Search Engine Strategies London

I just came back from my first Search Engine Strategies conference in London. And I must say that I really enjoyed it. It  was good to finally listen to some of the SEO gurus - Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, Shari Thurow, Ammon Johns - instead of reading what they have to say. At the heart of most presentations was the simple idea that you need to focus on your target audience and use the language that they use; everything else just spins off this - page titles, web page introductions, web site navigation, etc.

For me the most enjoyable presentations came from Shari Thurow and Heather Lloyd-Martin. Shari was given her own slot to discuss Search Engine Friendly Design, whilst Heather shared hers with David Mill of MediaCo and discussed Writing for the Search Engines. I must say that it was quite refreshing to listen to 2 speakers who were not only passionate about their subject but were also able to instil some passion into the audience.

Another discussion I found interesting was entitled Integrating Search Into Other Marketing. Marshall D Simmonds , VP of Enterprise Search Marketing for the New York Times, told the audience how his team tries to bring together the different divisions within the company - IT, Marketing and Finance - to work together om an integrated approach to marketing. It was interesting to hear him say that writers are more or less being taught to 'unlearn' their previous copywriting skillls in order to dael with both search engines and the online audience and that they now have to think very carefully think about how to introduce their keywords into headlines, page titles, content and anchor text.

All in all a good event.