Day 2 PubCon recap and Mind Dump

Sitting here with loads on my mind, it is only pertinent that I have a icy cold adult beverage and stream KISW while working out today’s Scooby Snacks of information. Today’s agenda covered a lot of different topics and the panels where unbelievable so here is the short list and then onto more detail (panel list is in order of attendance).

– How do Social Media & Search Intersect?
– Understanding The Complex Social Marketing Playing Field
– SEO Design & Organic Site Structure
– Mega Site SEO

The first session started off with a text from Max while did today’s earlier blog – “dude slow down – you’ll break the keyboard :)”. After looking around for him and laughing a bit it was time to start rolling. The first panel discussed how search and social media have many cross sections. The one item I really pulled out is using social media can help build search results buy creating awareness and hopefully many backlinks. This is something I have really struggle with and haven’t done very well – mostly my content in the social media realm isn’t worth sharing. But I will keep trying to get something to pop.

Next it was onto social media outlets and how relationship building applies to any industry. The second speaker shared a quantitative analysis of Twitter user behavior and how if business want to have an effective Twitter account then certain times of the day as well the day of the week are more popular for sharing information. But the real treat came when Rand from SEOMoz.org spoke. Rand filled in for a speaker that pulled a no show and at the end I had the opportunity to get a few minutes of his time.

My questions was about breaking news or just covering news for my real estate website’s blog content. He offered the suggestion as to gather data, create nice charts, write good content, and it will create link for geographically targeted area. Looking back it seems so simple but link all obvious items – they’re are right under the nose. Thanks Rand!

Hoping this advice helps change the lack of sharable information I am currently producing.

Then off to the next group for SEO Design & Organic Site Structure. This topic was killer as I am building a new real estate website and knowing some items to avoid and implement is highly useful. The biggest item that came from this panel was the closing of directories posted by Scott Polk. It wasn’t till getting back to TI that I was able to catch before getting on the elivator. I asked Scott regarding the level of importance of adding a .html or .aspx file extension to close the directory. He said it is standard in which he conforms to while building a site and after sharing my situation – a site just over 400 pages – it’s probably not worth it creating all the 301 redirects to close the directories. But if it meant moving from #2 to #1 over a competitor it is worth. I can understand gaining any competitive edge.

The final course I went to was for sites with millions of pages – slightly more than my 400+ – but I wanted to hear the panel of super experts:

– Matt Craine, VP of Online Media, Catalogs.com
– Dan Perry, Director of SEO, Turner Broadcasting
– Catfish Comstock, Senior Search Strategist, BusinessOnLine
– Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search Strategy, Digitas
– Derrick Wheeler, Senior Search Engine Optmization Architect, Microsoft

I was completely blow away by the panel of speakers and revived from a day of brain beatings. Everyone on this panel had stellar information and for me to even try and repeat would do it an injustice. From humor to Rock On! It was just unreal and what I took away is to review my site and conduct a proper analysis of: keywords, link building, analysis, more analysis, and … oh yea … more analysis. But the analysis is critical when going through such major sites and the difference it can make dominating market share – any business can benefit from that.

That is all for now and time to enjoy another cold beer. Probably run out another post tomorrow.