March 29, 2013: March in New York means SES – the annual Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo – is in town, and I had a full day to walk around at the Marriot Marquis, gathering intel. You can learn a lot about where the Search Industry is – and where it’s going — by talking to the exhibitors who support the show, so here are some observations gleaned from the SES Exhibit Hall.
PPC AGENCIES: MISSING IN ACTION?
SES is a traditionally SEO-heavy show (the Conference Agenda devotes more time to SEO than any other topic), and multiple SEO firms were represented in the Exhibit Hall. But oddly, the Paid Search agency presence was wafer-thin this time around. Only two Paid Search agencies had a presence – and only one had a booth (the other sponsored a workshop). Of course there were ppc tool platform companies in attendance (pic below). What’s going on here? Well, the industry has matured, and the rules of the Paid Search game are very different now. It’s obvious by the lack of show that SEM firms can no longer rely on what was once the king of search conferences. PPC agencies must obtain an ROI from the investment required of them to exhibit at trade shows and the competitive environment has become more selective. It seems that the days of high interest and fierce competition for Exhibit Hall attention are over – perhaps forever.
BOOTHLESS GOOGLE
Google loomed large at the show – as it always does at SES — but did so without a booth at all. Instead, Google walled off the entire north side of the Exhibit Hall with transparent glass and used the space for a series of classes, which were well-attended throughout the day. Although not having a booth made Google’s staff a bit more aloof than usual, I frankly think that the classroom idea worked very well – the booth environment is noisy and distracting and Google’s granular, detail-packed lectures are better suited to a noise-free, classroom environment. The only hitch with Google’s elaborate structure was that at least one attendee, mistaken a glass panel for an open door, smashed right into the glass wall on her way out of the room. Fortunately this woman wasn’t seriously injured but yes – it seems you can sometimes have too much transparency.
WHO RATES THE SEOS?
I spoke for a while with a rep from TopSEOS – a company that’s been around for years whose business is to rate SEO practitioners. This is an important job because we all know how dangerous SEO malpractice is, especially in the era of business-crushing Panda/Penguin penalties — not a week seems to pass without news of another company being delisted because of over-aggressive SEO tactics. To its credit, TopSEOS does its best to apply meaningful criteria to the operational philosophy, strategy, and tactics of SEO companies, going so far as to contact clients for direct input. The problem – – and it’s the same problem we witnessed with Wall Street and the credit rating agencies – is that agencies must ultimately rely on the honesty and integrity of the company being rated, and some SEO companies haven’t been completely upfront about how far they push the envelope, especially in sensitive areas such as link-building. Still, TopSEOS is trying to make the SEO agency selection process a gentler game than Russian Roulette, which is a good thing.
IS SOCIAL MEDIA “BUNK?”
Tim Judd – of elocalisting.com –ruffled a few feathers when he proclaimed that Social Media was – and I’ll paraphrase him here, “bunk,” a sentiment in conflict with the larger pro-social theme of SES (more conference time was spent on Social Media topics this year than any topic other than SEO). Several people angrily stomped out of Judd’s presentation after he made his remark, and I’m not surprised, given the heavy emphasis on Social at the show. The point that Judd is making is that Social is an inferior marketing media for many SMBs who don’t care about clicks, likes, or follows – they just want telephone calls –and are willing to spend a lot of money to get them). While I agree with Judd that this industry has a nasty tendency to focus on sizzle more often than on steak, my own position is that Social has definite value as an amplification channel, but is certainly not the only marketing arrow that should be in one’s quiver.
SES SPELLS FAIL!
You couldn’t walk far at Search Engine Strategies 2013 without hearing the words “quality content” and “relevancy” being murmered, and that’s a good thing, given how much the SEO industry used to obsess about link-building and keywords — as if they were the only things that ever mattered. But it’s clear that the job of actually creating good, error-free, compelling content is a lot harder than it looks – even for companies that are otherwise scrupulous. Case in point: Marin Software’s misspelled sign outside the Expo Hall exhorting attendees to “Drive Media, Aquire (sic) Revenue.”Let’s hope that next year’s SES contains at least one in-depth workshop on basic copy-editing.
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