You may recall a little over a month ago Matt Cutts from Google's Search Quality Team talked about Google getting more transparent this year and making his talks from conferences available online so that everyone can easily see what he has to say. He started then with a video based on his "Preventing Virtual Blight" presentation from the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco from November. He also provided his presentation slides. Now Cutts has posted a video and slideshow based on his "State of the Index" talk from PubCon Las Vegas a while back. Here are both: As I said when he posted the first video, a lot of people are going to be appreciative that Cutts is posting his presentations. Quite honestly, most speakers at industry conferences would be wise to follow suit and include their own presentations on their respective sites/blogs. If the content was good enough for a presentation in front of a live audience, chances are there is enough valuable information in it that it can benefit visitors to your site/blog. And considering the increasing popularity of online video (not to mention the ranking implications) it's a win-win situation.

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Mike McDonald of WebProNews chats with Brett Tabke, CEO of Webmasterworld, about all things PubCon. Tabke said PubCon had "More than exceeded expectations this year and the buzz has just been fantastic. If you have been following us on Twitter, we are the number one ranking search term." This year 30 percent of the sessions were focused on search down from last year. PubCon has grown in other areas and has not reduced the number of sessions. More WebProNews Videos Tabke talked about his 26 Steps thread on Webmasterworld that focuses on how to build a Web site and make it successful.  Tabke said," Anyone can build a one hit wonder but it has to be sustained for 4, 5, 6 years in a row." Tabke creates the PubCon series by asking people what they would want to talk about. From there they try and mix and match speakers. "It turns out everybody talks from their passion. 'It's not just us coming up with this is gonna be hot, that's gonna be hot you go speak on that, you go speak on that.'" Tabke says that "Search has matured. It's part of the whole picture. Google really led the way with Universal Search. They're pretty much an admission its not just about 10 little blue links anymore."

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At PubCon, Bruce Clay, Inc. President Bruce Clay presented at a session entitled "Top-Shelf Organic SEO" in which he discussed the approaching future of SEO as search engines evolve into more modern ranking methods through more personalized search results. Bruce was good enough to take the time to speak with our own Michael McDonald in a one-on-one interview about personal search, which can be viewed in the video below. In this interview, Bruce elaborated on the concepts mentioned above. Behavior Based Search Bruce says that everybody who does a search will end up with different search results based on their prior search history. Personalization is going to be "web-wide" using third party cookies and things. He provided a specific example of a search for "java". Some are looking for programming, some are looking for the beverage, and some are looking for travel information. Theoretically, personal search will know that and provide results accordingly. "We can't search for any term and look at rankings because I can get different results than you for exactly the same query. So that's going to change a lot," he says. It doesn't matter if you're logged into Google or not. Bruce believes that Google personalized results will be coming out within the first quarter of next year. Intent-based Search Google has been looking up your IP and revising results based on IP. They know where you're located and can make assumptions about the intent of your search. As you get more into intent-based search, it's going to change the way pages rank, Bruce explains. "The page that ranks for a shopping query is an entirely different architecture than the page that ranks for a research query." Where Does this Leave the SEO Crowd? "Ranking is dead," says Bruce, recalling his words from his presentation. Going forward, he says you're going to have to look at analytics, measure traffic, bounce rates, action, etc. SEOs will have to ask themselves questions like: - Did I get the conversion I was after? - Did I really deliver on the promise of SEO? Bruce thinks that in the first six months of 2009, we're going to see a lot more implementation of behavior and intent-based search leading to a mindset of "ranking is dead, and traffic is all that matters." Universal Search Bruce says this will be the most significant factor of 2009. Google looks at soundtracks and convert them to text. They can jump into the middle of videos, scan sites to determine if you have video/images or not. There are a lot of variables in universal search, and some of these variables tell how engaging your site is. If you don't have video and your competition does, Bruce thinks we're going to see a big shift in rankings. He thinks if the top ten sites don't have video, they may lose their ranking over night. Bruce notes that Google has been testing some of these variables, and will really start testing them a lot more in the first quarter, once the holidays are out of the way. He mentions the criticism Google took over the Florida Update, which took place in the month of November, and believes the company wants to avoid that again. He thinks we're going to see a lot of "Google Dances" early in the year though. The Impact on Spam According to Bruce, this is all going to really help Google fight spammers. He says it will affect the way scrapers and spammers work, because if they are just scraping text, they wouldn't be able to rank. He also says that all of the variables that come into play may diminish the value of linking, which will certainly not help the spammers' cause either. He says it will be a big win for Google, and big win for the searchers. There's no question that if everything Bruce talked about comes true, the SEO world will be turned on its ear. Bruce says, "If you're not ready for it as an SEO, you're gonna lose."

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How do you optimize your site for the search engines when you have hundreds of thousands of pages of content? That's a big job and can get increasingly difficult as the days pass and more pages are created. It doesn't have to be as difficult as it seems though. At Pubcon in Las Vegas, Mike McDonald of WebProNews caught up with Bill Hunt, CEO of Global Strategies International, a search engine marketing consultancy firm that specializes in global enterprise companies. They talked about some things that companies can do to simplify their search engine marketing efforts when their sites are huge. Hunt spoke a little about this at the PubCon session called "Discover Techniques Used by Enterprise-Level SEOs/SEMs", but talked a little more about it with Mike. More WebProNews Videos So What Do the Big Boys Use? Companies with millions of pages often leverage all the different properties of partners they have and use them to get links. One way Bill talked about doing this is getting partners to link to specific pages instead of your homepage. He gives an example of a company like IBM sponsoring events. These event pages would have IBM logos linking to IBM.com, but what IBM could do is talk to the people running the event page and ask them to link to a more topical page instead of their homepage. If it was for a supply chain management event, they could link to a supply chain management page. Another example would be OEM partners. You can have them link to the appropriate channel of your site instead of the homepage. The more partners you have, the bigger impact this kind or reaching out will make on your search engine marketing efforts. Bill says to just go out and see who's linking to your homepage and simply ask them to change the link. And if they're your partner, they're more likely to comply. Affiliate Issues A large company is bound to have some affiliates, and you probably don't want to step on any toes in cases like these. Bill suggests looking at the combination of paid and organic data that's out there and turning off paid words if they've got a good organic ranking. Bill says to ask yourself "Is there cannibalization?" When working with companies that have a lot of channel partners and brands themselves you have to understand what the cost is of having that affiliate partner, he notes. A lot of big companies (like Intel) are starting to use "co-op dollars" or subsidize their channel partners work by saying: Here's a list of words you can use, here's some acceptable copy and if you use those, we'll pay "X" percentage like they do with the Intel Inside program. It subsidizes and you get almost twice the amount of budget. "Sit down and do the math," says Bill. Does it make sense to compete or does it make sense to subsidize? Or do you not need to do anything at all? Subsidizing your partners is a big win for them and you let them do all the heavy lifting. Organizing Big Sites for SEO For Big sites with many pages, Mike asked Bill for some tips to keep them organized and pointed in the right direction. Bill offered the following advice.The first thing is to take your words and tier them (such as three tiers). Bill returns to IBM as an example of having 53 million pages. You can't do SEO on all of those outside of using templates. Tier the words...take 100 words for example, and assign them each a page and monitor how those are doing. Use the page ranking...is it meeting the criteria or is it not? Focus on making sure those primary phrases are there. Another big issue is whether or not you are actually getting indexed. Bill says to use XML sitemaps and run your own spider to "make sure you're not getting trapped out." Using templates is big though. Bill says he has clients that have hundreds of thousands of pages, but they can fit neatly into five templates. "Optimize five templates, and anything that's built in that template is search-friendly out of the box." It's not quite perfect, he says, but it's about 80% there, and then you can fine-tune it. I would also add that a good amount of internal linking in large sites is probably a good idea as well. A huge site with tons of content would appear to be a gargantuan task when it comes to SEO, and without organization, it can be just that. Considering the advice Bill Hunt has offered though, it doesn't have to be as intimidating of a process as it appears on the surface.

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Barry Schwartz posted something of a rant at Search Engine Roundtable after an unnamed blogger attacked the site's live blogging coverage of PubCon: This guy calls live blogging, "useless" and "inaccurate." He goes on to say what we do is "selfish disregard for reporting integrity." To call live blogging "selfish," oh, that makes me mad. To call the 38+ conferences we've flown to, paid hotel costs, sometimes paid conference passes for, "selfish." To call the dumbing, incredibly tiring and exhausting work it is to sit there, session after session, to write down the words that come out of speakers mouths, no matter if you disagree with them or if you find them boring - or, even worse, love what they are saying, but are too consumed in typing down what they are saying to have the time to actually appreciate the words of wisdom - to call that "selfish" (long sentence, sorry, been up for over 24 hours). Like most forms of media, live blogging has its advantages and disadvantages, and Barry Acknowledges that. While he may have gotten a little more fired up about the criticism of a relatively new-to-the-game blogger than necessary, his rant does bring up a good subject of debate. Is live blogging worth it? Is it worth it to readers? Is it worth it to live bloggers? Is it a legitimate way to report? It just so happens that Barry included a poll asking readers if Search Engine Roundtable should give up live blogging. The results at this time are as follows: For the record, I voted no. People want information, and they want it as soon as possible. Live blogging achieves this. Errors occur, but they do so in other formats as well. And when you're reading the product of live blogging, you should take this into consideration anyway. Search Engine Roundtable has been live blogging conferences for years. We were doing it a long time ago too, and we still live blog some stories from time to time, like the recent Google conference call. I don't recall getting many complaints, and I'm quite sure that many people have enjoyed this kind of coverage over the years. What do you think about live blogging?

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Sometimes you read something about a company or a business that simply gets it more than others. OK, so we know that in most cases Google does that. Sometimes they do it in ways that still amaze and make one say “Huh, that makes good sense.”Fresh off the mantra from several folks at PubCon to embrace traditional media, an article appeared in today’s Journal that exemplifies that strategy by, you guessed it, Google and one of the most unlikely traditional marketing powerhouses, Proctor & Gamble. These two titans of their representative media strongholds have met in the middle in a unique way. They swapped employees. Both were bright enough and daring enough to recognize that they needed to know more about the “other side”. I can’t urge you enough to read this article in its entirety. Rarely do I read something and throughout keep saying, “Holy crap, that is cool!” This one did that. It was pretty fascinating to read about the various “Aha!” moments that occurred on both sides of the aisle because there was actual sharing and learning taking place. While the new v. old media struggles that occur in public are often contentious this one appeared to be collegial. It’s when this type of environment exists that real growth takes place. Also, real learning occurs and relationships start. I suspect that we will be reading about this partnership and innovation between “Googlers” and “Proctoids” (by the way, P & G, this nickname for your employees is a bit uncomfortable for obvious reasons) for years to come. Here are some of the high points: P & G’s complete ignorance of the power of mommy bloggers and how that could impact Pampers sales. Of course, that gets a real “Duh!” from search marketers but Google seemed smart enough to not insult the traditional folks but aid them instead. Kill’em with kindness, I guess. P & G’s willingness to allow their flagship brand, Tide, to be put in the hands of YouTube amateurs following their successful TV ad with a talking stain. (Note to you online only types; while you might laugh at the sales of laundry detergent you probably would envy the $3.5 billion (with a b) a year in annual sales it generates). There’s a lot more. We as search and internet marketers should be reaching across the aisle more because if the deep pockets of a P & G have yet to embrace online, what about the rest of the traditional marketplace? Imagine helping these folks with efficiency and effectiveness during this economic climate. What an opportunity. Go get’em.Comments

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If you've decided to conduct a social media campaign (or are already in the middle of one), congratulations - you're more or less on the cutting edge.  It's important not to either fall off or get sliced, though, and some tips to that end arrived from PubCon. Vanessa Fox, who's moved on from several other impressive things to become the founder of Nine By Blue, observed in an interview with Mike McDonald that social media is great for raising brand awareness and engaging customers.  These are the sorts of things that people will voluntarily watch and pass on to friends. At the same time, you need to have concrete goals.  Getting a lot of traffic from Digg, for example, may not do the average business any good by itself if no visitors click on ads or buy products. More examples of social media mistakes: the popular "easy button" and "got milk?" campaigns weren't well tied into search terms.  And Fox saw some Coke billboards and bus ads that suggested viewers call a 1-800 number rather than visit any site. So try to issue a clear and appropriate call to action.  The Will It Blend site serves as a good model in this regard, with "order your blender now"-style buttons sprinkled about.  It seems to bring us back to the cutting theme, too, so we'll just wrap this up by wishing you a safe weekend.   

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Out in Las Vegas at PubCon, Mike McDonald of WebProNews spoke with Eric Enge, who was one of the speakers at the session entitled "Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies." You might be familiar with Enge. He's been a WebProNews blog partner for some time. He's the StoneTemple Consulting guy, and he's developed a reputation over the years as a reputable source for information about link building. In fact, that's one of StoneTemple's areas of expertise, along with SEO site evaluation, social media marketing, blog implementation, PPC, web analytics, and local SEO among other things. At this session, Enge talked about how companies should "Think Big" in order to get the most out of their link building strategies through social media. Mike caught up with him and talked about this subject a little bit more outside of the session. Other link building advice Enge discussed at the session included: - Studying what has worked before - Writing compelling articles - Write an interesting description - Voting for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages - Making sure you stand out! You can find more coverage on that session here. Watch the video above to see what Enge has to say about thinking big, and how to apply link building strategies through social media when you are a small business.

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Technically, Pubcon is still going on at the time of this writing, but today it's all about networking and the sessions are in the past. WebProNews is out there and has been covering sessions, and our own Mike McDonald has even spoken and moderated at a few of them. Let's take a look back and see what this year's PubCon in Las Vegas had to offer. Our coverage included: - Earning Big Bucks with Social Media Traffic   - Going Beyond Social Media Buzz - Real-World Winning Tactics For Content Creation - Reputation Management Tips - Succeeding at Local and Mobile Search - Brett Tabke's 26 Steps to 15k a Day - Microsoft Live Search Keynote Address - Getting Rid of Duplicate Content - Aaron Wall Talks Link Buying Without Getting in Trouble - Think Big for Link Building Through Social Media - Paid Links Go Underground And roundups: The PubCon Buzz: Day 1 The PubCon Buzz: Day 2 The PubCon Buzz: Day 3 So far, we also have the following video interviews posted (with more sure to come): Ken Jurina on negative keyword campaigns: Lee Odden on pulling your reputation out of the gutter: Aaron Wall on "buying" links without getting in trouble:  Eric Enge on link building through social media: Search Engine Roundtable did a fair amount of live blogging from the event, which can be found here. In fact, the live blogging drew some (possibly unjustified) criticism that led to the site posting a poll asking readers if they should continue to live blog. So that was another story that came indirectly out of PubCon. BruceClay.com has some additional coverage of the event. Frank Reed has a nice reflection at Marketing Pilgrim. Twitterers were definitely in full effect throughout PubCon and have tweeted away throughout the entire week. Now that it's wrapping up, let's look at what they're saying: wrestlingandy says: Attended my first Pubcon, what a great experience! coffeecupkat says: Getting ready to leave Las Vegas. It's been fun, exhausting, educational. opie says: I look so bad this morning - I dont think my mom would even recognize me. DerrickWheeler says: Had way too much fun last night at #pubcon and Search Bash. Thanks to you all that hung out with me. It was good times. The general consensus seems to be that PubCon was a great time with plenty of good helpful information, but was at the same time very tiring. Barry Schwart'z live blogging post seems to confirm the tiring part. What are your thoughts on PubCon? Who's going next year?

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WebProNews is in full force at Pubcon, this time not only covering the event, but presenting as well. Our own Mike McDonald spoke at the sessions titled: "Game On: Rocking Your Video Startup", and "Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What's the Worst That Can Happen?" He also moderated the session "How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns to Grow Traffic." Among others, Mike scored an interview with the brains behind SEOBook, Aaron Wall: Once again, our crew in Vegas sent back some notes to HQ, so we could get some articles up for you based on sessions they attended. Aside from the video, our coverage in article form today includes: - Getting Rid of Duplicate Content - Microsoft Live Search Keynote Address - Paid Links Go Underground Search Engine Roundtable has additional coverage on these. And from our blog partners: - Brett Tabke's 26 Steps To 15k a Day - SEO Strategies Various Companies Have Employed BruceClay.com has coverage of: - The Secret Life of On-Site Search Exposed And no PubCon round-up would be complete without a look what some Twitterers are saying. Erika Goddess says: BE Social, & provide value no need to buy links. Write great content, make totally awesome videos & links will love you. She also says: Ha, link buying wkshp #pubcon advises Organic links thru Social Interaction- told you all... Social Networking/SEO merging. Hear me. Get it. Katemorris says: has anyone ever noticed that @aaronwall kinda sounds like @mattcutts?? lawrencecoburn says: tip of the day so far for me has been about the dynamic yahoo url rewriter for url parameters http://bit.ly/8kUI There's a lot of talk on Twitter about Matt Cutts. He is quite a star. Also lots of talk about money being given away and iPhone chargers. The conference ends tomorrow, but stay tuned for more coverage from WebPronews. That includes the WebProNews Video Blog. Go here and here for coverage of Day 1 and Day 2 respectively.

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Aaron Wall knows a thing or two about SEO. He's been in this game as long as I can remember. He's the brains behind the hugely popular SEOBook. When he talks about ways of getting links, people looking to increase their search engine rankings should pay attention. Our own Mike McDonald scored an interview with him out in Las Vegas while attending the PubCon conference. Video of that can be seen below. As you probably know, Google isn't very high on people buying links, but there are ways around this without directly "buying" a link. Wall elaborates on this. Three methods highlighted are through: - Testimonials - Conferences - Charity Events Testimonials will help build credibility (and links). Conferences are good places to network and hand out business cards, which can also lead to links, and charity events will not only reflect a positive image upon your brand, but also drive links (not to mention serve a good cause). There are actually a number of other methods to "buy" links without being called a spammer. Wall goes into them in this article he wrote a while back. Stay tuned to WebProNews.com and the WebProNews Video Blog for more coverage of PubCon in Las Vegas.

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The issue of duplicate content is something that all webmasters and site owners have to take into consideration and the PubCon session "Getting Rid of Duplicate Content Once and For All," addresses that challenge.(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)Ben D' Angelo, Software Engineer, Google, spoke about duplicate content issues. There are multiple disjoint situations including multiple URLs pointing to the same page, different countries with the same language, and syndicated content across other sites.To avoid such issues you should have one URL for one piece of content. The reason for this is users don't like duplicated results, it saves resources by having room to index other content, and it saves resources on your server.Sources of duplicate content within your sites are multiple URLs pointing to the same page, www. Vs non www., session ids, URL parameters, and printable versions of your pages.Google handles duplicate content in a number of ways. The general idea is to cluster pages and choose the best representative. Google uses different filters for different types of duplicate content. The goal is to serve on version of the content in the SERPs.To prevent duplicate content there are a variety of things you can do.  For exact duplicates a 301 redirect is the best option.  For near duplicate content use noindex and robots.txtFor domains by country, different languages are not duplicate content. Use unique content specific to that country.  Use different TLDs and Webmaster tools for geo targeting. For URL parameters put data which does not effect the substance of the page in a cookie, not the URL.When it comes to other sites include the original absolute URL in any syndicated content. Syndicate slightly different content. Manage your expectations if you use syndicated content, you will probably not outrank the original source.Don't be too concerned about scrapers or proxies, they generally won't impact your rankings. If you are concerned you can file a DMCA or spam report with Google.If you need other information you can visit Google Webmaster Central or the Google Webmaster Central Blog. 

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Microsoft's moving forward in more ways than one.  Even as it announced a new and more social Windows Live redesign this morning, Satya Nadella, a senior vice president, gave some details on the search side of things during a PubCon keynote.(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)Nadella summed up both his department's direction and the main points of his speech by stating that no one performs searches in isolation.  Searches are performed in the context of a task (either implicit or explicit), according to Nadella, and Microsoft is doing its best to respond to these situations.A search for [flight to Las Vegas], for example, yields results from Live Search Farecast, a tool that's in beta.  Or you can search for [canon digital camera] and see both product results and some buying guides."Task completion is going to become the next measure of relevance," claimed Nadella.  And as for how Microsoft's going to recognize tasks in the first place, its acquisition of Powerset may well figure into the matter.  The SVP said, "Going forward we think semantics are going to play a crucial role."On other fronts, Microsoft intends to simplify key tasks, and has worked on video and image search (with pictures from Virtual Earth being pulled into the latter).  It may even innovate in terms of a business model, although relevant details were lacking.Microsoft hasn't entirely accepted its backseat to Google and Yahoo, either.  Nadella stated, "As far as we are concerned, the race for core relevance is on."

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There's no need to introduce Brett Tabke's '26 Steps To 15k a Day'. The page, that was posted almost seven years ago, has had nearly 29 million page views and 15 million unique visitors. It has also been used as a training manual by numerous Fortune 100 companies. In this interactive session, Brett gives an insight at the controversial issues that the post had raised and how the relevance of this webpage posted in 2002 transcends to present times.Moderator: Brett Tabke Speakers: Brett Tabke,CEO,WebmasterWorld.com Brett started out with some stats on the famous '26 Steps' Webpage. Some of his Webpage's achievements: 29 million page views.5 million uniques.200 copies over the web.290 cease and desists have been issued so far.It is the first chapter in Google Hacks. The post is owned by O'reily now.Total income generated is $500 paid by O'reily for Google Hacks Book.The webpage features 10,000 thousands back links. One by one, Brett went over all of the points he wrote in the webpage back in 2002 and discussed over the same with the audience. Back then, Brett had written that it was enough for the initial document to have 100 pages. However, he said, now the number should be around 500. The posts are not really supposed to be about SEO, but more about content, traffic and building a sustainable website. On asking the audience regarding their experience with website having less that 100 pages, most say that they (the experiences) haven't been satisfactory.Regarding the domain name, Brett said that the domain name game is now much more complicated than ever and one can have a TLD (Top Level Domain) of his own. About Site design, Brett stated that the criteria was and still is that the simpler the better. The advent of the iPhone has further confirmed on the notion. It is imperative that now every website is designed keeping the compatibility with mobile devices in mind. One has to adapt all current designs to iPhones.Static sites are seemingly going extinct and there's simply no point in building up sites in HTML. But the most important thing was, is and will continue to be content. Content should have its purpose and not be there just for the sake of existence. Quality content cannot be substituted. Matt Tuens added here that content was the main reason that Search Engines were created. One should ensure a certain degree of stickiness in their websites since people are too busy to go to twenty different sites. You can do the same by simply creating one site that could be the 'go to' site. Brett moved on to the topic of user generated content. The reliance on UCG is a thing of past now. Back in 2002, outbound links were considered a delicate issue since each site was as good as to the ones they were linked to. Even now, Search Engines judge on the same criterion. One could practice cross linking to boost up PageRank on lesser value pages.Shared hosting is unthinkable now for the simple fact that costs have dropped drastically and everyone can have a server of their own. About regular log tracking softwares, Brett stated that his team uses one they have created on their own and displayed the wide variation it shows from the results of other packages. Many CMS (Content Management Systems) are still not spider friendly and this can be a major bottleneck in your SEO objectives. Ensuring that you are in the right directories is still a good way to enhance traffic. With the users becoming more web savvy than ever, gimmicks are still a hit. People tend to negate the importance of options, such as 'e-mail a friend'. These are still as valuable as they were earlier. Targeted content is the key now. Smart content can get your business places. Matt Tuens goes on to elaborate on 'smart content'. You have to understand that everyone is trying to criticize and judge your content. Give information that your demography is looking for instead of irrelevant garbage just to get a good ranking, otherwise you will incur losses on sales, credibility and overall business in spite of a good ranking.Comments

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For the moment, never mind the "world wide" aspect of the Web.  A whole lot of any business's customers are likely to come from its home region, and so a PubCon session called "Local and Mobile" search took a look at ways in which companies can best serve these nearby individuals.(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)Alex Porter, a vice president at Location3 Media, suggested taking advantage of map pages to reach customers locally.  He believes that best-case optimization - achieved by tweaking a lot of database entries - can grant a business control of 80 percent of all local searches.  It's a simple, cheap solution, although at the same time, Porter said that people need to make sure their business listings don't get "hijacked."Bill Mongovan, a vice president at Omniture, then stepped up to talk about creating customized landing pages based on searchers' locations.  He thinks there will be a boom next year in mobile search conversions, and that progress on this front will be a key contributor to the trend.  Analyze the matter as you go, so that you know how many people are reaching you from mobile phones.The owner of Infuse Creative, Gregory Markel, finally wrapped the session up by confirming what some of the other speakers said.  Since so many searches are conducted on the iPhone, one of the more accessible advanced phones, continual improvements in phone technology should lead to a huge mobile search market. And getting acknowledged by Google Local Listings is, according to Markel, a great way to get your foot in the door.

quot mobile local business pubcon search listings said pages porter session searches phones president markel customers vice webpronews coverage people

WebProNews is in full force at Pubcon, this time not only covering the event, but presenting as well. Our own Mike McDonald spoke yesterday at the session titled: "Game On: Rocking Your Video Startup", and is speaking today at the one called "Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What's the Worst That Can Happen?" He also moderated the session "How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns to Grow Traffic." Mike was also able to get a video interview with Lee Odden of TopRank, who discusses "pulling your reputation out of the gutter." Again, our crew in Vegas sent back some notes to HQ, so we could get some articles up for you based on sessions they attended. Aside from the video, our coverage in article form today includes: - Reputation Management Tips - Going Beyond Social Media Buzz - Real-World Winning Tactics for Content Creation, - Succeeding at Local and Mobile Search Coverage of other sessions can be found at Search Engine Roundtable. Sessions like: - Ground-Up SEO Content Development as Pure Business Strategy - How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns To Grow Traffic (moderated by Mike) - Competitive Intelligence : Know Thy Competitor Well - The Big Dedicated Server Payoff - Brand Reputation Monitoring & Management: Background & Tactics - Analytics Vendors and Package Implementation, and the - Keynote Address by George Wright of Blendtec BruceClay.com has more on that keynote as well as the brand management session.Then of course, there are the constant tweets rolling out faster than you can read them. A few that stuck out to me as I was perusing them included:tonyadam says: For more info on indexable AJAX content see my post talking about AJAX and Web 2.0 for SEO friendly sites - http://zi.ma/69aed0SEOMike says: If you outsource SEO be sure to make your SEO vendor sign an NDA. SEOs like to brag and your competitor might ask.jennita says: hah! @oilman says give devleopers liquor and they will do work for you. include them, and they will be your friend. LOLbadijones says: Just finished "Interactive Site Reviews: Focus - Social Media". was a great session. Great panel. Want more like that. I saw a lot of tweets mentioning partying, which seems to be a high priority for the PubCon crowd. Those who aren't there are envious, and lament about missing the event.So that's a "brief" summary of Day Two. There will be plenty more coverage at WebProNews in article as well as video form throughout the conference, which doesn't end until Friday. Check back often. View Day 1 coverage here.

quot says coverage video session content management pubcon reputation mike sessions competitor traffic grow search ajax smbs moderate campaigns buzz

It shouldn't come as news to anyone that people are watching their money closely these days.  Where they simply may have placed orders before, consumers might Google companies and shy away due to any problems they find.  As a result, reputation management is more important than ever.Some issues are easy enough to notice.  Again, consider the questionable search result situation, or something even more obvious like spray paint on the side of a building.  Social media is a little trickier to monitor, but there are also solutions.  In an interview with Mike McDonald, Lee Odden named TweetBeep, Radian6, and BuzzLogic.Then, you've got to actually resolve the issue.  Odden suggests first researching whether you're dealing with someone who's at all influential or credible.  If not, consider it time to move on - there are too many crazies in the world.  If so, you may want to suggest resolving the matter offline since this will leave less evidence for Google, Twitter, and other sources to display.There's also the fact that it's not enough to get one public message deleted; the person behind it will be able to just keep posting in various places until the end of time.  So by really talking to critics, you can try to solve the core issue.  And by really talking to them, you may well convince them that you care, and that they should respect or even support you.Hopefully these ideas will help you get through any rough patches the economy creates.  They should prove useful in quieter times, too.

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Creating relevant content for a Web site is one of the most important things an individual or organization can do and at the PubCon session "Real-World Winning Tactics For Content" focused on ways to manage and achieve that goal.(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)Ted Ulle, Partner, The MEWS Group, said the focus should be on keeping every member of your organization informed and working towards a common goal.Don't build a "Franken site," a site pieced together with products from disconnected departments with your organization. From IT, to marketing to design to writing to management, every individual at every level of the organization must have a clear understanding of the goals of the site content.This requires that everyone involved is aware of the goals of the content/site and has an understanding of SEO and analytics. Business process and workflow has to support your SEO, or you will have no SEO and end up with content without readers.Ulle said to educate everyone in your workflow on SEO. "Not everyone has to be a SEO guru, but it is important that SEO is taken into consideration along every step of the process."Develop dedicated analytics for each person in the workflow. Make sure every individual has some metrics for the success/failures of their efforts in the process.Hold regular team meetings and keep everyone on the same page so they understand the overall goals.Site/content development strategy outline:Begin with a marketing strategy:1. Content on a conceptual levelBack end decisions- servers, CMS, AnalyticsKeyword researchInformation architecture and menus2 Content - develop a full copyGraphic Design - Templates3. Content - web edit in a browserDocument any changes or alterations to the strategy at every level. 

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WebProNews is in full force at Pubcon, this time not only covering the event, but presenting as well. Our own Mike McDonald spoke this morning at the session titled: Game On: Rocking Your Video Startup. He'll also be speaking tomorrow at the one called "Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What's the Worst That Can Happen?" Today Mike also managed to get in a video interview with Ken Jurina from Epiar about negative keyword advertising campaigns: Mike sent back some notes to HQ as well, where we've covered the session called "Earning Big Bucks with Social Media". This session featured some top-notch speakers like Vanessa Fox, Michael Gray, and Alexander Barbara. Of course we're not the only ones covering PubCon. Around the web you can find coverage of other sessions like: - Video Search Engine Optimization with Edward Kim, Mark Robertson, and Grant Crowell. Search Engine Roundtable takes away a number of valuable SEO tips from this one. - Top Shelf Organic SEO - Speaking of valuable SEO tips, you're probably not going to find a session with more of them than this one. BruceClay.com covers it(they also hit up the Kickoff Keynote). If that wasn't enough for you, Search Engine Roundtable has even more on that one as well as: - Understanding the Complex Social Marketing Playing Field, which includes Cameron Olthuis, Michael Gray and Neil Patel - Effective Affiliate Strategies with Elisabeth Archambault, Dixon Jones, and Jim Banks - and the PPC Engine Vendor Panel with speakers Patrizio Spagnoletto (Yahoo Search Marketing), Frederick Vallaeys (Google AdWords), Dustin Kwan (Ask Sponsored Listings), and Doug Stotland (Microsoft Live Search). But What About the Buzz? Well, Twitterers are a tweetin' about the conference. And some are tweetin' the sessions. Chiropractic says: "Good old fashioned blue text linked SEO still rules." Pratt says: "I get that we shouldn't focus on rankings, but what KPIs are you using to measure success?" mediahatch says: "in video optimization. impressed with foxnews video search & optimization." jantallent says @WarrenWhitlock tweet your questions about social media to @brbreslin. we will answer at #pubcon #sexy and on Twitter" Now there's a good display of the usefulness of Twitter at a an event such as this. So that's a "brief" summary of Day one, and it's just getting started. There will be plenty more coverage at WebProNews in article as well as video form throughout the conference, which doesn't end until Friday. Check back often.

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The PubCon session "Earning Big Bucks with Social Media Traffic" focused on ways that social media outlets can be monetized.(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos. Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)Vanessa Fox, Founder, Nine By Blue said to define your action goals for social media and to make sure that the action is very prominent and easy for the visitor to take action.The whole point of social media is engagement and traffic alone is not enough. You have to look at not just page views, but your bounce rate. Measure each stage of your process to find your high bounce rates and failures where you need to make adjustments.Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service, said when it comes to social media and brand aversion to not go to places where people don't like you. Find sites and communities where your "people" are. It does not have to be Digg. There are social communities for almost every subject.Alexander Barbara, CEO, ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc. said to find tangential concepts that tacitly relate to your subject but might have a broader appeal.When trying to come up with witty relevant content for things like real estate for Digg, Gray said to use current events. For real estate look at popular people and write about the value of their property.On microsites Fox said if you build a microsite to leave it as a microsite. Don't use redirection, just use links. Look up what a microsite is if you don't know. In a nutshell it's a social media focused site that people sometimes 301 redirect to their domains. 

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Now, more than ever, marketing companies and consultants need to get competitive for client dollars and what better way than advancing your knowledge and your network? There are many options for companies and agencies to train digital marketing teams and to keep tenured employees up to date including conferences such as: this week's WebmasterWorld Pubcon, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, numerous regional and niche events and an increasing number of web based offerings including SEMPO Institute and the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification program. I would be remiss not to mention the upcoming "Social Media Smarts" workshop in NYC covering all aspects of social media marketing including a strategy exercise and tips on building a business case for a social media effort in your organization. Attending conferences is not cheap when you factor the increasing price of travel and hotels as well as pre/post and conference training fees, meals and taxi. Attendees and their companies are paying $2500 - $5000 per person per conference as well as the cost of time away from the office performing billable work. It's easy to see why webinars are on the increase and why those who are fortunate to attend these events need to get the most out of them. The most important thing that conference attendees can do to get the most out of their time at events is to set goals. Managers sending individuals to conferences should be clear about expectations. Company staff should be sure to talk with others within the organization or team that have attended the same or similar events to gain their insight. Depending on the purpose for attending a conference, goals may vary. Here are some common goals based on the various reasons for attending any kind of marketing conference: Knowledge - How many sessions will you attend and how will you capture the information? Notes, photos, video (where allowed) When meeting new people, discuss the sessions with them. Compare notes with other attendees, it's a great way to network and to get other opinions. Before the conference, make a grid or a plan for which specific sessions you'll be attending. Often times, there is not much time between sessions and the difference between getting a good seat and standing room only can be a matter of minutes. Networking - How many qualified prospects, marketing partners, vendors to outsource to and job candidates will you meeting? Each day, tally them up and plan how you will follow up. Content - how will you leverage your conference experience to create new content for your company blog, articles, or process documentation? Set goals for how many you’ll create each day. The content you capture and create can supply a company blog with numerous posts and show clients, staff and prospective clients that you are on top of what's happening in the industry. At TopRank, our staff are required to publish at least 3 blog posts for each day of conference attended. Set goals for how many blog posts, articles or other types of content will be created each day of the conference. It doesn't have to be all text, you can take photos of people, and presentation slides. Take videos where allowed. Knowledge transfer - How will you pass on the information youâ've acquired to the rest of the team? At TopRank Online Marketing, our staff take the highlights and any specific tactics of use and create presentations which they share with the rest of the TopRank team. Knowing you will be required to present the information you are gaining with the team back at the office helps focus on takeaways and practical interpretations of the new information. Socialize - Where there's a conference, there's a party. After hours events are exceptional opportunities for conference attendees to relax, network and share information. Make no mistake, post session networking can be an art form. Make a point to relax and have fun, but be clear about objectives and make a goal of attending a dinner each night of the event if possible. Some dinners are a tradition amongst long time friends, some are sponsored by vendors and some are at hoc events that occur as a result of like minded individuals wanting to continue the day's discussion. As you can see, there are many more opportunities to get value from marketing conference participation than keeping up to date with an industry. Pre conference goal setting and planning, well defined processes as well as follow up and post event knowledge sharing can all multiple the value organizations realize by sending employees to educational events. Not all organizations are positioned to take full advantage of these insights, but through simple analysis, it can become clear pretty quickly how much is being left on the table or to competitors who are sending the same numbers of people and incurring the same costs. Understand the conference offerings, set goals and make the time to pre-plan conference involvement. Leverage content creation, networking, recruiting, competitive intelligence as well as prospecting opportunities and industry conferences can move pretty quickly from an expense with an uncertain effect to an investment with multiples of return.Comments

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One of the questions I get asked frequently is “which search conferences should I attend”. Seeing as conferences end up costing you between $3500-$5000 a pop when you include travel, lodging and meals I thought I’d share my experience. Year 1 if you’ve absolutely never been to search conference before start with one of the smaller shows like SES Chicago, or SES Toronto. Sometimes the big shows can be a bit overwhelming for a newcomer. SMX East or SMX West - These shows are solid places to start learning what you need to know and need to start networking. OK there hasn’t technically been and SMX East yet, but I’ve got a hunch it will be similar to SMX West. SES NY or SES San Jose - These shows are much bigger than the smaller SES shows, they also have different speakers, and are a completely different conference experience. Year 2 SMX East or SMX West - Whichever show you went to last year go to the other this year. SES NY or SES San Jose - Again which ever one you went to last year go to the other one this year Pubcon - Pubcon has a much more in the trenches feel than the other shows. The majority of the speakers at Pubcon are actively involved in owning, running, or managing sites, their knowledge is much more hands on, as opposed to “agency” folks at the other shows. Year 3 Ok by this point you are conference veteran and probably have your favorite shows. You also have seen most of the speakers more than once and you know who gives new presentations each time and who … umm … recycles. SMX Advanced - By this point you know enough to make the most of what you can learn here, and you can also network with people who are just unreachable at the big shows. Then I’d go back to your two favorite shows, Either of the SMX, SES, or a Pubcon show. Once you’ve been more than once you’ll really have good idea how much you can learn. Year 4+ Ok this is the year where you can get the most out of the niche shows. Shows like SMX Mobile, SMX Social, or SES Travel, whichever makes the most sense for you. If your budget can support two shows pick the two you liked the from SMX, SES, or Pubcon. The next year go to the show you skipped last year, working with a rotation. Should you go to every show? Unless you are speaking or doing some heavy networking that leads to lucrative deals at a certain point it’s hard to justify the expense. But IMHO you should be going to 1-3 shows a year, there are always new topics, and be in the loop with your peers. If you really want to get the most out of conferences network with people. Really sometimes the information and ideas you get at the parties or bar is just as valuable as what you get in the sessions. Really. I know it’s hard and scary to talk to new people especially if you’re shy, but make the effort it will really make for a better conference. For more on how to network check out SEO Conference Tips and Tricks and 15 Ways to Be a SEO Conference Douchebag by Stuntdubl. Don’t believe me … sometimes being it the right spot at the right time you can get three people you probably could never afford to hire at the same time who will keep talking as long as you pick up their bar tab.Comments

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Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well. Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency evolves. Conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include: May: ACCM in FloridaJun: PRSA Digital Impact in NYCJul: ad:tech in ChicagoAug: Search Engine Strategies in San JoseSep: Blogworld Expo in Las VegasOct: DMA08 in VegasOct PRSA International Conference in DetroitNov: Pubcon in Vegas Personally, I try my best to limit conferences to one per month and those I am speaking at. The above list is not comprehensive for the TopRank team of course, since we do typically blog most SES and SMX conferences. We’ll definitely be at SMX Advanced this year as well as SES Chicago in December. It just won’t be me that attends. There are several other events that I may attend or speak at, I’m just not confirmed that far out. There are many other great conferences with programming that touches on search, social, interactive and PR the rest of this year. What conferences are you attending in the coming months and remainder of 2008?Comments

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PubCon, the Search Engine & Internet Marketing Conference has announced the dates of November 11-14, 2008 for its Las Vegas event. PubCon logo(Photo Credit: PubCon)The conference will be held in the North Halls, Las Vegas Convention Center. WebProNews will be attending the event offering both video and written coverage.Brett Tabke, PubCon's organizer and WebmasterWorld's CEO, said, "It's great to be back to our November dates in Las Vegas, this time with a switch to the North Halls at the Convention Center. Our 2007 Las Vegas PubCon once again broke records for attendees and sessions.""Once again, our aim, for Las Vegas PubCon 2008, is to deliver an extensive program of educational, highly topical and cutting-edge Internet marketing know-how, and to bring extensive networking opportunities to every attendee. It's a great place to meet and learn!" Tabke continued, "Anyone wishing to speak at the conference should apply with their proposal as soon as possible."Conference registration will open later this year for those planning on attending. 

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A couple of days back Google's Susan Moskwa & Trevor Foucher published FAQs about sitemaps, see: Google's FAQs on Sitemaps. The FAQs followed from their experience at SES Chicago 2007. Now, Michael Wyszomierski releases notes answering issues faced by many webmasters who he interacted with at PubCon Vegas 2007. Here are the webmaster's concerns: Site Verification Files and Meta Tags Several webmasters asked, "Is it necessary to keep the verification meta tag or HTML file in place to remain a verified owner in Webmaster Tools?" The answer is yes, you should keep your verification file or meta tag live to maintain your status as a verified owner. These verification codes are used to control who has access to the owner-specific tools for your site in Webmaster Tools. To ensure that only current owners of a site are verified, we periodically re-check to see if the verification code is in place, and if it is not, you will get unverified for that site. While we're on the topic: Site Verification Best Practices If you have multiple people working on your site with Webmaster Tools, it's a good idea to have each person verify the site with his or her own account, rather than using a shared login. That way, as people come and go, you can control the access appropriately by adding or removing verification files or meta tags for each account. You may want to keep a list of these verification codes and which owner they are connected to, so you can easily control access later. If you lose track, you can always use the "Manage site verification" option in Webmaster Tools, which allows you to force all site owners to reverify their accounts. Subdomains vs. Subdirectories What's the difference between using subdomains and subdirectories? When it comes to Google, there aren't major differences between the two, so when you're making that decision, do what works for you and your visitors. Following PubCon, our very own Matt Cutts outlined many of the key issues in a post on his personal blog. In addition to those considerations, if you use Webmaster Tools (which we hope you do!), keep in mind that you'll automatically be verified for deeper subdirectories of any sites you've verified, but subdomains need to be verified separately. Underscores vs. Dashes Webmasters asked about the difference between how Google interprets underscores and dashes in URLs. In general, we break words on punctuation, so if you use punctuation as separators, you're providing Google a useful signal for parsing your URLs. Currently, dashes in URLs are consistently treated as separators while underscores are not. Keep in mind our technology is constantly improving, so this distinction between underscores and dashes may decrease over time. Even without punctuation, there's a good chance we'll be able to figure out that bigleopard.html is about a "big leopard" and not a "bigle opard." While using separators is a good practice, it's likely unnecessary to place a high priority on changing your existing URLs just to convert underscores to dashes. Keywords in URLs We were also asked if it is useful to have relevant keywords in URLs. It's always a good idea to be descriptive across your site, with titles, ALT attributes, and yes, even URLs, as they can be useful signals for users and search engines. This can be especially true with image files, which otherwise may not have any text for a search engine to consider. Imagine you've taken a picture of your cat asleep on the sofa. Your digital camera will likely name it something like IMG_2937.jpg. Not exactly the most descriptive name. So unless your cat really looks like an IMG_2937, consider changing the filename to something more relevant, like adorable-kitten.jpg. If you have a post about your favorite cat names, it's much easier to guess that a URL ending in my-favorite-cat-names would be the relevant page, rather than a URL ending in postid=8652. For more information regarding issues with how Google understands your content, check out our new content analysis feature in Webmaster Tools, as well as our post on the URL suggestions feature of the new Google Toolbar. Moving to a new IP address We got a question about changing a site's IP address, and provided a few steps you can take a webmaster to make sure things go smoothly. Here's what you can do: Change the TTL (Time To Live) value of your DNS configuration to something short, like five minutes (300 seconds). This will tell web browsers to re-check the IP address for your site every five minutes. Copy your content to the new hosting environment, and make sure it is live on the new IP address. Change your DNS settings so your hostname points to the new IP address. Check your logs to see when Googlebot starts crawling your site on the new IP address. To make sure it's really Googlebot who's visiting, you can verify Googlebot by following these instructions. You can then log into Webmaster Tools and monitor any crawl errors. Once Googlebot is happily crawling on the new IP address, you should be all set as far as Google is concerned. To make sure everyone got the message of your move, you may want to keep an eye out for visits to your old IP address before shutting it down. Proxies A few webmasters were concerned that proxy services are being indexed with copies of their content. While it's often possible to find duplicate copies of your content in our results if you look hard enough, the original source is most likely going to be ranked higher than a proxy copy. However, if you find this not to be the case, please drop us some URLs in the Webmaster Help Group. There are many Googlers including myself who monitor this group and escalate issues appropriately. You can join the follow-up conversation in the Webmaster Help Group. Comments

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Back in December I attended the PubCon conference in Las Vegas and I was fortunate enough to meet my friend and Internet celebrity Ralph Wilson for an interview. Ralph has me regularly contributing tutorials and articles to the SEO section of his popular Web Marketing Today website and decided to interview me for a feature video on the website. The competitor analysis interview turned out pretty well I think - thank you Ralph!  Comments

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My mother always says that the longer you leave something the harder it gets… And realising that I haven’t really set foot on my blog in almost a month is kinda depressing. But it’s been quite a month… The Reds Hit Pubcon Myself and Dave decided to hit the annual webmaster pilgrimage better know as PubCon. Staged in Las Vegas, the event is one of the best known SEO conferences with a speaker line-up that includes virtually every well-known name in the SEM industry. Fabulous Las Vegas Everything is big in the US. And boy oh boy, the Las Vegas Convention Center doesn’t let down on this count either. We had a good laugh walking through the cowboy convention the first morning. You’d never believe the cowboy products you can actually buy unless you saw it with your own eyes  The Highlights  A lot happened during the 4 days in Vegas, so best bet here is to cover some of my highlights: A lot of attention was being paid to link buying. Interesting that so many speakers fessed up to buying links. Matt Cutts scribbled away in his notebook throughout the Link Buying session. Speaking of links, met Jim Boykin and now understand how fruit figures in the SEO industry.Sat down with Mr. Patents Bill Slawski on a couple of occasions. Bill is one of the nicest and approachable people I’ve met during my travels online, and shooting the breeze with him for a couple of hours was pretty cool.Matt Cutts the blackhat. Lots of folk probably joked about this, but the fascinating part of watching him play werewolf was that the all-around nice guy can certainly play the game when needed. Interesting insight IMO.Meet the Engineers means 40 people circling Matt Cutts, and groups of lesser-know Googlers huddled together. Maybe next time you guys should wear Google t-shirts so folk can find you? On a further negative note - the geo-targeting tool within Webmaster Console is either slightly broken or very broken depending on which member of the Webmaster Tools team you corner (that deserves a post of its own). I better apologise about my Webmaster Group rants - hope none of you took it personally. On a positive note - had a great laugh with Jonathan Simon who is a real fun down-to-earth Googler.Domaining is seriously hot. Lots of quiet chat amongst SEOs about domaining. I noticed that searchengineoptimization.us sold for $2k at the live auction. Wonder how much the .mobi would fetch? Had a drink or four with Nick Wilsdon who has set up camp in Russia and seems to have many fingers in many pies. Very nice unassuming guy.Leave it to the Brits and Irish to prop up the bar late at night! We managed a 6am finish on day 2 - myself, Dave, Rob Kerry and Lisa Ditlefsen were the last wo/men standing. Good laugh that.Best session for sheer entertainment value has to go to Jake Baillie’s take on Competitive Intelligence. Laughed a lot at his collection ‘techniques’.Sat in on the enterprise Level SEO session - it’s more about politics, setting expectations and managing people than actual SEO. I’m learning this myself these days.You can meet people anywhere. On the bus from the airport we got talking to Erik Gough who we had quite a few drinks with during our stay. And apparently not all afilliate marketers are scum - Richard Kershaw was great to chat with over the few days. The Canadians were nice guys and really up for it - Tony Clifton was a master stroke IMO Most speakers were wearing suits - just goes to show how it’s gone mainstream and the serious money is now entering the industry. Was I born in the wrong country?Although everyone told me to take Vegas for what it is, I have to admit the place just doesn’t ring any bells for me. Really happy I made the short hop to the east coast for a few days in Palo Alto and San Fran (yet another post). All in all it was a great way to turn off from the day-to-day client stuff. I’m not quite the socialite that Dave is, and networking isn’t really my thing, but it was great to make the journey and open my mind to just how big SEO is outside of wee little Ireland. Certainly came away with some new ideas about what to get involved in next year and how to extend my career. More to follow as semi-regular posting will recommence shortly.Comments

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At PubCon Matt Cutts just announced the launch of the Google Friend Connect API. It let's you copy javascript and make your blog more social. Editor's note: How do you think the launch of the Google Friend Connect API will affect data portability? Share your thoughts. WebProNews anchor Abby Jonnson spoke with Cutts at the conference: More WebProNews Videos The key point to acknowledge here is that Google is encouraging people to create more plug-ins for it, and it will be available through WordPress, Drupal, and phpbb plugins making it accessible to a whole lot of the web. Google Friend Connect will be easily usable with not only blogs, but forums and content management systems. It's completely open and built on open social. Out of this, publishers can get: - more user participation - More comments and higher -quality comments, less spam - More interactions: questions, answers, votes - flexibility - widgets, etc. This is an important step for data portability. We have not seen Google Friend Connect truly take off yet like it could, and this might get it pushed in that direction. Cutts says it's not perfect yet, and it's not live yet, but it will be in an hour or two. More on this as we find out... Update: Google has posted to the official Social Web Blog now with more. Product Manager Mussie Shore writes: Whether you're a site owner or developer, the new Friend Connect APIs offer something for anyone who is interested in helping the web become more social: Site owners - Integrate Friend Connect more deeply into your site. JavaScript APIs allow you to integrate a social community directly within the markup of your page, and our REST APIs allow you integrate existing login systems and your existing data with new social data and activities. These are your visitors and this is your site, so you should be able to add social features the way you want. Plugin developers - Make plugins to integrate with popular content management systems, bulletin boards, or any open framework. To get you started, we have created open source plugin samples for WordPress, Drupal, and phpBB. Gadget developers - Make OpenSocial applications with greater control over how data flows across servers with signed requests. Use server-side authentication mechanisms so that a site with Friend Connect can act as an OpenSocial container. Update 2: WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson spoke to Matt Cutts about the API launch who basically  just said it provides deeper integration. The plugins are new and developed by his team. Once users sign in they don't have to sign into each site and are able to copy that info in other places. A few other tidbits coming from the Q&A with Matt Cutts: - Twitter followers will not help your page rank - Does CTR or other behavioral metrics on SERPS affect ranking? It would be really spammy and noisy. - Cutts says he can't promise Google would never use its wiki results... Abby Johnson conributed to this report. >>> What are your thoughts on this breaking news/? Comment here. Let us know what you think about the Google Friend Connect API.

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Recently I've discussed how businesses can use Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic to their sites, and even looked at some specific examples of how local businesses here in Lexington, KY are using Twitter. A lot of existing brands are jumping on the social media bandwagon, and though some still struggle to find a good fit, many are reaping the benefits. This was the topic of a session called Moving Old Brands into New Social Media at PubCon South in Austin, Texas. Coverage of PubCon South Austin continues at WebProNews Videos. Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week. Lisa Buyer of The Buyer Group discussed using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and company blogs for PR purposes as well as social branding opportunities. She says LinkedIn is good for corporate groups. Twitter works well for online branding. You can have both a personal account and a brand account, but watch out for irresponsible employees on Twitter, because as she says, "Twitter news travels fast." Your company should have a policy on social media for employee use. Talk with employees about their social media use, and create an action plan for reputation management. Buyer offers these three social media lessons: - Think before you tweet - Avoid gossip - Use Google Alerts Certainly good advice for online reputation management (I've got an article on that here.) Pat Strader of Matterhorn Marketing also spoke, and says "social media is not a tactic. It's a collection of tools." That is well said, because often people get caught up in whether or not they should be using social media to market their businesses when they should really be focusing on what they hope to accomplish with it. He offers the following advice: 1. Extract primary keywords - group them by topic 2. Create a demographic profile 3. Compare to profiles of social sites 4. Look at when your primary keywords begin to trend 5. Identify locations and develop editorial calendar 6. Listen! Strader says, "If you don't take anything else away from this, take listening." I was thinking the same thing. Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

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BusinessWeek asks if Twitter is the Next Monster.com, which is an interesting question because at PubCon South, Top Rank Marketing's Lee Odden referenced a company that bought ads with Monster (and other places like it) but got better results from Twitter. With Twitter, it received both qualitative and quantitative results he said. Perhaps this is indicative of social media marketing in general. In the same session, or "Super Session," if you will, Wayne Sutton of Social Wayne said, "social media is the online way of doing it the offline way." That's an interesting way of putting it. As Odden says, it's not direct marketing. It influences purchases down the line. Following are some various thoughts from speakers at the session, Odden, Sutton, Social Media Wiz Chris Brogan, and Reem Abeidoh of Social Impressions: Chris Brogan: If it's just transactional sales, Twitter might not be best thing, but if you're building relationships or multiple transactions, you need that relationship. Reem Abeidoh: Professional perspective may not directly bring in dollars, but can build awareness. Reem Abeidoh: Identify where your customers are at, and that's what social media really is. Reem Abeidoh: It's about being social - you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Reem Abeidoh: Facebook is a great resource because you can have both personal and public relationships On the Biggest Risks of social media for small businesses: Lee Odden: Businesses need to have a strategy before going into it Reem Abeidoh: You have to kinda avoid making mistakes online because it's there forever. On the Skittles Episode: Reem Abeidoh: Almost genius... brave; started new trend and expects other companies to do it Lee Odden: As a PR stunt, successful, but not in value; believes consumers want value Wayne Sutton: It's creative, but Pepsi is doing it better like what they're doing for SXSW -- they bring it to their own site. Abby Johnson contributed to this report. Read more from PubCon South and stay tuned to the WebProNews Video Blog for exclusive interviews with marketing experts.

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