Best of SMX Toronto 2010

Great conference. Here’s the best of the best:

Best Lines:

• Avinash Kaushik: I know my books were successful because the top search results for the book’s topics are the pirated versions of the book.
  Avinash Kaushik: The important question is the Why. The internet is full of weird people and they’re all on your Website, simply trying to screw with you.
• Bryan Segal: (asking for a show of hands on different questions) BTW, this isn’t how we get our data at comScore.
• Shari Thurow: The 5-second usability test. Let people look at your site for 5 seconds, then ask them what the site is about. If they can’t tell you, you’re site isn’t focused enough.
• Shari Thurow: You have to pass the “What kind of X are you?” Test. What kind of law firm are you? “State of the Art?” “World class?” No. You’re a corporate law firm, that’s what you have to say most clearly. [I love that marketing hype is now one of the worst ways to market. People aren't searching for superlatives or marketing hype, they're looking for concrete information].
• Dawn Wentzell: “Worst of” lists rank better than “Best of” lists.
• Shalom Issenberg: Since we had to stop buying links, link-building got really expensive.
• Larry Bailin: People don’t search for the solution, they search for the problem.
• Sionne Roberts: We’re going to be discussing a tsunami of information. That’s from the session description. I don’t know what it is, but it sounds like a good thing.
• Warren Raisch: There’s a lot of confusion in the market. Which is good for us, because we’re consultants.
• Warren Raisch: If you could have a car or a cellphone? 80% of kids said phone. The digital need to be connected is more important than physical mobility to kids today.
• Sionne Roberts: So far we’ve had 2 answers to every question:
  1. It depends
  2. Focus on outcomes, begin with the end in mind

• Larry Bailin: Successful internet marketing is more about sales and marketing strategies than technical skills & faulty tactics. This will never change.
• Larry Bailin: Article in Feb 2010 Entrepreneur says “The SEO business is 80% spam” That number is probably a little low.
• Larry Bailin: A few years ago I was here and we all said the future was Second Life. 3 months later is was dead. We don’t know the future.
• Guillaume Bouchard: There’s a lot less content internationally. Think if you were doing SEO in US a few years ago, but with today’s algos.

Best Takeaways:

• Avinash Kaushik: Paid searchers are often only converting days later. Optimize for those later conversions.
• Bryan Segal: Organic search has become a richer experience. Paid search will catch up, and will then be used more for branding, not just direct response. (Backs up Avinash’s key takeaway)
• Dawn Wentzell: Content that gets linked to naturally:
  • Original research, with good visuals
  • The Definitive Guide to your industry
  • Industry coverage, including live blogging conferences. Lisa Barone’s PubCon coverage got 293 links [but that's an outlier].

Best Examples / Case Studies:

• Avinash Kaushik: When they saw conversion on a Travel site was only coming days later, even with paid click, they made 3 changes:
  • Changed from immediate sales pushes (“Buy Now”) to softer (“Learn More”)
  • Added “Save My Itinerary” feature
  • Added checkbox to “Notify me if prices go up or down more than 10%” with box for e-mail address.
• Shari Thurow: Design for your users, not for yourself or your spouse. A site about cement was in purple and teal, because those were the designer’s favorite colors.

Best Warming up the crowd:

• Manny Rivas did a good job waking us up before a Friday afternoon session.

Best Speakers:

• Particularly great presentations by: Avinash, Bryan Segal, Dawn Wentzell, Christina Keffer, Barbara Coll, Rob Garner, Joshua Dreller, Ken Jurina, Warren Raisch, Manny Rivas

Best of Tim Ash:

I didn’t include anything from the eMetrics conference, which was co-located, but apparently Tim Ash rocked (and Manny Rivas captured it, thanx Manny!).

The 7 Deadly Landing Page Sins …

1. Unclear Call to Action.
2. Too many choices.
3. Asking for too much, too soon – “Would you like me to hold your credit card while you shop?” [Heh]
4. Too much text – unclutter content by striking out adjectives.
5. Not keeping your promise – if you set the bar high, you damn well better stand up to it.
6. Visual distractions – Don’t kid yourself, boring works. Make sure your prioritize goals.
7. Lack of trust – don’t undermine your potential to gain your customers trust.

Tim’s best lines:

• You decipher images 4-500X quicker than reading words
• The purpose of the homepage is to get people off the homepage. (hat tip to Manny Rivas)
• If the desired action isn’t obvious you’re losing money!

Best Live Blogging:

• CT Moore at NVI.

Did I miss anything? Any corrections? Let me know!

More SMX Toronto coverage:

• Top 3 Takeaways from SMX Toronto
• Link Building Strategies and Ranking Tactics
• Search Marketing Toolkit
• Crystal Ball Panel: What’s Next in Search
• Digital State of the Nation: Search Edition
• What is Search Analytics and Why Should I Care?
• Mobile Search
• Next Generation Agency: Search, Social, Viral, Mobile and Analytics
• Optimizing Video: On Site and on You Tube
• Personalized Search
• Search and Social Media: Insight and Inspiration

Also in this series:

• Best of SMX Advanced
• Best of PubCon
• Best of SphinnCon
• Best of BirdBrain

Tagged as: Best of, conferences, SEO, SMX, SMX Toronto