Anne Kennedy

A fresh look at how to successfully architect your site for search engines and how specific page elements and design technologies may impact your ability to gain good organic listings. Covers topics such as directory and file structure, server-side includes (SSIs), 404 error trapping, JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage, and much more. Toward the end of the session, volunteers from the audience will have their sites examined to see how changes could be made to their site architecture and design to increase search engine traffic, as time allows.

As knowledge of SEO practices moves from the offices of the optimizers to the board room, the standard metrics used by the practitioners of this former dark art are straining under the weight of the all powerful bottom line. The days when upper management was impressed by subtle changes in Page Rank have been replaced by questions of LTV and ROI. As more resources are being dedicated to creating the perfectly optimized and keyword rich landing page, C-level executives are demanding proof of the return they are receiving from these resources.

This panel will discuss a myriad of ways to move beyond Page Rank, indexed pages or linked sites and into metrics that can make you a hero and, better still, get your budget increased to a respectable level.

Nothing in search marketing is as certain as change. Ten years ago Google did not exist Ñ now it’s a verb that means searching on the Web. Growing use of media such as video, social and personal appear to provide new avenues for searchers. What are the early adopters embracing now? How will your customers find you? What media should you keep in your sites and what should you discard? This session is a long-view look at weak signals and trends that appear to point in new directions.

The current economic recession calls for radical measures to control marketing spend and make it as cost effective as possible. The last downturn a decade ago saw the emergence of Google’s pay-for-performance model as the preeminent way to advertise online cost-effectively. Now that keyword advertising on general search engines has become mainstream, marketers must look elsewhere for untapped opportunities where there is less competition for attention. Vertical search engines provide this opportunity. Vertical search category leaders – such as in travel, shopping and classifieds – have seen an explosion in traffic but are relatively unexploited by advertisers. Attend this session to find out what vertical search engines are doing for marketers in this recession that Google did for them in the last.

Build a user-friendly site and chances are you’ve also built a search engine friendly site. Learn how good usability and accessibility can help your human visitors plus bring in the search traffic.

More and more site owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content. If you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue? What happens if you syndicate content through RSS and feeds? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This session looks at the issues and explores solutions.