We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.

If you see any changes in your Yahoo! rankings “over the next few days”, make a comment and let us know. Feel free to speculate – what do you think has changed & why? We’ll definitely be observing these changes as we make reports for our clients next week.

The big question of course is whether these changes will be given a prominent name like Google’s “Dewey”, and whether you might need to know this name when studying for the Yahoo! Ambassador Test.

• Leveraging Video as a Social Media Choice
• Reputation Management Through Measurement and Monitoring

Being PR professionals, the presenters made very compelling cases on why traditional media and PR outlets are blending into the “new media” and outlets of the web. They all agreed that the new media has totally “disrupted” the PR world. The first point here was that new media producers, such as online video producers, can and do have reach in this new world.

One example of this was Jack Hardy of Niche PR showing how he not only leveraged video for PR in the social media world, he had received the same press credentials as the New York Times at the SES event because of his influential Video Podcast, The Public Eye.

This leads to the second point; with the growth of this “new media” and outlets, a company’s reputation and brand can be strengthened or hurt on the web if the company or it’s marketing professionals have apathy towards the medium(s). One great quote about this by Ryerson Schwark of Mentor Graphics (paraphrase) was that building an online reputation is a marathon.

Therefore, if companies aren’t actively building their reputations online, the marathon is taking place without them. As they sit on the sidelines waiting to participate, they fall further behind in shaping their brand while others (3rd parties and competitors) have already started doing so.

The best part for Amplify-Interactive and the SEO/SEM industry as a whole is that long-time PR and marketing professionals are now understanding the power that the online world and new media/social media world has in today’s market. Whether those professionals look at creating blogs, going into Social Media platforms such as Facebook, use podcasts, or actively monitor and build their reputations online–they will need SEO/SEM professionals involved.

So, nice to meet you guys. Welcome to the party…did you bring beer?

This is my first post on Amplify’s blog, and it might be the longest one they have ever had. I blog at a few places–mostly about art and entertainment; therefore, it is nice to write more in-depth about a field I work in.

I attended SEMpdx’s SEM Six-Pack last night at Hotel Deluxe. I took some pictures and thought it an opportunity to continue a photo series I have been doing. In this manner, I can recap and hit some points of what a few speakers said as well as show a little practice-what-you-preach action here.

First, the food is good–look at it!
Kent Lewis, Anvil Media Inc. “SEM-PR”

In this grainy pic (I didn’t say I was a pro photographer), Kent Lewis of Anvil Media Inc is speaking “key strategies and tactics for a winning SEM PR program”.

Some of the quick takeaways from Kent’s lecture is that in the present internet environment, two things have become possible or at least much easier:

1. You can get PR out to many diverse publications with ease and much less time than in the wine and dine past; and
2. A company can better control their brand’s reputation by using PR and other “online reputation” techniques.

By not participating in these conversations through social media marketing/participation and online reputation management; you have essentially ceded the online definition of your brand’s reputation to others outside of your company.

A company needs to be out there filling the web with its positive aspects and when necessary confronting negative feedback with the truth or the alternate view. Otherwise, like many companies have seen when not dealing effectively with bad PR, this can be a much larger (and costly) clean-up process down the line.

Ben Lloyd, Amplify-Interactive “Content is King”

Here’s a link to Ben’s presentation on SEMportland.com

Also, I somehow did not get a picture of my boss-man, Mr. Ben Lloyd (this might be my last post now), but he spoke about how “Content is King”. This is in no way a new concept, and has existed in every art/content medium from print to radio to television and now the internet. Yet, on a daily basis, we confront companies whose websites have:

• Little to no content
• Content that’s hidden from search engines (because it’s behind a registration or in a flash presentation or graphic image)
• No fresh content
• And often are basically a commercial brochure if not just a splash page.

During his presentation, Ben used The Fertile Soul to illustrate how to build content that converts. When The Fertile Soul originally sought web presence help, they had little more than a splash page and they weren’t addressing the issues The Fertile Soul helps their clients deal with, which are infertility causes and treatments; so that’s where the content development efforts were focused.

Scott Hendison, SearchCommander “WordPress Rules” (or something like that)

Scott’s presentation was great, if not a little rushed due to the amount of content he tried to get through in 15 minutes. Scott basically broke down WordPress as a blogging platform & content management system, and gave lots of tips, pointers, plugins and reasons why blogs are so great for search. All in all, some great stuff (and included all the reasons why we use WordPress for this blog) we but I won’t reveal any of Scott’s secrets for him. He’ll post his presentation to the SEMpdx blog

Tom Hale, Thomas Creek Concepts “Metrics Strategies for Google AdWords”

Tom’s presentation focused on concepts, strategies & pointers for running paid search campaigns. Key takeaways: plan your measurement strategy, measure conversions & use the free tools available like conversion tracking & Google analytics to improve your campaigns.

Sean McMahon, EngineWorks “Social Media Optimization”

Sean spoke on “using social media content to increase qualified traffic and improve in-bound links.” One thing Sean spoke of was using catchy headlines to increase the stickiness of an article/post/site. For example – which is the more compelling headline?:

• SEMpdx | Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland (currently the top result on Google)
• SEMpdx Presents SEM Six-Pack–Great Event or…or…Greatest Event Ever?

Stan Davis, Straight-On Internet Consulting “SEO Joy”

Stan reminded us all that despite all the great new tools & techniques out there, you can’t ignore the fundamentals. Title tags, META descriptions, clean code, text links, header tags and the like are as important as ever.

The Final Word

This was the best SEMpdx event I have been too–perhaps not the “greatest event” ever–but you can always go to the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry next-door to keep partying.

See you next time, Portland.

Julian

PS – you can see SEMpdx blogger Todd Mintz’s recap on the SEMpdx blog here: http://www.semportland.com/announcements/strippers-with-5-inch-heels-pole-dancing-at-sem-six-pack/