisa, is creating and ‘getting content’ when thinking about links? Lisa – social media and local is a primary concern and consideration.

Dixon – asks Maile the original question.

Maile – dig deep and look at all properties and avenues available. Quantify returns, looking at metrics to measure social, realtime etc. Then implement on that by prioritising and re-prioritising.

Dan adds to this… when your site model is a page impression model, it’s all about bringing them and keeping them flowing through. As an example they are building technology to detect the visit from search- keyword, ping the bing API and see what else could be of use within site.

Lisa adds a concern about “chasing the keyword” i.e. creating content in a reactionary way. Need to be smarter, not just reactive.

Julian – obviously there must be a reactionary element for Tele, but involving personalsation of content direction and delivery adds distinction.

Dixon – is this a problem for Google? Maile, when it gets to legal issues yes. Show Googlebot the generic non-personalised content. Dixon – does that mean there will be a deterioration of quality. Maile – no, as we’re constantly evolving and personalisation isn’t new – think GEO.

Dixon – for me it’s about original content. 4BN people yet the same three stories on four news channels.

Dixon – (let’s have an argument) “does Google like SEO’s?”(He’s looking at Maile and asking why no sponsorship or parties anymore).

Maile – we want to speak to advanced webmasters because we get excellent feedback. Apparently the new server response time (site performance) in WMT came from feedback in last years’ SES London!!!

SEOs help us direct development for the benefit of all webmasters.

Dixon – Asks Lisa if she feels Google reaches out to Europe. Yes nowadays. We have Fille and Gusella (sic?) and people reaching out to SEOs with feeback.

Dixon – to Julian, do you feel an advantage as a publisher. Not really but there is some form of symbiosis. We give good content and in return get our SERPS position.

Lisa – wants to come back on the previous point that there seems to be a complete lack of assistance or input from Google when it comes to specific search experiences, e.g. Local and UK SERPS.

Dan – thinks the Bing position as content provider, plus SEO, plus search engine means MSN are well placed.

Dixon – asks the audience to vote on contact from Google. Over-whelming majority think Google is getting better on reaching out.

Dixon – is old-school SEO dead? (On page, html tags, meta-data etc)

Dan – though not speaking as a search engine, yes. Very important to get on page right from simple construction perspective. Dan moves onto Twitter (though I have no idea why or how this relates to, if on page still matters.)

Lisa – Googler in Norway confirmed that H1 tags not as important as 2 – 3 years ago. Stuff like optimum KW density is bullshit. Of course title tags, internal linking is massive.

Julian – for us the basic core technical challenge as a large publisher is the CMS. Inbound links are important and occur quite naturally as a content provider. Julian goes on to mention Twitter, but Lisa points out that has nothing to do with on-page. Yeah but it’s an engagement factor. (Maybe that’s what Dan was getting at too.)

Dixon – Asks Maile, what is Google looking for…

Maile there are tools like Allinone SEO pack which take care of the on-page stuff, therefore it is really more about off-site and prioritising engagement drivers like social tools.

Lisa – points out that link strategies and link tools are harder to work on in a time when link factors seems to be tuned higher in the algorithm.

Dixon – finally gets to my question on mobile usability (thanks @richardbaxter for re-tweeting).

Dan – talks about vertical silos of information and how search engines seem to be lacking in how they link data points.

Maile – Applications are important, but the idea of the web being a database of applications needs to be understood in the way we access applications on the web. It is no longer something you access from your desktop. Which creates a big playground on the web. Whilst there is a lot going on in terms of apps, they have a huge stake in HTML5 because they’ve put their money on the web.

(I was hoping more for a consideration of mobile web usability in “on-page” and how that impacts SEO; perspective rather than a bit about apps TBH)…

Dixon – opens up questions to the floor.

Q for Dan – how does he feel about Google using content from the PA?

Interesting, particualrly as Google have hired a commercial content person so is there a move to paid content on cards?

Dan passes to Julian – Julian when it comes to content disparity and challenges true content publishers must adapt. Yes it’s changing but we have to adapt to change as technology changes. Dixon – does that include rev share on content deals with Google? Julien sidesteps, as it’s not his bag.

I’m sure if they’re getting a share of revenue from ad revenue on content shared with Yahoo! then they’ll be getting some kick-back from Google.

Q How do SEOs keep up with 400+ changes a year with 200+ algorithmic componants????

Lisa – things like this event. Talk to other SEOs, share knowledge to piece it together. Get the ear of the black hatters.

Dixon uses RSS runner to check all the major SEO forums every morning (SES, ClickZ, Webmaster World etc). After that… wait until the market catches up. Though “Wave” might have been exciting for us lot, the average punter hasn’t got a clue just yet.

Lisa – remember not all of those changes are to piss off SEOs. Many of these changes are deliberately as a result of our feedback. One change might mean less work elsewhere.

Dan – prioritise for internal development. Which is very difficult. How do you quantify the value of fixing an H1 tag???

Q from the audience – How does Google detect paid links (I don’t do it but I have a friend that does.) Dixon adds – why is this bad in a free market economy?

Maile  – We want our organic search results to be available to everyone and reflect what people like. Impartiality.

How do we detect a paid links? Maile starts, well what we ususally do is… Kidding! Maile nearly had us going there

Normally this is approached by a warning message that you might be infringing their guidelines. Can’t give more detail as if they say what it is that has been detected it will open the detection criteria, therefore open the algorithm for opportunity to be gamed.

Another Q from audience to Maile – where to focus on absorbing information from Google.

Webmaster central blog should be the focus for major feature releases like realtime etc. Don’t worry too much about the tweaks and small updates.

Q – less organic listing as there is PPC, News, Video, Froogle, etc.

Lisa – yes, organic can at times be seen to be disappearing from page one. Dixon, is not that the data sources are changing. Lisa – but that changes things quite considerably. Dixon – from a SERPS checking perspective, but check your tracking systems for tracking.

Maile – lets clarify that most of these other types of listing are still organic and not paid content. Lisa – yes but all of these other types of listings have algorithms that are very different, and seem to get much less attention.

Maile – think of it more as another route to entry. Having a strong website is still the key.

With that we’re out of time. Not sure where to next for SEO, but this SEO is off to interview someone. Laters

Yeah! That’s right Y’all. Our very own SEO Chick Lisa Myers is making this morning’s social keynote.

Microsoft’s Mel Carson: Advertising Community Manager is our MC.

Mel sets us up for the session by explaining they like to think of social media not just as platform, but as marketing tool. It’s important to remember it’s not all just about Twitter and Facebook, but about finding your audience and where they hang out.

Apparently 21% of FB traffic comes from IM. So shared content, is the pull and such stats act as carrot to businesses who often jump in, looking for an instant win. It takes dedication, committment for reward.

Get the basics right!

Lisa starts by stressing this is a 101 and we start with a definition.

Technical platform that facilitates connection. HOWEVER, just being there is not enough. Presence is not the success factor in social media.

Speed by which social media faciliates communication, can be understood b a move from word of mouth to WORLD of mouth.

The key to participation is to listen first – sell later (if at all). SM is not a traditional “sales” tool. Much more below the line relationship sales.

Lisa Plays… Social Media Revolution

Which contains some awesome facts about social media growth, user numbers, frequency of access, and some metrics about the decline of the traditional news media industries.

We’re moving onto looking at the core of social media strategies; The Social Media Elements…

Content marketing, Link Baiting, Site Seeding, ORM and Monitoring, Blogging, Viral and Social Media Networks.

Start With an Objective.

Example: brand awareness, traffic generation, link generation, conversions.

Identify Your Audience.

Who are they and where are they? Doesn’t need to be obsessively detailed as most social medium’s reach some range of audience.

Blogging

200,000,000 blog out there in the interwebosphere, of which 54% post content of some sort DAILY. 34% of whom post product and service OPINION.

Identify your bloggersphere and factor outreach into social strategy.

Allow your own blog to develop a personality. Make sure the blog is designed with the contributors in mind. Easy enough for the CEO to use.

Think about who is blogging, who is managing, what topic and style?

Checklist before you start.

Main topics and categories; who are the bloggers, who is the manager.

Then build out content and relationships accordingly. Consider personality and how this drives content and profile. (Lisa is showing everyone our freakin’ mugshots. LOL) Good point though as all the Chicks have pretty strong social profiles, and can be traced throughout social media including other blogs, Twitter, guest posting, our own company blogs, FB, and the rest.

A Few Favourite Plugins for Wordpress

• Tweetmeme (make it easy)
• Sexybookmarks
• Allinone SEO Pack
• Post avatar
• Vodpod

Social SEO

So much material here, as there are inextricable linkes between the two disciplines. Don’t ringfence them as you will get much greater benefit by comining strateguies and knowledge.

One way to think about it – the Linkerati (who any SEO will be grateful for) are the same people we would consider to be the “Socialerati”.

Linkbaiting = a piece of content designed to be attractive so that it is linked to. Remember it has to be on your domain. Viral content can be off-site, but it can not be considered to be linkbait. Linkbait can gain viral popularity though.

Viral

You can’t “create” a viral. Viral is the spread mechanism not the content type. It can be difficult to control or predict content the “goes viral”.

Must be a creative idea with solid execution elements.

All the tweeting, digging etc will not help a shit idea. Or flash content for example.

Twitter

Lisa got her first client through Twitter! (Moi aussi).

Top tips… don’t overthink it. say it, share it, be normal, be natural.

LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!

This is a two way process and going into it with this mental attitude, you may find you get more out than you put in!

Remember #hashtags add great additional value for grouping and organisation, search and content retrieval.

Twitter lists are a great tool.

Tweetdeck and other third party apps allow for ease of access, multi-account management. Some allow for scheduling Tweets e.g. Hootsuite, and FutureTweets.

Free Social Monitoring Tools for Twitter

www.socialmention.com

www.tweetbeep.com

www.tweepmeme.com

www.klout.com

www.blogpulse.com

Paid Monitoring Tools

www.trackur.com

www.radian6.com

Facebook

Good for spreading the word, linkbuilding, campaign specific and brand perspective.

Fan page pros- indexed, vanity URLs Twitter and blog integration, member stats.

Cons – can’t message all, no post notifications, can’t bulk invite.

Group Pros, bulk invites, DM all members, pre-approve members.

Cons – Not indexed, lose message feature

YouTube: Launching own keyword monitoring and data tools. 2nd biggest global search engine, with it’s own algorithm.

Final point…

INTEGRATE!!!

Integrate your social media, with each other, integrate your strategy, so that it interconnects and flows through.

CASE STUDY: City Inn Advent calendar

(Please refer to the presentation that Lisa will be posting as this is a brilliant and highly effective campaign. )

Micro-site advent calendar with click on each of the 24 days, revealing a great prize e.g. iPhones, 2 tickets to “Strictly” final.

Campaign promoted through Twitter, site, blogs other social media.

Generated equivalent 50% of average monthly traffic

Increased email database considerably

300 more Twitter followers (from starting point of handful).

In summary from Lisa:

Don’t let the stats fool you. If it’s too good to believe it probably is. Think, before you go, and trust your instinct.

Live example. We’re about to do a funky live example social media activity. Which will be going on www.stateofsearch.com and Twitter with #sessocial

Lastly, as Lisa promised, here’s her slide deck from the session (including links etc):

Lisa was also interviewed after the session by Mel Carson and the SES YouTube Channel, here’s her thoughts of the Social Media Tidalwave (and feel free to laugh at the ridiculous “freeze frame”)

Hashtag #SESKey

Our speaker Bryan is on the SES Advisory Board and is a NYTimes bestselling author. We should be getting some great benchmark data and insider tips on driving real conversion improvements.

We start with a quick lesson in conversion – bribery works! (Bryan is talking about incentives).

First premise – “Your Website Sucks”

Why? Average site conversion rate is 3% Which has remained static over the past 5 years, despite improve,entts in design, usability, technology, access etc.

Why settle for 3% when…

Some top 10 online retailers convert from 10 to 65% – what are they doing differently?

1. These sites communicate UVPs and UCPs (unique value propositions and unique conversion props). E.g. “Over 10 million orders shipped since 1994″ as a header. Easyjet “Europes leading low-cost travel website”.

2. Make persuasive and relevant offers – the most being FREE SHIPPING!

From experience at Dell, free shipping made most profit and greatest sales.

3. If you proclaim a great offer on the site, ensure this follows throughout the site, in particular on the checkout page. Or you may lose them. Message must be persuasive and appear consistently.

4. They maintain scent.

Concept of “scent” is explained as our online user behaviour; as information foraging animals. Use signals to continue “scent” and relational path throughout the user journey.

Example from Web Analytics Consulting, we see an ad in Google which explicitly promises a free white paper from industry top names. All of these items are clearly present on the ad LP.

Visual Example: Victoria’s Secret IS scent. Images, style, categories and offers all maintained.

Optimisation is not a single page exercise – It’s a whole journey.

Basically don’t stop with just LP optimisation. Look at the entire user journey to sale. The ad and landing page tend to be marketed, whereas the technical

5. They Make a Strong First Impression

8 seconds to make an association.

Example: LifeLock guarantee your identity and on the HP their VP image is displayed along with his social security number (to make a bold impact statement and instant hook)

6. They Appeal to Multiple Personas/Segments

A common theme from yesterday, segmentation is key to understanding data – and of course understanding and acting according to difference improves conversions.

Quotes Jakob Nielson eyetracking study where people tend to fall into four types; competitive, methodical, spontaneous and humanistic. Need to build personas and market to them.

7. They Don’t do Slice and Dice Optimisation

Example of how to do LP optimisation using the Persuasion Architecture Process – which seeks to appeal to the four different personas. Looking at an example of an overstock.com page which had 91% bounce, we see that there is very little content to appeal to the different user types, in the incorrect places for each type.

Test is for impact and not variation.

E.g. who’s voice works best in online video? British or American (video/audio plays). Which worked better?

It depends… globally British accent won. In the US the British accent also won. In the UK the American accent won!

8. Leverage Social Commerce Using Customer Voice

Amazon example. Number of customer reviews.

Figleaves increased conversion by 35% by adding reviews and ratings. Of course this also helps generate natural search as UGC is written in consumer language.

9 They Use it for Navigation

Add social, comment, rating content to the navigation.

10. They Use it for Promotions

Promoting reviews as part of general promotions (including in emails) greatly improves conversion rate in one case 1482% for Vitacost.

11. They Use it for Credibiltiy

Adds authenticity without seeming to market so aggressively. Opens up to the customer.

12 They Use it for Feedback and Research

Usabiltiy labs, user testing etc can be expensive, whereas review/social content analysis $100 UserTesting.com.

Search for 69 free tools to find a blog post from Bryan with a number of really accessible and affordable usability test and analysis tools.

13. They Use Persuasion Tactics e.g. Scarcity

“Hurry there are 365 people shopping right now. Only 25 left”.

Other tactics; set a scene with product image, e.g. clothing in lifestyle situation.

14. They Even Make Forms Engaging

Short, simple, continued “scent” attractive images. “Thanks for choosing…”

Why make people register pre-checkout. Why not do this on the thank-you page? Or at the same time as checkout?

15. They Provide Point of Action Assurances

E.g. “Guaranteed response within 2 business hours”

Privacy Security, Delivery Guarantee etc.

16. They Keep You In the Process

E.g. on product selection, don’t take the user to the shopping basket, show a confirmation windo with a choice to keep shopping or checkout.

17. They Consider Email Preview

Check how your emails appear in all mail formats without images.

18 They Budget for Experience

Normally spend is focused on traffic driving whilst focus on building customer experience is neglected. Throwing money away.

They Focus on Continued Improvement

Tiny drip-feed improvents over time can add incremental performance improvement. Times change, user-behaviour changes. Always continue to test.

19. They Utilise A System for Prioritisation

There are more “one hour a day” books than there are hours in a day.

Dell gave Bryan a great example of how to do this, bytaking a 71 page list of recommendations from Bryan and asked how many people, how long, how much improvement? Decided to make just one change (two words) from “learn more” to “help me choose”. This change has made $10,000,000 over the years since change.

20. They Make Data Driven Decisions

To do web analytics and optimisation correctly you have to make a to-do list regularly and ACT ON IT! (Looking at level of impact and level or resources).

21. They Know How to Execute Rapidly.

2 hours after Michael Jackson dies, Amazon had reconfigured their MP3 page. This is why Amazon beat all the established old-school merchants in the online arean. Leveraging social content and constantly testing and acting in immediacy.

“Execution is not an event – a onetime push towards acheiving goals. Rather it is a way of life”. (Guy Kawasaki)

5 Final Action Steps

1. Identify problems

2. Create the to-do list

3. Document the change hypothiseis

4. Prioritise this to-do list

5. Start testing and do the same next time.

Audience Questions:

Should we have a number of niche sites?

Yes and no according to subject matter complexity, as people click on what is attractive to them, which can be leverage on one site in most sectors.

Objection to testing from Clients – Largest tend to be inflexible CMS

Bryan recommends Optimost.

What about B2B Signals?

Depends on marketplace and relationship. Spontaneity may matter less, so free shipping might not be such a draw. Free gifts work well for bulk orders.

Do these tips apply to mobile device conversion rates?

Too hard and too early to tell. A lot of these principles will work, but things like improved content and product descriptions will work.

Diff between Social Commerce and Social Media?

Don’t think about social apps as ways to connect, but ways to integrate as business strategy.

How do we handle negative reviews?

Surprisingly negs improve conversions as it helps to qualify which product is not (but conversely what is) a suitable product for them.

Moderated by Jon Myers, this panel of experts will be looking at what constitutes ‘meaningful’ SEO metrics. We’re going beyond volume and position.

Panellists: Jeff Ferguson, SES Advisory Board & Local.com. Miles Bennett, Targetstone Limited and Brian Clifton, Author: Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics.

Jon starts by reminding us that search and SEO can be difficult to quantify and contains a lot of a times “obfuscating” (my paraphrase) terminology for outsiders. SEO is now at the forefront of every business marketing plan; so how do we take meaningful metrics to the board?

Up first we have Jeff, who is looking primarily at how to make search metrics meaningful for board level execs. It’s important for us to get a sense of perspective, as what we are measuring may not mean that much to VP and CEO level. Not only may it not mean too much but these people have very little time.

What are we looking to justify? ROI

ROI must be quantified, therefore activities, time spent on activities and $$$ by activity are what really counts.

Tangible performance drivers, rather than all metrics matter here: so think UU rather than PV, conversion rather than engagement.

Next up is Brian Clifton, former Google Analytics and Author: Advanced Web Metrics

Brian starts by looking at where web analytics fits into marketing strategies and how to approach value; which is split into a 5 phase approach.

1.Aquire data (including off-site)

2. Engage

3. Measure (including on-site)

4. Test

5. Learn

To go into more detail we look at five more specific ways to attribute meaning to web data.

1. Brand engagement. A way to quantify brand engagement is to look at

brand engagement = #visits from brand search + direct visits/total search visits + direct visits (expressed as percentage)

E.g. 2544 “brand search” visits + 5777 direct/9362 total search visits + 5777 direct, equates to 55% brand engagement.

Big organisations tend to be impressed by this and seek to drive greater brand engagement, however smaller brands will need to drive this percentage down, as tail terms and product specific terms drive conversions. I’m reminded of Avinash’s example of HMV from this morning’s keynote).

2. Percentage of pages yielding traffic.

To get here look in GA at your keyword report/landing pages/total landing pages. Divide this by total number of indexed pages on the site. Goal in all cases here is t drive up the percentage of pages appearing in search.

3. Bounce Rate

Headline: 50%+ Red, 25 – 50% Amber, <25% Green.

Look at BR by top content to get some focus. Typical bounce reason = expectations have not been met.

4. Per visit values

Drilling down by medium, look at goal value total divided by visits per medium to give per visit value (by medium). Great for understanding intrinsic value of each traffic medium, and invaluable for spend planning.

Lesson: Whilst all of this adds value, do not get too carried away with the detail as mastering analytics involves doing the basics very well.

Jon takes over and asks Brian; putting GA aside, what other tool would you reccommend for good metric analysis?

Brian says we’re heading towards a lot of fragmentation as so much data is now being made freely available including the new Yahoo! performance analytics tool, which is rolling out in Europe now.

Jon introduces Miles Bennett, (Targetstone)who is going to talk to us about Web Metrics for Success.

Quite important to start with data collection points and ensure you are covering both On and Offsite…

On includes; keywords, keyphrases, onsite search logs, URLs, entry points

Off includes; link schema, competitor analysis, clickstreams, referring URLs, social mentions, backlinks, video.

With onsite strategy we’re interested primarily in the key drivers for engagement and conversions, which needs must focus on tailored content. As an example we look at the keyword density of content on moneysavingexpert.com which might be a usability nightmare, but is elsewhere rather successful in search engines.

Offsite strategies look more to link analysis, including KW anchor text not just numbers. Learn to love Excel, as pivot tables VLOOKUPS, text to columns, are all invaluable.

Miles finishes by looking at an SEO Metrics checklist.

• Referral traffic by volume
• % SEO friendly URLs to not
• KW complexity vs content on site
• Social referrals
• SERPS positions
• Paid vs organic

Jon asks Miles in summary, if he had to pick one metric, which is THE most important? Miles says it is audience specific but generally channel performance. Always remember it’s about the bottom line.

There’s a question from the audience which I couldn’t really hear but I think was about the difficulties of KW analysis with a looooong tail.

Brian – grouping KW into segments (something Tami in the Deep Dive session calls “clusters”).

Jeff – use negative keywords and filter out irrelevant keywords.

Another audience question, which this time I hear, is about tools for measuring links?

Jeff recommends SEOmoz and Google Webmaster Tools.

Jon points the audience towards Christoph Cemper of www.Cemper.com (advanced link building services and tools) who is sat amongst us.

Another audience member asks about quantifying ROI. Jeff urges us to log time. Look at time in vs value out.

Brian urges us to monetise goals, set a commercial objective for goals to focus on worth.

Miles – points out it is useful to try to quantify engagement as well as conversions.

There’s a final question about measuring Personalised Search, which in summary, is currently impossible.

Brian Clifton is moderating this time and our panellists are John Marshall of marketMotive, Tami Dalley, Acronym Media and Neil Mason, Fovian applied insights.

Brian’s a bit “phew!” from the last sesh so we’re pretty quick over to John.

John starts off with his experience, which is actually his Netscape user analytics experience (at Netscape) that he is drawing on most here.

At Clicktracks, built a web analytics tool as complete neophites. Quickly learned it goes like this… build massive tool, loads of data, spit out reports that nobody uses…

History of WA – fits in two worlds, data mining vs web analytics. John could not understand why these two worlds did not seem to talk to each other.

Reason – data mining tools deal with deep data (age, gender, postcode, household income.) Few people, but huge amounts of detail. Web Analytics is almost the antithesis. Massive amount of people but at much less depth. Web analytics is shallow (I like, so totally knew that.)

So… Why deep dive? How deep can we really get from WA?

Too often the reason is need driven (we need better data, fatter paychecks, better reports). There is still value in deep dive, but remember you CAN NOT turn web analytics into data mining.

Make your data deep. Find out and collate more levels of info from…

• Login
• Email
• Volunteed info
• CRM
• Website

WARNING!

• This is a complicated process
• Not for everyone
• Big companies truly suck at this

John puts this down to choice of tool. If incumbent tool exists path is dictated by the tool. Existing tools may not be what you want. In most cases, to go really deep – the company CRM is often the first port of call.

John summarises – Basically make sure you have enough data to warrant the exercise.

Q from Brian – what IS the problem with large companies like P&G? John thinks it is because these co.s have the right tools but approach web analytics from wrong angle.

Next up is Tami Dalleyfrom Acronym, who focus on WA, MV testing and UX

Tami disagrees slightly with John in that she feels it is possible to go deep with web analytics without too much additional data.

What is deep dive analytics? Mining additonal information to find the story.

Good analysts love to spend time wallowing around in data, sometimes without objective. So process needs to go…

• Hypothesis
• Define scope
• Pull data
• Follow the crumb trail
• Translate into action

Popular Techniques

Segmentation (Geo, High value visits)

Example: Geo insights for PPC

Q – How should I change my market budget allocation by geography?

Process – focused on KW cluster (we’re looking at a bubble graph where size of bubble is size of order value, with CVR on vertical and CPC on horizontal.) Tami shows us a comparison where we compare the same graph per market – which shows dramatic difference.

So: let’s look at messaging within KW clusters to understand more.

Example “free shipping” had 2x ROAS than EU and N.America (for concerts but not gift keywords.)

We’re moving on to a really cool representation of demand by KW cluster by regions; where each region has it’s own colour on a bar, and colour area width denotes demand per region. Looking at conversion by KW cluster, should also be considered against volume demand per region.

Travel client asked them to help improve conversions. Conversion funnel analysis example (obviously important in a climate of doing more with less): looked at select package stage, identified high converting packages and made recommendations.

Final good practise tips:-

A/B test, not just usability to inform recs. Good data sample size, garbage in = garbage out.

Brian is introducing our final speaker of the day – Neil Mason of Foviance.

Segmentation is the theme of this presentation, which is a particulalr passion of Neil’s. Neil thinks this has it’s roots in 15+ years of offline marketing.

In WA we tend to focus on metics from a site perspective. We use bland meaningless metrics like time on site, page views – which creates a one size fits all experience.

In a fitting median point between John and Tami’s differing perspective Neil is kinda in the swimming pool.

What do we mean by Segmentation?

Leveraging knowledge and insight to make things more interesting and relevant to users. So in that case – what “segments” are useful?

Traditionally; gender, age, household etc

Another way; attitudes, buy again liklihood, need states, brand empathy, category empathy.

Third classical way – behavioural; browsing, purchasing, visits (recency, frequency). (WA professionals are good at this!)

Neil urges a slice and dice approach. We need to “get into the guts” of it to understand it. Tools are getting better so there is no excuse! Adding in demographic data is not easy but it is do-able. Find out where data exists within organisations. Attitudinal and behavioural survey data may exist elsewhere in the business.

Real value comes from data synergy. As an example one publisher segments “daytime online” and “weekenders” as these two types have wildly disparate behaviours.

Lesson: look for differences, in data and behaviour. Segment attitudinally, segment behaviourally and segment demographically.

Brian wraps up with asking the audience for questions. Nobody is forthcoming so John gives us a bit of food for thought. Just because a deep dive is useful, going deeper may not be more useful. It might just be a total waste of time.

Line-up Change: Aaron Kahlow is moderating. Leaving Fischer, Scott and Walk as panellists.

Aaron kahlow is defining reatime as live results, prescient information. Remember Twitter and FB are not the only, nor often the most important/useful source of realtime.

230MM pieces of UGC published every day. A 40BN dollar market. A lot is at stake in terms of who cracks this first. Thinking of the MSN Twitter deal, quickly countered with Google deal shows us that a lot of this is knee-jerk. It’s a struggle even for the big guys.

Example: Remember Michael Jackson example. G shut down results as the volume search was thought to be a denial of service attack.

Realtime search is cool. Normal search is static. Do not get caught up by the cool factor. Lots of this is not verifiable, nor accurate.

We’re going to be looking at challenges, relevancy, unique sources, credibility of sources and of course the age-old issue of spam.

To the panel…

Rob Walk – Nova Rising

Takes us through a case study for BBC Switch, which was “Sound Index”. A tool to collate RT social mention for music specifically.

The Sound Index was a top 1000 chart taken from YouTube, Bebo, LastFM and later… Twitter an FB; which used algorithms for trawl and crawl and semantic analysis for inetrpretation (which had inherent difficulties due to slang and “teenspeak.”)

Relevancy of the product is underpinned by the need to know/understand “what is a social, music-mention?” To do this you need a taxonomy. This product used the lastFM taxonomy however; recency was a recurring issue. As an example Joe McElderry was added to the taxonomy, however “the climb” was not bringing up mention for Joe, as it had not been added to the taxonomy. Such static algorithms are problmatic, which they are looking to improve by allowing user interaction behaviour to inform the development of the algorithm. Identifying feeds, stating preferences, “liking” etc informs and weights algorithm componants.

Other issues – noise vs freshness e.g. when Britney lost the plot. So much mention was non-music related.

Rob hands over to Bill Scott CEO of easelTV.

easelTV – Using Broadband connection with TV to enable brands to deliver content.

2010 – consumer push to upgrade TV for many reasons e.g. analog switch-off, HDTV coming to freeview, BBC iPlayer pushing to TV and more.

When analog stops so will VCRs.

Project Canvas (lead by Beeb), with 4, itv, BT, five and more to establish standards in BB TV, so that there are tangible technical targets.

easelTV working to these standards, will allow brands to use largely web based technologies to do this. So tools and techniques from mobile, web etc. can be transferrable.

SONY, Samsung, Panasonic, all major manufacturers are working on standardised BB compatible TV.

£200 will get you equivant functionality to Sky box, in an accessible consumer device to access this BB on-demand content.

Consumer drivers will be 2012 Olympics.

TV is of course v.different to web. TV is about shared experience not personal information retrieval. Traditional web products will not translate well. e.g. Google search engine. traditional discovery methods will not possibly be the route forward on TV medium.

Also – Serendipity. TV behaviour – you just watch it because it is there. TV is about delivery with minimal viewer/user effort. Must be an element of push, of relevance and of realtime. TV must intuit from prior interaction, (skipping, most watched, recorded etc.) but needs to be smarter than the Amazon style, recommendation engine. TV must combine serendipity with recommendation adn social trends.

Surfacing information via TV is about “Suggestive Discovery” and not search as we may know it. So how do we relate SEO to TV?

• It is still about meta-data (describing content is very important)
• It is more (though not exclusively) about B2C
• More about video assets than pages
• An integrated discovery with aggregated content proposition

Relationships with the consumer and consumer trust are key (because of the way behaviour informs suggestive discovery.

Bill wraps up with his vision of the future of BB TV.

• Connected
• Still Television
• Retains serendipity
• Personal and relevant
• Dynamic

Finally; we have William Fischer of Watchdigital Ltd.

Watchdigital focus primarily on realtime job search, with products such as TwitterJobSearch.

Primarily they look to create a semantic search experience focused on the former classified ad space, which in terms of opportunity size is around a $48 BN market.

Why?

Due to the fragmentation of the space. We no longer advertise jobs in trade press or classified ad sections, but in the 6000 Uk job boards and on Linkedin and Twitter.

Seeking to collate this disparate content and information types has it’s own problems of course…

Interpretation (140 characters). Search alone is not enough. Also a tendancy to speak to our communities in social media. Our social peers may know what we mean if “looking for an associate” but that is meaningless without additional qualifying data.  Again they are using meta data such as profile and geo-location.

Again taxonomic databases, semantics, synonym databases are required to add meaning. A search for “web developer” jobs should bring up “php developer” jobs.

Questions…

Aaron starts us off with the problem of relevance – how do we combat this?

Rob thinks we need to look deeper than demographic plus match and look more towards behavioural information in RT. William agrees, and this is something they too focus on. Bill – blending different data services together is very important.

Aaron asks the audience for input, but we’re temporarily overcome with shyness, so he saves us with a question about signal vs noise.

William – difficulties tend to occur the broader the user pool which is why they prefer to build specific user base products and tailor algorithms accordingly. I’m guessing such examples could extend to industry lingo (PPC means a whole different thing to paid search vs organic search communities). My example. I’ll ask @williamfischer to clarify…

There were a couple of questions from the audience…

1. Are job searchers active or passive?

William 2/3 of activity is from passive (got a job, casually browsing, vaguely happy, might leave if something better turns up. My words.)

Passive searchers are the Holy Grail as they tend to be more lucrative and less desperate (bit of paraphrasing there re: desperate).

2. Do your products have multi-lingual capabilities?

All panellists have multi-lingual technologies underpinning products, however the position seems to be to learn to walk in the UK, before running off into other markets.

In summary: realtime is much more than Twitter and Facebook. Integrating realtime information with broadband TV will be a huge market focus from now on. Issues exist around relevancy, understanding signal vs noise and developing sophistocated interpretative tools that incorporate behaviour, interaction, semantics and traditional taxonomic databases, to inform product behaviour.

Panellist Twitter accounts.

@williamfischer

@billjscott

@novarising