Following an elegant evening at the US Search Awards, the third and final day of Pubcon Las Vegas kicked off with a similar theme as the day before.
Algorithms and engines took a back seat during majority of this year’s sessions, with a renewed focus on real human searchers. In addition, there are new generations of searchers coming up with radically different expectations.
More on that in the recap of some of the day’s sessions.
Pubcon Las Vegas Day 3 Recap
Duane Forrester Keynote
The last day of Pubcon called for a triple shot of keynote speakers, with Duane Forrester, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bing, getting the morning started.
Forrester prepared marketers for a generation that’s about to have a lot more buying power.
In upcoming years, a collective $7 trillion is going to be inherited by millennials as baby boomer parents pass away.
Mobile marketing is key to reach this generation — citing a 40% increase in year over year mobile search volume. In addition, those searching on mobile want to achieve more by doing less.
Voice search is going to be critically important, which will change the landscape of SEO over the next 10 years.
“Adapt or die” were Forrester’s closing words.
Wil Reynolds Keynote
Wil Reynolds, Founder of Seer Interactive, spoke to the fact there’s a high cost to the free traffic we’re trying to generate from Google.
Much of that stems from marketers creating and/or paying for content that people aren’t interested in reading.
Great content should help people — he used the analogy of “levelling up” a character in a video game. Reading a great piece of content should “level up” the reader’s knowledge on the subject.
As an example, Reynolds spoke highly of the site SeriousEats.com, which helped him to “level up” his ability to cook steak.
Reynolds parting words left the audience asking one question:
“If your content was removed from the web, would anyone miss it?”
Gary Illyes Keynote
Gary Illyes, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, broke down the characteristics of the new generations of searchers — Generations Y and Z.
Knowing their idiosyncrasies is the most important part to keeping them doing business with you.
Both generations are open to change, and will likely not stay loyal to a company if they find another one that serves their needs better.
The same holds true for visiting websites. These generations will abandon a site if it takes more than several seconds to load. Illyes said these generations have a notoriously low attention span.
If you do not cater to Gen Y and Z, and meet their needs in a timely manner, you will lose them.
Google has made strides to provide fast and immediate solutions with services like:
- Google Now
- Now on Tap
- Voice Search
- Location-Aware Search
Google is making it easier for these generations to find your content, now it’s up to site owners to provide content worth reading.
Iliyes advice for creating content worth reading:
- Be original, don’t rely solely on widely available data
- Be comprehensive, don’t send visitors offsite for further information.
- Write for humans, don’t opimize solely for search
- Create bite sized pieces of information
- Do not attempt to rank in search for information you don’t have.
For a visual recap of the final day of Pubcon Las Vegas 2015, please see the gallery below.
