Search Engine Strategies - Chicago Wrapup

Just got back from the Chicago SES conferences. Nothing big going on this year, unlike last year with the whole talk of the florida update. The big things this year were Local Search, Tracking Trends and Link Building. I've got a lot of notes of some things that top seo firms have been successful with and will be sharing them as I go through them. Most things were known by experienced SEO's and have been talked about here, but there were a few new things to try.

Local Search
- Overture hinted at IP geotargeting in the next year...about time.
- Actually one of our competitors was talking about what he is doing with local search with his SEO company
- Super Pages, Yellow Pages are suppose to have some unique valuable real estate open.

Link Building
- Glossary Directories are a great linking strategy for those sites with lots of information.
- PR releases great for getting backlinks from many different sources.
- Listed some new directories...will add later
- They decreased the value of DMOZ, something I disagreed with.
- Stressed the future importance of Authority Site linking. Something I have done for a while is look for related sites in Teoma. Teoma shows authority sites for keywords.
- Stressed future unimportance of reciprocal links, importance of 3-way linking. (we all know is coming)
- When looking at backlinks in Google, don't use the backlink tool, use the command, "+www.domain.+com"
- Good directories listed on http://www.ericward.com
- We all know newsletters are a good place for links, but buying ads with a link are even more important to newsletter that people cut and paste and add to their own sites. This in turn can give you many more backlinks that you originally thought.

Trends
- Trellion or Trellian is like the Overture Suggestion Tool, but it also shows seasonality trends. Very promising, but not all to accurate at the moment.

Other
- Spiders specifically made to spider site product prices so competitors can lower their prices on the same products.
- For those that are tech savvy, create some downloadable apps and submit the free to Download Sites, and give them a link to your site to download the app.
- To find out what's going on in DMOZ, there is a DMOZ blog out there, dmoz.theblob.org/dmoz/journal.cgi

Like I said, much of this is well known, but there are a few things that may be new to try!

nice wrapup vetofunk!

didnt know abt the teoma N authority sites thing.
gonna try it out now

Question on the Teoma thing. If I type in boasting rights, my site comes up #1, but it's the old site which was closed in August. Can somebody perhaps explain why that would happen? And I'm a little confused about how to understand the "authority" thing. Perhaps a link or two to read up on it?

The Authority sites in Teoma are measured by communities. Teoma put related sites into communities and sees which sites have the most links coming in and the most going out making them an Authority on Teoma.

The authority sites are shown on the left hand side under "Link Collections from Experts and Enthusiasts".

OK -- I see it now. Thanks

That's a superb tip veto. Do you think that getting links from these sites will increase your Google rankings if/when the HillTop change happens?

Well I am not sure, I have never really tested it, I have always just done it. I can tell you that 90% of my client's keywords are on the 1st-2nd page in Google, but I really do not know if it is directly related to the authority sites.

I would just see if links are available from them, and if they are, take them. I wouldn't only focus on authority sites, though, get any qualified links you can.

I hear you veto That Teoma tip is going to come in useful.

Hey Veto, can I have some of that knowledge juice your drinkin, cuz Stew and Atno are already drunk with it and I could use a bit. hehe


I love reading what you guys have to say about all this stuff.


Swan

nice write up veto some very good advice and options for people to try there.

I'll have some things written up in the next week when I have some time. Hopefully a few more things everyone can use towards there marketing campaign...mostly linking strategies and local search.

Sweet -- my site's an authority site for my niche and my competition's aren't... i guess that's what being first and best gets ya

If they take away reciprocal link importance, it sounds like paid links are going to take on even more importance than they do now.

I'm redoing the structure of my links to be 3-way links ASAP.

I've read about unimportance of reciprocal inks, but what are these 3-way links? Got any URLs with more info?

http://www.mydomain.com links to http://www.yourdomain.com and http://www.yourotherdomain.com links to http://www.mydomain.com.

All it involves is 3 domains forming a kind of link triangle...