I am here at the first session of the day, yes i am up on time after the Google Dance! We have Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ moderating this morning.
The first speaker this morning is Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit
Amanda starts it off by saying that blogs are now not only used just for your organic search play but has grown to be so much more. Blogs have grown to be a great tool to really build your brand and really gives you the ability to engage your visitors.
Things you should think about before you launch a new blog:
– Official or personal?
– Sub domain or main domain?
– Cooperate look and feel or personal feel?
– Multi blogger or a lone blogger?
Amanda thinks it will be in the best interest of the blog to really have multiple authors on the blog. She then goes on to discuss areas to really optimize, such as:
– Optimize the CMS
– Optimize your RSS Feeds
– Conduct and apply your keyword tag research
– Optimize your social aspects
Amanda really wants to stress pushing out frequent content and being consistent with your posting times. She then talks about how many blogs lose the focus and as a result the following of the blog will decrease as well as the quality.
Next up is Lee Oden, CEO, Toprank Online Marketing
Lee wants to start by showing some case studies and data that will identify why blogs are a great way to generate traffic and conversions. Lee showcases how blogs are a great way to generate a large amount of inbound links within a short period of time. Lee states that really having a solid foundation of keyword research conducted for your blog will allow you to get the best results for your blog. Lee wants to really stress optimizing your blog, mining social data such as twitter to find out what the community is talking about in regards to your brand.
Next we have Chris Boggs, Search Engine Watch Expert & Manager, SEO, Brulant Inc
Chris starts off his presntation really asking the question, is a blog the right thing for you? He goes on the state that in some cases, where the user is just looking for quick information on a subject that a blog may not be the right direction to go. He stresses that conducting the right research about the industry your in and also how its searched is cruical to your sucess.
Chirs starts talking about building links as one of the curical elements to having a sucess ful blog, that and providing qulaity content on a regular basis. He showed some research on third party press relase sites and how long they last. He stated that Yahoo! News had the least bit of historical infomration out of most and that PRWeb had years more.
The last item Chris discusses is the power of semantic indexing. He showcases an example of searching for his own name in Technorati and seeing results from people that have placed his name in content they have created. Seems as though “Chris Boggs” has now been assicated with the term search engine marketing. Chris says its really imporatnt for blog owners and website owners to conduct research on which terms this would also apply to within your industry.
