The first annual SEO World Championship has just been launched!

“SEO is one of the fastest growing Internet media channels today. Our objective is to highlight the advantages of SEO surrounding the advertising community and help sustain the technical development within optimization. The main challenge of this contest is for a website to rank as high as possible on the organic search engine results on all 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN). We will determine the winner based on an average ranking between the selected search engines.”

Sponsored by a leading Swedish SEO company, Eastpoint Media, the contest offers some interesting prizes (in addition bragging rights):

1st prize: a new car
2nd prize: a Caribbean cruise
3rd prize: a plasma television
4th prize: five hundred dollars
5th prize: a hundred dollars

Eastpoint’s Markus Jalmerot and Luar Buso took time out during Chicago’s busy SES conference to chat with Chris Richardson of WebProNews on the subject of SEO, globally and as it relates to their market in Sweden.

Everyone’s clamoring to become a part of the social media scene… to be heard and understood as well as to understand. To some businesses this integration is only natural. To others it can be like swimming on dry land. Que sera, sera… but we can’t just stand by the wayside as the entire market transforms. Conversation on these issues was rampant at Chicago’s Search Engine Strategies. Sharing their opinion (and business sense), Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal & Converseon CEO, Robert Key had a discussion with Mike McDonald of WebProNews during the conference.

What’s our point of entry? Can we fund bloggers to spread the gospel of our products and services? Is this even ethical?

“Everybody’s trying to figure out this concept of ‘incentivized’ word-of-mouth marketing and (I think) the issue is about transparency…” With scandals such as the WalMart blogging fiasco, Key believes this the chief problem.

Reputation seems to be preserved through disclosing sponsors, preserving trust for both blogger and business. Yet Beal warns of alternate issues.

“One of the disturbing things that I’ve seen is a complete overreaction by a lot of bloggers to the point where they’re being too aggressive in disclosing… I’ve seen bloggers write positive things about a company… [and feel] like they need to put a disclaimer [on their blog] to say… ‘Hey we weren’t paid to write this. We just like it!’ That’s not the path that we should go down.”

Even if these risks seem too shaky to bear participation, good business still follows trend.

Said Beal, “Companies tend to be late in their reaction. They don’t pay any attention until it actually affects them. The conversations are going on… you can either put your hands over your ears or you can listen and potentially engage… A company should be aware… even if they’re not ready to pull the trigger and jump into the mix.”

Social media brings us ever closer to our customers and seems to empower nearly anyone to make or break our business. Yet, if we can’t recognize its benefit and everyone’s gain, then we’re lost.

Our natural inclination when presented with terms such as “keywords,” “trend research” and “data mining,” is to associate them with SEO… to imagine “How can I utilize this information to drive traffic toward my site? Ken Jurina and Curtis Dueck of Epiar march to a slightly different beat. Mining data and conducting keyword research, they’ve discovered that we’re able to do far more with this information than choose the proper keywords for a title tag. At Chicago’s Search Engine Strategies Dueck and Jurina shared their vision with WebProNews.

According to Dueck, “We have the ability to put our finger on the pulse of history in the year 2006: What people want… just by the way that they’re entering stuff into search engines.” Closely following the ebb and flow of search trends equips us with a window on political opinion, popular culture and the current view on any other topic we wish. “It’s mind boggling.”

With this power, market research has been turned on its head. Jurina adds, “[This is the] largest sample size you could ever want.. the biggest focus group… and the information is unbiased as no one even knows they’re really being watched… Instead of having to look through a small sample of phrases, we’re usually looking at eighty thousand, a hundred thousand or multiple hundred thousands of phrases. So as a result you are collecting some good information that can provde some great business direction and trending information.”

Many traditionalists are having trouble coming to grips with this new capacity for knowledge. Yet, previously where few pursued such marketing angles, many are now beginning to realize its potential.

Dueck mused, “The evolution within the mainstream industry has been really interesting. We’re showing just the tip of the iceburg… and people’s jaws are dropping.”

It’s certainly exciting for marketers to dwell on the notion of such a vast pool of information, yet the best is yet to come. As search data collection continues, this set gets larger and the data gets richer. Jurina commented, “[Marketers need] to identify the long tail phrases versus the short one or two word phrases which are much more difficult to determine the intention of what the person is looking for. Is there a likelyhood that they are going to be converting? …This is where the real opportunity to conversion is.”

Search Engine Strategies is a wonderful conference series when it comes to keeping the industry informed about search engine marketing and optimization issues. The various SES events, held year-round and internationally, explore the nuances of search engine marketing as well as present information from top industry players and also from the search engine companies. This suits conference attendee Ben Fremer wonderfully, as he looks to gather whatever tips and tricks he can in order to optimize his company’s site for the best results. Our own Chris Richardson talked with Ben at the recent SES show in Chicago about all the different SEO approaches, particularly local search.

Social Search. Linkbait. Pay-Per-Click. Organic. Local Search.

There are a myriad of different shades and brush strokes that comprise the portrait of search engine optimization. For Ben, however, local search seems to be the primary color of the search marketing canvas for his site. His goal at this year’s SES was to learn more about the subtleties of local search, and how it can be used to benefit his local business. The conference had a ton of information to offer in this field, to be sure, but here at WebProNews we go the extra mile in order to provide relevant and up-to-date insight from all corners of the blogosphere.

So here you go, Ben. Eight simple steps to make your page more local,
courtesy of Matt McGee at Search Engine Guide:

- Have your physical location on every page of your site.

- Have your local phone number on every page of your site.

- Give your physical address extra prominence on your “Contact Us” page.

- Create a page on your site called “Directions / Location”.

- Link to Google Maps and Yahoo Maps on your Location/Directions page.

- When possible, include your location in your page Titles.

- Somewhere on your site, list all the cities / towns your business
covers.

- Take advantage of internal linking opportunities with smart anchor
text.

Stay tuned to the WebProNews video blog for more great content from Search Engine Strategies in Chicago!

The common perception when it comes to search marketing is to view pay-per-click and organic strategies as two separate, diametrically opposed methods of optimization. This viewpoint, however, can be somewhat misleading, as most successful marketing campaigns will employ both tactics in order to achieve optimum rankings with search engines. So, if pay-per-click isn’t mutually exclusive to an organic strategy, how is it best put to use? Matt Van Wagner of findmefaster.com is a PPC expert who has the answer to just such a question. Matt sat down for a chat with Mike McDonald of WebProNews at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago, and went through the ins and outs of pay-per-click.

Mark notes the often-misguided conception of antithetical opposition lauded upon PPC versus organic search marketing strategies. The truth is that pay-per-click is actually better described as a “gateway” service that ultimately leads to a point where organic optimization is a natural progression. In fact, PPC services are not at all an alternative to organic-based optimization strategies in the least. In reality, pay-per-click is more appropriately labeled as a substitute for offline marketing avenues such as the Yellow Pages and direct mailing.

PPC can be just the springboard that the budding small business needs in order to make an immediate splash in an online retail venture. Matt deems it as a sort of “risk mitigation” for businesses, allowing them to dip their toes into the SEO wading pool, achieving a measure of exposure with a minimum amount of risk.

What’s the best advice for the business looking to go with pay-per-click? Mark warns the potential client not to over-obsess about the potential negative impact of click fraud. He encourages PPC users to avoid negative thinking and focus on the positive aspects of pay-per-click. Because in the end, it’s conversions, not click fraud, that should be the primary concern.

Online video is a rapidly growing and evolving medium in the Web 2.0 landscape, to be sure. Many websites are embracing the platform, building their entire structure around the practice. BusinessPOV.com is just such a site, providing a forum for business journalism through an online video format. Mark Scheffler is in charge of the content and editorial direction of BusinessPOV.com, overseeing all segments productions as well as the site’s team of producers, editors and videographers. Chris Richardson of WebProNews had the opportunity to chat with Mark at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago about video search and the SES conference scene.

While Mark is a conference rookie, he’s certainly no stranger to the realm of online video. As sites like Google Video, YouTube, and DailyMotion begin to garner an increasing amount of traffic (and consequently, increasing revenue streams through advertising monetization) the demand for effective video search optimization services is beginning to skyrocket. Blinkx is a sterling example of a site that has devoted the entirety of its existence toward providing users with relevant and innovative video search functionality.

Here are some tips given by an expert blogger on how folks such as Mark can effectively optimize their videos for search:

- Make Your Videos Accessible to as Many People as Possible.

- Submit Your Video to Video Search Engines.

- Add Meta Data to Your Files.

- Create a page that hosts the video and optimize that page via the same means as you would organic search engine optimization.

- Place all of your video content in your video directory and create a Video Sitemap.

- Create an RSS feed/Atom Feed/iTunes Feed/MRSS feed for your videos.

- Submit your video in the highest encoding quality as possible within each site’s guidelines.

- Optimize your listings with keywords.

- Bookmark your video links in Dabble, a social bookmarking site for videos.

- To help create action and branding, and to drive traffic to your website, add a watermark to your video with your company/URL and create a call to action at the end of the video.

So if you want to see what SES and video SEO can do for you, check out what Mark has to say in our video, and try these tips for yourself!