PubCon: Building Your Social Media Profile

If you haven’t jumped onto the social media bandwagon, you had better get on or you’ll fall behind. Most people are active on at least one social media site if not several because they realize the benefits of it. The problem is that people seem to neglect building their profile. Brent Csutoras in the above video discusses the importance of developing your profile since it is the first thing others look at to find out about you. A person trying to research you will look at your interests, groups, beliefs, and your activities before pursuing you for business purposes.

PubCon 2008 Exceeds Expectations

Brett Tabke, the CEO of Webmasterworld, is the man behind the PubConference series. He is responsible for how good or how bad the show turns out. This year’s event has done nothing but receive raving reviews and was the #1 search term on Twitter for several days.

PubCon has something for everyone. It doesn’t just feature SEO, marketing, IT, or social media - it’s a combination of all those and more. In the above video, Brett says how they tried to focus on quality sessions at this year’s show.

PubCon: Buying and Selling Links, Good or Bad?

The Linkfluence session at PubCon reportedly had a packed out house with many opinions. We already brought you Aaron Wall’s take on the infamous link buying subject, and now we’re going to delve into Rand Fishkin’s ideas on the subject.

Here’s the question that causes so much debate: Is link buying good or bad? Which is it?
If you are selling links and making money, then it seems to be working out “good” for you. Another scenario in which it seems to be “good” is when you are purchasing links and your ranking is improving.

PubCon: “Blending” Viral Marketing into Your Marketing Strategy

Are you familiar with the ever-popular Will It Blend campaign from Blendtec? If not, you’re depriving yourself from one of the best viral marketing campaigns ever. George Wright, the Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Blendtec, gave a keynote at PubCon, in which he explained the strategy behind their campaign. In the above WPN video, Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick, Inc. tells how Blendtec had to go out on a limb to get their brand name out there.

Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia Introduce O’Reilly Found Conference

As individuals, Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia have earned their respected status in the search industry. Vanessa’s list includes Google, Zillow, Search Engine Land, and most recently Nine By Blue. Nathan is currently the lead program manager for Microsoft’s Live Search Webmaster Center and has worked for a decade involved in nearly every area of web technology. Now, these great minds have come together in an effort to unite web developers with search engine optimization.

PubCon: Understanding How the Big Boys Operate

Did you ever wonder how large companies keep up with all the pages on their websites? As he explains in the above video, Bill Hunt of Global Strategies knows all about this since IBM is one of their clients. First, know whether or not the search engines are indexing all your pages. If they aren’t, then you need to check a few things out. Make sure you have a sitemap that is working correctly, and check your own spider to make sure you’re being seen. Also, look at your combined PPC and organic data to find out what is converting and what is not.

PubCon: Creating Link Bait

Link bait attracts people to your site and has the ultimate goal of gaining links from those viewers. Bill Hartzer of Vizion Interactive offers up some advice for link baiting in the above WPN video. For starters, he says you should focus on a specific industry or topic. Produce good and interesting content that people want to know about.

Matt Cutts on Changes at Google

We previously brought you a video report in which Bruce Clay made a claim that “ranking is dead.” In the above WPN video, Matt Cutts of Google responds to that assertion. Matt does not completely agree with Bruce that “ranking is dead” but does announce that it is not as important as it once was.

Bruce Clay: Ranking Is Dead!

In the Top Shelf Organic SEO session at PubCon 2008, Bruce Clay made some very significant predictions regarding SEO. As we all know, SEO has advanced in many areas over the past several years. Compare your current searches to that of just 2 years ago. Quite a bit of difference in the results, huh?

In the above WPN video, Bruce Clay predicts even greater changes in the coming year. Personalized search, behavior-based search, intent-based search, and universal search allow for direct and specific searches. With so many ways to search now, it’s quite obvious that search results are getting better, which is exactly what Google wants.

PubCon: Making Your Social Media Campaign Work

Social media has taken over. Honestly, everyone is using it now and not simply for social reasons. Companies now realize how powerful it is for raising brand awareness and engaging with customers. But a lot of money can be lost if a social media campaign is not efficiently conducted.

When you begin your social media campaign, make sure your viral content is relevant so customers can immediately associate it with your brand. Also, work closely with the search team in order for potential customers to be able to find you in their searches.