SES Chicago 2005: Day 1 Notes
Hello everyone. As I promised, I am going to do my best to post my notes after each conference day in hopes of passing on any of the good stuff that may come this way. My day started off very well considering I was up after 1:00am watching "Bram Stoker's Dracula"... hey, I don't get the premiere movie channels like Starz or HBO at home so I have to take advantage when I can. By the way, the movie sucked. This should go into Matt Cutts' movie reviews and be filed under crap.
After a very fulfilling breakfast with my colleague Jessica Guadiana, one of All Web's top SEO Specialists, (it's a cheap plug, but what the hell) I rolled into the conference session ready to go with pen in hand. My first session of the day was "Searcher Behavior Research Updates" and I just about walked out within the first 30 seconds. Mark Neal of Galleon, the first speaker at this particular session, actually stood at the podium and stressed how important it was to have your website listed on the first page of the search engine results... as if everyone in the room didn't already know that. In fact his whole presentation was just that. He explained the benefits and so forth for being on the first page which is completely mind blowing seeing as though this whole conference is based around that general concept. Obviously we all understand this idea or we wouldn't be at the show. We definitely didn't need Mr. Neal's 15 minute presentation to tell us so.
Just so that I am not completely bagging on Mark Neal, he did provide this interesting statistic: "90% of all visitors delivered from search engines are from the first page". I new that that the percentage would be high, but, never did I think that it would be as high as 90%. An interesting piece of information I thought.
Another statistic that caught my attention during that session was provided by Jon Stewart of Neilson Net Ratings and it was this: "62 million searches typed a website name directly into a search box this year, representing 40% of the online universe". So what does this mean? It means that there is a large amount of lazy search engine users who just type in "www.yahoo.com" or "www.google.com" into their browser's home page search box instead of taking their mouse and clicking in the main URL box. Another interesting piece of info.
My second session was "Search Term Research & Targeting" with Christine Churchill from KeyRelevance and Dan Thies from SEO Research Labs. This was a decent session with lots of good keyword research suggestions and tools.
After lunch I checked out the "Search Engine Friendly Design" session with Shari Thurow. Honestly the presentation itself was enjoyable and informative, but I didn't really like how Shari presented herself and in fact I never do. She comes off as being very arrogant and cocky... maybe it's just me though.
For the last session of the day I attended "Ads Beyond Search" presented by the ClickZ Forum. As the name hints on, the session discusses other marketing ventures and opportunities outside of Search Engine Marketing. Nothing too impressive.
This leads us to the evening hours. SEMPO kicked off Monday night with a cocktail reception, which is a bit different this time around. Usually they have a meeting and talk about the future of the organization... I guess I should be grateful that I didn't have to sit through all that just to get a free drink or two. Kudos to you SEMPO. Actually Michael Roebuck, the General Manager of All Web Promotion and my conference buddy, and I make it our goal to drink as much as possible at the SEMPO events. We feel we need to get our money's worth some how. If you haven't noticed, SEMPO membership fees are outrageous compared to what little we actually get out of being a member.
Tomorrow I look forward to the Expo Hall opening as there should be some really great venders with great tools, resources, and so forth. Check back for day 2 notes.
After a very fulfilling breakfast with my colleague Jessica Guadiana, one of All Web's top SEO Specialists, (it's a cheap plug, but what the hell) I rolled into the conference session ready to go with pen in hand. My first session of the day was "Searcher Behavior Research Updates" and I just about walked out within the first 30 seconds. Mark Neal of Galleon, the first speaker at this particular session, actually stood at the podium and stressed how important it was to have your website listed on the first page of the search engine results... as if everyone in the room didn't already know that. In fact his whole presentation was just that. He explained the benefits and so forth for being on the first page which is completely mind blowing seeing as though this whole conference is based around that general concept. Obviously we all understand this idea or we wouldn't be at the show. We definitely didn't need Mr. Neal's 15 minute presentation to tell us so.
Just so that I am not completely bagging on Mark Neal, he did provide this interesting statistic: "90% of all visitors delivered from search engines are from the first page". I new that that the percentage would be high, but, never did I think that it would be as high as 90%. An interesting piece of information I thought.
Another statistic that caught my attention during that session was provided by Jon Stewart of Neilson Net Ratings and it was this: "62 million searches typed a website name directly into a search box this year, representing 40% of the online universe". So what does this mean? It means that there is a large amount of lazy search engine users who just type in "www.yahoo.com" or "www.google.com" into their browser's home page search box instead of taking their mouse and clicking in the main URL box. Another interesting piece of info.
My second session was "Search Term Research & Targeting" with Christine Churchill from KeyRelevance and Dan Thies from SEO Research Labs. This was a decent session with lots of good keyword research suggestions and tools.
After lunch I checked out the "Search Engine Friendly Design" session with Shari Thurow. Honestly the presentation itself was enjoyable and informative, but I didn't really like how Shari presented herself and in fact I never do. She comes off as being very arrogant and cocky... maybe it's just me though.
For the last session of the day I attended "Ads Beyond Search" presented by the ClickZ Forum. As the name hints on, the session discusses other marketing ventures and opportunities outside of Search Engine Marketing. Nothing too impressive.
This leads us to the evening hours. SEMPO kicked off Monday night with a cocktail reception, which is a bit different this time around. Usually they have a meeting and talk about the future of the organization... I guess I should be grateful that I didn't have to sit through all that just to get a free drink or two. Kudos to you SEMPO. Actually Michael Roebuck, the General Manager of All Web Promotion and my conference buddy, and I make it our goal to drink as much as possible at the SEMPO events. We feel we need to get our money's worth some how. If you haven't noticed, SEMPO membership fees are outrageous compared to what little we actually get out of being a member.
Tomorrow I look forward to the Expo Hall opening as there should be some really great venders with great tools, resources, and so forth. Check back for day 2 notes.
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posted by Karl Ribas Monday, December 05, 2005 Read Comments (0) | Post a Comment | Subscribe  
 
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