Take Away Items From PubCon South 2009

Recently I traveled to Austin, TX, from Denver, CO, to attend my first PubCon event, PubCon South, March 11 through 13, 2009. I had heard about PubCon from some of my trusted real estate friends and notable SEO gurus. For me, this was a great opportunity for a deep dive into the SEO world, an opportunity to network with industry professionals and a great chance to meet up with some Austin real estate friends.

The two keynote speakers were Guy Kawasaki and Matt Cutts. Guy spoke of social media trends with emphasis on Twitter, TweetDeck and TwitterHawk. Matt made a mention of Google Voice and Interest-based advertising and notably introduced rolled out Google Friend Connect API. Matt also spoke of common sense use of URLs, titles, and content management.

I opted to attend a smorgageboard of select conferences. While there were only three sessions running per window I wished I could have attended two at the same time. I thought I would briefly note my personal experience and highlight what I thought seemed of interest, from my perspective anyways, from each session.

Emerging Social and New Media Landscape – While I have been actively expanding my social network with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn this session provided me with greater insight to what these products were about. I also learned about the pros/cons of Digg vs. StumbleUpon. The shared opinion was that StumbleUpon is more user-friendly and had perhaps slightly lower but steadier flow of traffic. I also learned of StumbleUpon’s premium inclusion starting at just at 5 cents per targeted visitor which I am dying to test out. Consider that Approval = Perception of Quality and Enjoyment divided by Time Taken to Enjoy. And, finally Twitter, flow with the river of conversation.

SEO Landscape – My take away from this forum and session is that SEO was alive and well. Focal areas for the near future should be International Search, Local Search, Social Media Marketing and Mobile Search. One can ignore these areas at their own peril. User adoption rates of social media websites over the course of the last ten years is outright staggering. Some demographics shared of who has a social profile are as follows:

• 75% of online adults 18-24
• 57% of online adults 25-34
• 30% of online adults 35-44
• 19% of online adults 45-54
• 10% of online adults 55-64
• 7% of online adults 65 & older

Conversion Optimization and Testing – This session taught me to identify what I am trying to test, know my audience and use live user testing for the best feedback. Am I after impressions, clicks, leads/online sales or offline sales? I learned as ultimately real estate is about offline sales perhaps I need to keep my focus on the end game rather than simply lead capture. And, as phone calls may lead to stronger relationships perhaps I should put more calls to action on my website for phone calls.

Optimizing for Local Search – As local search is near and dear to me and as I knew one of the presenters, Eric Bramlett, this session was of greatest interest. I’d invite you to review Eric’s post to review his fine PowerPoint presentation. I also walked away with many to-dos from this session including focusing more on local events, landmarks and with greater granularity. I’ll be experimenting with one of the posed concepts of hyper focus on a local event here in Denver, the “Cherry Creek Sneak” on my Cherry Creek real estate blog.

Organic Keyword Research and Selection – Of course, key to this topic is to know thyself and know thy competition. Research steadily and often was the message of the day. I learned of many valuable SEO tools including Google Adwords(exact match), Google Trends, Google Insights for Search, Yahoo Site Explorer, Word Tracker, Trellian, SpyFu.com, Compete.com and much more. Assess the value of your ranking and follow the 10 golden rules as follows. Keyword research is never done, there is no one research tool which can do it all, the research is only as good as the analyst, determine the right keywords, capture the head from the tail, content-centric keywords are win-win, segment your keywords, observe, look forward, repeat often.

Organic Link Building Campaigns – Of course, there was no sure and easy way for this to happen without hard work and steady effort. Core essentials required consistent social activity including frequent blogging and commenting. Offering great content and free tools provided some answers. Advanced techniques may include WordPress pluggins and widgets. One suggestion of value submitted for consideration was to write a killer article, put it on an off-site or guest blog, link it back to your site, after cached spin it on some article submission sites and eventually post a summary of it on your on-site blog.

SEO Site Design and SEO Deployment – Information Architecture – This somewhat esoterical course offering was not for the faint of heart. Just when I was wondering what I walked into I began to actually listen to the message. Essentially, sound commonly known principals remain key. One tool which I have yet to test is iThenticate for discovering duplicate content on the net. While the main messages were to leave an information scent so your website visitors can find your content. Basic main menus(less than 7), without heavy use of the hover, were thought to help get the website user comfortable with your website and then it’s up to you to make it interesting. Consider a “card sort” exercise to see if your navigation system makes sense to the website visitor.

Tracking and Results Analytics – I found the greatest take away from this session was news of the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ). The course content is free and the test is currently only $50. There was some discussion of segmentation, filtering, reporting and event tracking. Event tracking of objects, actions and labels closer ties to user experience in a new Web 2.0 world. Web 3.0 may offer even more challenges in tracking and analyzing results of content creation, reputation management and social media. Expect change as channels of communication change.

Intersection of SEO and PR Agencies – This course helped bring the two days of coursework together for me. With much of the SEO world evolving into various forms of Internet search and social media this tied up the loose ends. Prior to the conference and oddly shortly after return I have been contacted by reporters for local news and national reporters. One fact reported is that 64% of Journalist begin their search for news online. With last minute projects they resort to the Internet to find local experts in their field. One section soon to be added to my website is an Online Newsroom. We spend much of our time trying to make it easier for our target audience to find what their after however we often spend very little time helping news reporters finding information about us. PRWeb.com and eReleases.com offer affordable solutions for promotion of news and events.

Finally, one of my key take away items, “Words Matter. If you write well, you will rank well.” and write often as suggested by speaker Sean Jackson. Bring the reader in to focus and be true to your words.

1. Headline: 65 characters maximum headline with use of your keywords.
2. Sub-heading: 140 character target using your keywords again.
3. First Paragraph: This is most important paragraph and should fulfill the promise of your headline and sub-heading. Use your keywords and include anchor text.
4. General Content: 300-500 words with maximum 6 hyperlinks. Place keywords towards the top with a goal of 5% keyword density sprinkling with synonyms.
5. Use Tags & Digital Assets such as images, video, audio and documents with keyword focus.

I invite you to visit the PubCon South Wrap Up for more information about PubCon and the related sessions and events. I’m looking forward to PubCon Las Vegas scheduled for November 10-13, 2009. Who wants to join me there?

Brian Kinkade is a broker and team leader with Cherry Creek Professionals Realty, a full service Denver real estate firm. His team specializes in Denver Metro real estate and Denver luxury properties. Brian invites you to visit his Denver real estate blog for more information about the Denver real estate market.