The Search Engine Strategies conference is one of the greatest conferences to hit up for the SEO worker. Experts and novices alike can get some good information out of the show.

The conference features a lots of great speakers from big New York powerhouses such as the New York Times company SEO staff, the ABC News SEO staff, the author of World Wide Rave and of course a Googler.

The main page of the SES site said it perfectly:

Your customers, colleagues and competition will be in attendance — will you?

It’s always something to ponder, going to these type of events. Sometime you’ll come home thinking you didn’t learn anything. But even if you didn’t learn anything new, a whole slew of other people did. So if you learn one thing, it’s exactly what your competition knows.

I don’t think I’ve been to a conference where I didn’t take at least a small helpful nugget of advice. It’s always good to see what the big dogs are doing — even if they are far behind the smaller agile SEO experts.

See you at SES New York!

EQUTE — As Google continues tweak its use of canonical tags to work across domains, Bing is saying that the tags aren’t all that necessary for their search results.

Bing Search Engine Land told webmasters should essentially use canonical as a last resort.

“Our first and foremost advice is the same as it always has been: 301 redirects and good site design should be the primary focus of webmasters, with canonical tags picking up the slack when technical limitations impede other solutions.

So this means, of course, that both 301 directs and canonical tags are necessary to stay competitive with duplicate content across all the search engines.

Bing said it would have full support of the canonical tag within several months, but in what exact form is still unclear.

EQUTE — There are thousands of good URL tips for search engine optimization out there, but one simple fix is crucial for helping boos the homepage traffic.

One of the most basic things you can do is get your homepage consolidated. If you’re trying to get the best out of SEO, it an obvious foul to split up the page you are trying to link to.

A list of three common URL problems featured on SEO.com gives site owners a great set of tips to get things streamlined for search spiders and users.

Many sites send links to their homepage, but which one? Links don’t always come to the page you want.

SEO.com gave several examples:

http://www.mysite.com

http://mysite.com

http://www.mysite.com/index.html

http://mysite.com/index.html

This is a pretty easy fix, one that makes use of the almighty canonical tag.

Simply direct all those errant homepages to your www.mysite.com instead of cutting your resources into fractions. Even if you want to split your homepage up for separate versions or tracking purposes, you should send all other sites to whichever version you want showing up in the search engines.

EQUTE — The Bing Webmaster Center Team gave some pointers on link building for the Bing search engine.

Rick DeJarnette, of the Bing Webmaster Center, said in a blog post . He runs down the basics of link building and says the key to good search rankings is about the same as Google’s.

DeJarnette ran the gamut saying content is king, leverage authority sites, good inbound links — nothing new. He did go into what makes Bing take a second glance. While he says link building is OK (read necessary) he said they must be helpful to searchers.

Bing’s position on link building is straightforward - we are less concerned about the link building techniques used than we are about the intentions behind the effort. That said, techniques used are often quite revealing of intent. Allow me to explain.
Examples of potentially conspiratorial hocus-pocus that might be perceived as unnatural and warrant a closer review by search engine staff include but are not limited to:

The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time

Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites

Using hidden links in your pages

Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web

Linking out to known web spam sites

When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction. If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.

Bing offered a lot of tips that will help, but it’s nothing a seasoned SEO expert wouldn’t know by working with Google. These tips do, however, give good basics for working with Bing.

EQUTE — Researchers say the benefit of good organic SEO rankings may also contribute to people clicking on paid ads.

Researchers Sha Yang and Anindya Ghose at the New York University — Leonard N. Stern School of Business wrote up their findings in a really long paper, luckily WebProNews distilled the juicy bits for everyone.

Basically, the research shows that when both organic results and paid ad results appear on a search results page, the paid ads perform better.

It’s almost surprising how synergy the study suggests.

Positive interdependence leads to an increase in expected profits for the firm ranging from 4.2 % to 6.15 % when compared to profits in the absence of this interdependence.

The study showed that the he positive association is strongest when advertiser-specific keywords are used and weakest when brand-specific and generic keywords are used. When the two combine, click-through rates are 5.1 percent higher than when only organic listings are present and 11.7 percent higher when both are shown together.

Overall, the researchers said that profit from the paid search can shoot up by as much as 54 percent.

So those SEM marketers that completely ignore organic search should take note to spread their efforts around. Whether the search listing adds credibility to the ads or vice versa, it’s an interesting synchronicity

So all you SEM marketers should work on those organic rankings, and those SEO experts should work to get their ads displayed alongside their high-ranking search results.

EQUTE — A new search feature is coming to Google, one that will help you find your friends and colleagues amid the vast Internet landscape.

Search Engine Land discussed Google’s new Social Search.

The idea behind the new search option is a relatively simple one, it helps the user find their friends and news from trusted sites without having to trudge through millions of results. The example Google uses is the search phrase “New York” when looking for a friend’s blog. It’s going to be next to impossible to find the blog under the official sites, big brands, bigger blogs and everything in between.

Instead of covering everything, the social search option taps into Gmail, Google Reader and the user preferences to illuminate only the small corner to which the user is connected.

This will be a great addition to the Google search results, no longer will users have to put in awkward longtails and quotation marks to find a site. It will be interesting to see if brands take note and aim for more user interactivity so that they too will pop up in their trusted results.

EQUTE — Everyone is chomping at the bit to dominate the social networks, but in reality, it shouldn’t be the number one priority for online advertisers.

The number one thing marketers should know about social media users is that they are fickle. The more time and work you put into social media doesn’t mean results. While a new Nielson report shows that people are finding more and more content from social networks, it may not work for you or your client.

Search engine optimization, however, always means results. It’s more work, it takes longer and there are a lot of factors involved in ranking number one, but it’s work ten times any re-Tweet or Facebook fan.

Well duh, right?

Yeah, this is no secret, but marketers aren’t the only people hearing about social media 500 times a day. Your clients are going to ask about and ask for social media help. But marketers need to know when to say “no.” Sure, you can show them a big page of all their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn profiles and say “look what I can do!” And they will look at it for a little while then figure out that it hasn’t helped them make a sale.

Don’t be afraid to say, “why don’t you spend an hour and do it yourself while I make you some money.” OK, maybe not in those words, but you have to help them realize that that is not where the priority lies.

Tell them making the best of their online ad dollars means time, have a case study ready and show them how SEO helps over social media. Demonstrable results are the marketer’s friend, your site will thank you, your clients will thank you and your time (and their money) will be well spent.

EQUTE — Once you understand how to create search engine friendly text for your site, it’s time to use SEO tactics on your video — any video.

1. Create a Keyword Rich Headline:
   Headlines are the first thing search engines see, put all the information into your headline without making it too long. If it’s a video about Mayor Patty McMahon’s drinking problem, call it something like “Does Mayor Patty McMahon Have A Drinking Problem?”

   If it’s a commercial or snippet about your restaurant’s great omelets, call it “Debby’s Diner Omelet: Best Breakfast In Denver.” Think of what people are searching for, do some keyword research, the more matches in your video headline, the more traffic.



2. Make a Good Blurb/Summary:
   Search spiders will find any summary attached to your video. It’s essential to put good keywords here too, and the longer format allows longer “long tail keywords” — common searches or phrases people look for.

   Research here is ideal too. Use Google’s keyword tool to do some quick research to see what people are looking for.

   Your restaurant shouldn’t use best omelets in the summary since people aren’t looking for the best omelets; they’re looking for the best breakfast more. Something like “Try Debby’s delightful omelets at the best Denver breakfast spot. Debby’s Denver Diner — open all night and all day: 24 hours every day.”

   Here you’re hitting some extra keywords that you couldn’t in your headline. Namely the longtail “best Denver breakfast” and “open all night.” You can also hit some incidental keywords like “Denver diner,” “24 hours,” “omelets.” Google will also squeeze combinations out of searches like “24 hour diner Denver.”

3. Provide a Transcript:
   A transcript will give search spiders something to read without a lot of work. If you don’t have a script for your video just type one up, copy in your notes about the video or use cheap/free speech recognition software to turn it into text for you. It’s an easy way to get good keywords connected to your video or the page on which your video resides.
4. Link in the Blurb:
   Put a link in the blurb that directs watchers to read more, or in Debby’s case, find the menu, pictures or directions. It might not seem like SEO in itself, but if people take the video, embed it elsewhere or send it to friends on Facebook, Twitter etc., you’ll get the benefit of a link to your site.
   Even if the link is no follow, an inbound link means traffic.

Of course, look at high-ranking videos when you search in Google, see how videos in your own industry rank higher than others. Most importantly, pay attention to what people are searching for; if your video text is keyword rich, but the keywords are wrong, you’ve wasted your time.

EQUTE — The key to any search engine optimization is keywords and links, but finding new, helpful links gets harder and harder as the SEO goes on.

Government sites give a lot of Google link juice, so just get a link on there, how hard could it be?

OK, so maybe it’s harder than just calling them up and saying, “Hey, can you link to my site, I’ll link to yours.” They don’t need your links and don’t want to go giving links to just everyone. But baiting them into providing one — and possibly many — high value links really isn’t that difficult, just play to the vanity of politicians.

Schedule a short interview with your local lawmaker, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Senator, your mayor or a city councilor — even the head of the water services subcommittee is a politician. Take that interview and put it on your site and tell them it’s up, more than likely they will use it to fill space on their blog, their Twitter account or their Facebook page.

The interview doesn’t have to be the be-all-end all of interviews, nor should it be. If you go into a politicians office with loaded questions and controversial topics, they will be less likely to put it up on their site for everyone to see. Toss them a whole bucket of softballs.

Your interview doesn’t even need to be completely industry specific, especially if you work in a specialized field. Ask them to explain local business development projects that affect your business or new highway projects near your office. If you run a brick-and-mortar business — let’s say a local sub shop — you can ask them what their favorite sandwich is. Or if you run a yoga studio, ask them if they’ve ever tried yoga. Getting the mayor into a downward-facing dog position on video could make your video go viral locally. And if you run an online business ask them their favorite Web sites or how much time they spend on Facebook.

Keep it short, keep it simple and keep it incredibly positive. Ask them questions that get them laughing or telling a personal story rather than droning on about laws. It’ll make the video more appealing to viewers and will further entice them to link to you. If you make them look like a folksy and funny instead of like a stodgy politician, they’ll be eager to share the video.

Afterward, do your own SEO on the interview, politicians are good, steady local searches. People and possibly the media will naturally link to interviews like this because these people affect local communities. And if they put it on their site, even more people will find it and link away.

Remember the bigger, the better as far as politicians, but if you can’t get a Senator, you might still get a great .gov link. If your chosen politico happens to do something sensational in a bathroom stall or with their Argentinean mistress, you’ve got a goldmine.

An afternoon getting in touch with local legislatures is also the ideal break from the typical dull link building campaign.

EQUTE — Judging when your key search terms will come up just got a lot easier with Google Insights.

Google has gotten into the prognostication business with its new Trends tool. They have a quite exhaustive research paper on the topic for anyone who really likes math and graphs. But it boils down to Google using past results and search patterns to determine what people will be searching for in the coming months and years.

Marketers can use the tool as a good way to see what kind of keywords and ads they want to run in the future. For example, pretend we have a Minnesota gardening company staffed with gardeners and stocked with all the gardening tools for a hobbyist.

Google Insights Graph

With Google Insight, it’s easy to see that gardening searches skyrockets in April — one doesn’t even need Google to tell them people are interested in gardening in the spring, but what Insights does well is tell us how the searches have changed. Sure gardening searches will jump in April, but Insights can give us insight into what marketers should be targeting with their articles, keywords and ads.

Google Insights Graph

For instance, this graph shows the search results for gardener. While it’s a subset of gardening and a key part of that gardening business, it seems the grim economy has more people doing their gardening on their own. But insight also gives nice related searches below, vegetable gardening, for example, is up 110 percent from the same time last year and flower gardening has dropped somewhat.

Google Insights Graph

This is where Insight needs some real knowledge to back it up since it’s formula doesn’t factor in other societal issues such as the bad economy. Perhaps Google is predicting the economy will bounce back in 2010 and people will give up on their victory gardens. That’s unlikely, but it still shows when growing veggies will be a popular thing to search for.

All this can really help bring customers to the store or to the Web site efficiently. Marketers can tone down their gardening adds in the winter and get their SEO friendly articles ready for next season. Especially in a down economy, it’s crucial to get some baring on where search will be going. Businesses can tailor their entire business plan to fall in line with how people will soon behave.

For instance, the gardening company could put out articles offering vegetable gardening tips instead of flower gardening tips and put off hiring new gardeners or serve ads that offer the cheapest gardening.

Maybe the gardening shop can serve ads offering a class taught by those gardeners with nothing to do. A “grow your own veggies class” at the store could burn up the local search ads and bring people to the store.

While it’s not a be-all-end all forecasting tool, Google Insight does give a good visual representation of how search volumes will stack up in the future, giving physical stores and online advertisers another piece of their game plan.