Thanks to Barry Schwartz and Keri Morgret from Search Engine Roundtable for taking the time to live blog many of the SMX West sessions!  Here are a few of my notes from Wednesday, Day 2…

Google’s SearchWiki, Customized, and Personal Search

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)
(Personalized and Customized Search from SMX East)

• For SearchWiki research, Google has actually gone into people’s homes to see what they’re searching for; not only on their computers but on notes around their computer!
• How Google thinks SearchWiki will help people:
  - Bookmarking
  - Improve specific name searches
  - Collect information for a task
  - Look at the RIGHT sites
  - Refinding hard-to-find info
• SearchWiki = explicit tool, Personalized Search = implicit tool (Google does work for user)
• Personalized Search: privacy-sensitive, transparent, show searcher is on and has ability to turn OFF
• Google Preferred Sites – add preferred sites with Google experiments (bases SERPS off of this)
• What does this mean for SEOs?
  Bad news:
  - Hard to collect metrics
  - See how page ranks
  Good news:
  - Easier for people to find you
  - Easier to retain customers who prefer your business
  - Top position no longer means winner takes all!
• From Google, how to deal with these new forms of search: “Make a good website.” (Ingenious.)
• To control personalized search
  - Use search details
  - Disable by appending &pws=0 in URL
  - Log out of your Google account
  - Look for extensions
• Google isn’t PRESENTLY using SearchWiki to change search results
• Not a large percentage of search results are personalized – most are simply due to geographic location
• Both SearchWiki and Personalized Search do NOT have a role with Ads
• There is still an opportunity for newcomers to be found: simply by making your site valuable to users and it will come up
• Get around localized results by changing location, specifying the location you’re looking for
• Right now, SearchWiki is meant for personal use
• Someone leaves a negative SearchWiki comment on your site? Give the comment a thumb’s down and/or flag as inappropriate – feedback is taken into consideration
• As soon as a comment is flagged as inappropriate, it is removed until reviewed
• Personalized results may even happen without your logging in (using IP address)

SEO Status Report Metrics

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• Four things we think are true but aren’t:
  1. Every keyword is equally important
  2. All potential keywords are accounted for and known. (What’s good last year is good this year)
  3. Movement outside the first page doesn’t matter
  4. Education = buy in
• Stop chasing rankings, they aren’t productive. But there ARE insightful.
• Use AdWords to improve natural search performance –> call to action optimization, snippet optimization.
• Tracking snippets:
  - Do one snippet for 30 days, record data.
  - Do second snippet for 30 days, record data.
  - Compare the two.
• Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz says Alexa is “statistically relevant and worth using”
• Looking at Analytics:
  - What traffic?
  - How much traffic? (month-to-month growth, seasonality, year over year)
  - From where? (does it align w/ market share?)
  - Growing the slice of the pie (larger share of overall traffic)
• Keyword advice:
  - Align keyword traffic w/ ranking (opportunities, misses, new terms)
  - Branded vs. non-branded (growth in non-branded)
• Site pages:
  - Entry pages (alignment w/ keywords)
  - Top post-landing pages (where did they go? opportunities)
  - Missed opportunities
• Site engagement
  - How long did they stay? (pages w/ traction)
  - How many pages are visited?
  - What is the abandonment rate? (where do they leave the site?)
  - Where did they go? Is it different for people who come from SEs vs. referrals?
  - What leads to conversions?
• Referral Sites:
  - What other sites drive traffic?
  - Links?
  - Opportunities to change anchor text
• Internal Search: What are they searching for on your site? <– keyword optimization info
• Where are people from?
  - Geographic terms
  - Localized terms
  - Blocking traffic (if nationally-focused); Barry gives the example: “soda vs. pop”; could be “sneakers vs. tennis shoes” if you’re originally Southern like me
• Additional metrics (from something like Webmaster Tools):
  - What are search engines doing when they come to your site?
  - How long does it take for a page to load?
  - Have any error pages?
• Stop talking about SEO metrics to execs, talk about improving business:
  - Market opportunity
  - Click thru rate
  - Acquisition costs
  - Keyword coverage
  - Etc.

Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• Heavy searchers account for 63% search volume.
• Search, in general, is up.  Why?
  - More people online this year than last year
  - A large percentage of them are searching
• Consumers are reliant on search
  - Searching two more days/month
  - Searching more every day
• Search engines + site search –> overall search growth
• Opportunities to expand search campaigns outside of traditional SEs:
  - videos
  - local
  - images
  - social networking
• Consumers are searching for directories, resources, retail, and entertainment
• Consumers are clicking on paid links for retail sites more than any other paid ads
• Interesting search habits:
  - Most of our search behavior is done on “auto pilot”
  - We search by habit
  - As we learn to do this, we free up our brain to more fully interact w/ results we see
  - We become fluent in search
  - We may “pattern search” to determine relevancy
• Problems users are having w/ search (via Yahoo rep):
  - Info overload: not excited to see 2 million results for a specific restaurant query
  - Text-heavy search results: too much decision making involved
  - Impersonal experience: user repeatedly needs to introduce themselves to search engines (Keri’s example: I type “haircut” I’m looking for a hair salon, not the history of haircuts)
• What users need (via Yahoo rep):
  - Internet to support life activity, search needs to keep up the pace
  - Understand true intent
  - Provide richer, more personally relevant experiences
• Web search – 10% queries lead to a click on next page; Image search – 50% queries lead to a click to the next page
• Other user insights:
  - Most customer time is not on single-queries
  - Not on easy queries
  - Customers engage in whole tasks
  - Tasks involved = trigger, research, action
• Lessons:
  - Assume people will hunt before they act
  - Help them hunt! (good content, tools for hunting)
  - Draw them back (good content, stickiness of your product)
  - Look at conversions in a new light
  - Think about long term relationship and brand
• People are more likely to requery than to go to the 2nd page

Tapping Into Image Search

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• Image searchers are likely to click 2-3 times more often than a web searcher
• How image search works:
  - SEs Discover pages and images (scr or href)
  - Crawl, classify, and index them
  - Look for duplicates/referring pages
  - Rank based on “many signals”
• Best Practices:
  - Focus on the User
  - High Quality images
  - Above the fold
• Yahoo images feed through Flickr (which they own)
• SEO Tips for images:
  - Proper text meta data (titles, tags, anchor, keywords)
  - Descriptive captions surrounding in text
  - Time date stamps are good
  - Image quality does matter
  - Use keywords in image file names
  - Describe image in detail
• Where should you use your images?
  - Social scene
  - Blogs
  - Bookmarking
  - Articles
• Places to upload images:
  - Flickr
  - Picasa
  - Image Shack
  - TwitPic
  - TinyPic
  - SlideShare
  - Photobucket
• Flickr image optimization:
  - Linking (even though they are nofollowed)
  - Title
  - H1
  - Captions
  - Tagging
  - Cross grouping
  - Sharing
  - Alt text
  - Optimal Linking hierarchy
  - Date taken, page views displayed
  - “Interestingness” algorithm
  - Make photos public
  - Share photos – “loose” licensing (Encourage people to exchange photo for a link)
  - Geotag photos
• Enable “enhanced image search” in Google Webmaster Tools!

301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• What are 301′s?
  - Redirect users and bots from old URL to new URL
  - Redirect users from old domain to new domain
  - Redirect users from alternate addresses (.org to .com)
  - Fixes www vs. non-www
  - Keeps unauthorized users and bots from accessing live development environments, redirects to main site (IP specific delivery)
• 301 Whitehat Social Media Strategy:
  - Use multi-part story strategy (Example stories: Free SEO Tools, Paid SEO Tools, Free PPC Tools, Paid PPC Tools)
  - Consolidate all the parts into a larger story
  - 301 redirect to transfer/consolidate inbound links to that single location
• Legitimate uses of 302:
  - Display user-friendly URL but the content lives deep w/in info architecture
  - Vanity URL doesn’t have 301

Search & US Presidential Campaign

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)
(Twitter, Search, and the Presidential Race)

• Reps from Ron Paul and Obama present
• Geo targeted with swing/non swing states
• Campaigns used Google Analytics and Website Optimizer (even Politicians use the awesome, free tools!)
• Reps said much like other SEO campaigns, more AB testing though