Q&A Session

Analytics – What should be tracked to successfully measure an SEO campaign?

Best Answer: Brian Rutledge – Track what it is you are monetizing, be it a lead or a sale. Newsletters, information, whatever will lead to a sale for you.

Other Answers
Matt Reid – Track the keywords that are leading visitors to your site.
Abel Alvarado – Track your competitors and the phrases they are competing with you on.
David Ogletree – Check your log files! Check for referrers from 404s and 301 redirect those to gain link value.
Brian Combs – Track your conversions to have a better view of your sales funnel.

On-site optimization – What are three steps to transition to a new domain name?

Best Answer: Brian Rutledge – Map site directly over with the same structure using 301 redirects. Then contact link partners to change links to new domain.

Other Answers
Larry Tamkin – You must prepare the domain for the new shift. It’s a big change in the life of the domain and much care is needed to transition it to its new role in life. Perhaps contact a domain psychologist to set up daily sessions to talk about the new challenges and road blocks ahead for the domain. (Yes, this answer was a joke, laugh.)
Kate Morris – Keep both sites up and running if you are changing hosting as well as the domain. A recent change of domain and hosting resulted in a week of updating DNS and search results. Keep mirrors running on both ends until you get all lose ends tied up when it comes to DNS changes.

SEO Myths – What is keyword density and how is it important to SEO?

Best Answer: David Ogletree – It’s about stemming which is the repeating of key phrases different ways. Focus on the topic not a specific key phrase.

Other Answers
Dan Crean – it is defined as the percentage of keywords focused to total number of words. Was relevant back in the day, but isn’t anymore.
Brian Rutledge – You don’t “need” to look at it anymore because you already know. For long tail, there is a sweet spot of density, but as search marketers we are just used to seeing it now. The theme of the site can dominate the page in results no matter the topic of the page.
Keith Goode – Begs to differ and says that with listing sites there is a focus for keyword density. There does seem to be a correlation. It does depend on the site.

Paid Search – What are the components that affect paid search quality score?

Best Answer: Brian Combs – There are actually two pieces to the paid search quality score. One is related to ad cost and the other to placement in rankings. If you end up having isses, your AdWords rep can help.

Other Answers
Moses Chang – Determining factors are account, keyword, and ad text. [Editors note, landing page is also taken into account]
David Ogletree – CTR is the biggest determining factor.

Blogging – Is creating a blog good for SEO?

Best Answer: Ashton Verrengia – Yes. Using them as a part of the whole campaign is good.

Other Answers
Keith Goode – yes it helps, but that’s because that’s the only part of the site that gets updated on a regular basis.
Dan Crean – I’m skeptical. It has to be used in the right way for it to be effective. It’s not about the updating, it’s the quality of the information in the blog.
Brian Rutledge – For people on a budget, getting someone to do a good SEO friendly blog is the best investment.
David Ogletree – Use a subdomain – blog.domain.com so that it ranks well in addition to your domain.

Conferences – Name the two best SEM related conferences.

Best Answer: Kate Morris – It depends on where you are in your career. Advanced professionals should attend SMX Advanced and PubCon Vegas for the best information and networking.

Other Answers
Larry Tamkin – What is SEM?
David Ogletree – SES and PubCon; SES to get clients and PubCon to learn.

Paid Links – What are they and what do SEs think?

This was a huge debate, so calling it a draw
David Chang – Popular bloggers post links for to profit on their blogs and SEs don’t like this practive cause it’s not quality content.
David Ogletree – Google is cracking down on it big time, but still effective.
Nadia King – It’s just advertising … we have to play by the rules. But a good link is a good link.
Brian Rutledge – Not sure Google cares, they don’t remove them. Wants the buyers to be kicked as well.

Paid Search – Two ads on same keyword, good or bad?

Best Answer: Kate Morris – it’s possible, but takes much setup in the way of having two separate sites, accounts, and ads. The platform has to not be able to tell its you multiple times. Won’t be caught by algo, but if hand checked can get you in some trouble. Besides, it’s not the trouble, you could be doing yourself a disservice. It’s more shelf space yes, but sometimes too much work for it. Get affiliates!

Other Answers
Brian – It’s not good or bad, but you are pushing up your own cost of doing business
David Ogletree – You can have 10 if you want.

Analytics – Best package on the market?

Best Answer: Keith Goode – Omniture, but GA is best. GA uses sampled data, it’s not 100% accurate

Other Answers
David Ogletree – Weblog Expert – Log analyzer, customized reports, web interface, Ghost.com
Larry Tamkin – Core Metrics
Dan Crean – Webtrends. I don’t want Google to know all that stuff.

Pictures

Thanks to Keith Goode for taking pictures!

Annoucements	Get Page One Boys
Brian Combs	Moses Chang