Dave and Jay - Crazy Web Entrepreneurs

Here’s a list of a few ideas and concepts that seem simple once you hear them, but I hadn’t thought of before hearing them at panels while attending SES.

1. Companies using Digg and other social media sites to promote their clients are gaming the system, at least a little bit.

This is more of a confirmation of my suspicions than anything else, but from the several social media sessions I attended, it was quite apparent that the companies using social media to promote their clients or their own site game the system a bit. The trick for me is to figure out where the balance lies for just the right amount of game.

2. Just because you’re ranked organically doesn’t mean PPC ads for the same term are useless.

I’m not 100% sure, but I believe this tidbit of information came from Anne Kennedy of Beyond Ink. In a nutshell, you are result 1 for Blue Widgets across all major search engines. Studies have shown that the top three PPC ads and the top three organic results pull in the majority of the traffic from a search page. If you have a competitor in the same field (Blue Widgets) in this example, you can deny them a spot for reaching your audience by buying the top PPC spot for the term you’re already ranked organically for.

3. SEO is changing dramatically.

Over the last few years, the SEO landscape has changed radically. Now it’s become inexorably linked to PR and relationships with people online as a means to an end (building links), unlike how things worked even a few years ago.

4. Panelists keep a little mystery surrounding specifics.

One of my biggest complaints about the sessions was that very few panelists went beyond basic vague ideas that I’ve heard before and actually got into the specific types of techniques that can be used for success. There are some notable exceptions… Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR and Helen from NLC were two notable exceptions that I’ll be exploring in future posts.

I need to expand a bit on this point. I think this is the fundamental problem with a show like SES. As a presenter, you also have your own business health to be concerned for, and if you give away all your trade secrets of how you accomplish what you do, then you might find yourself in a world of trouble. So, I do understand it’s a hard to maintain the proper balance.

5. Bigger isn’t always better.

At first I was a little disappointed with the relatively small size of SES Toronto (small relative to my expectations) . However, as I was leaving the show at the end of day two, it turns out that I was heading the same way that Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz was as well. We talked on the way, and he raised a point that I hadn’t thought of. At the bigger SES shows, he (and likely any other big name) gets mobbed with people the whole show. So at a bigger event, I probably wouldn’t have got the chance to talk to him and get some extra (much appreciated) advice about the Ancient Standard. This got me thinking about other facets of the show. I was extremely lucky to have AS plastered up on the big screen for all to see at two separate sessions. At a bigger show, there would have probably been tons more submissions at those sessions and my site would have likely never made it up there. Bigger isn’t always better.

Good Profits.