SES San Jose 2007 Quick Wrap-Up
Search Engine Strategies 2007 San Jose came and went. While I didn’t find any earth shattering changes in the landscape, it was a good chance to trade SEO tips, meet SEOers like Todd Malicoat and Lee Odden. I could in no way compete in the same way that Lee and his TopRank Team covered SES, but here are my highlights of the conference:
SES San Jose 2006 v. SES San Jose 2007
- Definite Corporate Feel, Less Geeky Hacker of the SEO Olden Days
- More Women: It felt like that the crowd was around 35-40% Women
- Growing Proportion of In-House SEM/SEO teams (30-60% in some sessions):
- This means an even better networking opportunity for Agencies :)
Tools and Reporting
- Definite trend in developing in-house PPC Bid Management tool, everyone expressed general dissatisfaction with their bid management tool
- Companies all knew the value of integrated marketing reporting, but everyone seemed to be at very different levels of archiving that twin holy grail (from no where, to significant integration):
1. Integrating all marketing activities analytics data as “Marketing Intelligence”
2. Integrating web analytics as part of a company’s Business Intelligence (BI)
Trends
- Universal Search (No, Not Google’s Universal Search):
- Actually saw a few presentations on optimizing or analyzing search on any web platform, not just Google and Yahoo, but anything from Yelp and MySpace to Expedia and YouTube
- Social Media Gaining Prominence (As Expected):
- Social Media Metrics, Campaigns and Marketing ideas appearing in many sessions from the obvious – SMO Session and Linkbait – to discussions on analytics and reputation monitoring
- Facebook as the Trendy Must-Join Network:
- Facebook was something that a lot of attendees just recently joined (~3 months ago or less), at least when a speaker did an informal survey of the room
Oddly Missing
- Social Media relationship with PR, Marketing and Search Marketing:
Granted SES gears towards more tactical knowledge, alot of people new to Social Media seemed to have a time tough time understanding Social Media. No speakers really help placed Social Media within the greater Marketing context, maybe someone should next year? - Mobile Search:
While there was a single session on it, Mobile Search wasn’t big on anyone’s radar - International SEO:
Basically no discussion of doing multi-national SEO campaigns other than one mention of behavior differences from Enquiro
It was a pleasure meeting you Daniel!
Regarding: “Oddly Missing - Social Media relationship with PR, Marketing and Search Marketing” I think it’s indicative of the over emphasis on certain tactical aspects of social media such as Digg, StumbleUpon etc that cause this oversight.
There are quite a people that provide social media consulting services talking about social media on the strategic level at other conferences like DMA07 and the PRSA International Conference, but for whatever reason, the lineup for social media at SES has pretty much focused on tactics.
Maybe that will change with the new programming chair?
Lee,
It was great meeting you too.
While I do appreciate SES for emphasis on what is actionable and to appeal to SMB to enterprise level, I think the tactical emphasis did cloud some folks thinking.
I’m actually seeing if the Social Media Club can SMX can work something out together. I’m a member of SMC and they’ve been very active in talking about Social Media and PR. I would love them to bridge their insight to the search side of things.
Cheers,
Daniel