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. ;-)

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The person in this position will be responsible for implementing and managing Organic Search campaigns. This person will be responsible for researching keywords that are appropriate to the market, determining the best optimization techniques, and incorporating these techniques into the clients’ websites.
Will work closely with clients to achieve desired results. The SEO Guru will be responsible for providing ongoing management of all subscribers including reporting to the client on results of their campaign, SEO recommendations and delivery of assigned program deliverables.

Required skills:
Ability to work independently, to organize and prioritize multiple project responsibilities, and to produce quality work under deadline pressure.
Knowledge and demonstrated application of industry standards.
Experience and understanding of link building.
Strong understanding of website development techniques, SEO tools and site analytics principles.
Able to remain up-to-date with competition and industry trends through trade publications, blogs, etc to assess the potential impact of industry events on the clients’ websites.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Orange Soda was founded by a group of Pay Per Click industry pioneers in the late 90’s. We have managed tens of thousands of campaigns of all sizes, and in all industries. This is a full-time position in Orem, Utah.

Please contact me if you are interested.

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Yeah, my widgets are getting out of control, but most of my readers use RSS apps anyway. Aren’t crazy amounts of plugins half the fun of blogging?

My latest site “enhancement” is my Ban That widget you can see on the top of my sidebar. It’s a fun site to tell the world about things you hate and why.

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I’m a fan of the Daily Searchcast with Danny Sullivan, but I have a gripe. IT’S NOT DAILY!

Oh, and while I’m in the mood to complain please prohibit Bruce Clay from advertising more than once a year on the podcast. Their ads nearly explode my speakers.

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Check out these 10 steps to becoming an SEO. Hilarious.

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