Archive for August, 2007

SES Conference Center

Monday, August 20th, 2007

No significant updates…just wasting some time while waiting for my ride.

Search Engine Strategies San Jose

Just my opinion, but the San Jose Convention Center could use a face lift. Maybe the 80’s have made a comeback and I missed it. If the building had a gift shop I’m pretty sure MJ would shop there.

Looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions and making my way over to the Googleplex.

SES San Jose

Monday, August 20th, 2007

I found my way to San Jose this morning to attend Search Engine Strategies. My flight departed early so I had to get up at 4:30am…so yeah, I’m kind of in a bad mood.

So far I’ve only attended one session. It was regarding Universal/Blended Search.
Moderator:

  • Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose
    Speakers:

  • Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
  • Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
  • Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing, Commerce360
    Q&A Speakers:
  • Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
  • David Bailey, Engineer, Google
  • Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Mostly, the various search engines discussed how they see the future of blended search evolving. Obviously the engines want to include more and more content (video, images, etc) to keep users in front of their ads.

    Some stuff to look for:

  • Google News currently only provides text and images. Video should be available soon.
  • Google Universal search will begin to shuffle features in the SERPs. For example, (as of 8/20/2007) a search for “Alex McArthur” returns 3 pictures of the actor and 10 standard web results. If a video or blog post about Alex McArthur became popular in the future, then a Google Onebox result may be added to the first SERP page.
  • Third party videos showing up in blended search results.

Erik Collier, from Ask.com, reported a 30% drop of searchers going to second page as a result of blended search. Also, a 15% drop on searchers performing more than 1 query. According to Erik this means that people are finding what they want quicker.
*2nd page just won’t cut it any more. ;-)

OrangeSoda Job Openings

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

OrangeSoda is hiring. There are a variety of openings (in Orem, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada) including web design, search engine optimization, account management, sales and .net dev. If you have any questions about the company or the positions feel free to shoot me an email. It really is a fun and challenging place to work.

Utah SEO, Bryan Phelps and Paid Links

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

Bryan Phelps has ranked #1 for “utah seo” for the past few days. He recently posted about it and seems to be surprised by the results.
Obviously this isn’t some huge dent in the internet marketing world as the search phrase barely gets any traffic. And that limited traffic is most likely composed of others in the field, but it’s still interesting to discuss.

Bryan’s site was started early 2007. He posted about random topics early on. Then, about a month ago he changed his title to “utah seo specialist” and was able to acquire some links. Now for the past few days he’s been ranking over firms that have put much more time into their rankings. Some of these firms were ranking well because of content (blog posts, age, good internal linking/cross site linking, etc - the guys at MWI always do well in these areas, especially blogs), while others are using purchased links plus the other stuff (check out the sponsored links at SEORoundtable. Utah firms have a strong presence there.

Will Bryan stay on top?
I highly doubt it. (Bryan, can we still be friends?)
In the past year I’ve seen many in the top spot including Vizad, Chris Sandberg, 97th Floor,MWI and UtahWebServices. In the end, the firms will knock Bryan down.

Which practices will win in the end?
Some of the search engines have come out and said they don’t like the paid link route and have even provided ways for others to report them. I personally don’t buy links for my own sites, but I’ve never reported anyone and never will.

I’ve enjoyed following the competition for the key phrase “utah seo”. It will be fun to see what happens next. For now Bryan Phelps is the champ. (Don’t let it get to your head or you could find yourself the newest member of the OrangeSoda link building team ;-) )

Update - 8/10/2007 - BryanPhelps.com fell to #2
HA HA