SphinnCon Israel 2010 Takeaways

Sunday, March 7, 2010: A sudden invasion of the campus of Machon Lev by SEO and SEM professionals.

Did they come for the sessions?  The networking with others in the industry?  The  constantly changing array of warming trays and platters containing tempting culinary experiences?  If only they had installed Google Analytics on SphinnCon Israel 2010, we might be able to find out.

Analytics was the topic of one of the sessions, which covered the range of the search engine profession from SEO to SEM to Social Media.  The following are some of the actionable takeaways from the sessions I attended:

A/B Split Testing for Adwords from Dan Perach of PPCPROZ (a very professional, well-presented and practical presentation):

• while A/B testing can help your performance tremendously, if you don’t have time to be on top of an A/B test – don’t  (simple, seemingly obvious, but overlooked – and definitely applicable to other areas of life as well).
• when you’re starting a new test in the Search Network, make sure you pause your old ad, clone it and start a new test – or the past history will skew the results.
• be on top of your tests to know as soon as possible after a test is really over (with a winner or a dead heat) – otherwise you’ll end up losing money to losing ads.  If you have many ads being tested, use a tool to manage the tests and tell you algorithmically when the test is over.
• matrix the competition – use a competitive research tool like Keyword Spy to look at the top ads for each keyword or adgroup.  Make a chart with the unique feature or benefit each one gives, the call to action, the tone – and then see how you can differentiate your ads from the competition.

Content Network Tips from Naomi Sela of Compucall:

• optimize by predefining: themes and site lists where you think your ad will succeed.
• optimize by refining: exclude sites, categories and page types if you see they aren’t bringing you the traffic you want; exclude demographic segments or bid more for a particular age or gender.
• use a placement performance report to identify your highest converting sites, and then create specific ad copy for those sites.
• target users who visit sites out of their country (for example, target sites in English, Russian and Arabic – but for visitors with an Israeli IP).

SEO Indexing Tips from Vanessa Fox (no, not the name of a session, but a few tips from a site clinic that she directed):

• the most accurate way to see how many pages of your site have been indexed by Google is by uploading an XML sitemap to Webmaster Tools – and letting them tell you there how many pages they’ve indexed.  Using the “site:” command is relatively inaccurate (as anyone who has paged to the end knows), and wildly inaccurate for numbers over 1000.
• if you have a directory site and some of the categories may not have listings, you should programmatically create a single page that will show for any request for which there is no content, otherwise Google may end up indexing lots of pages with different URLs that all say “0 results found” and eventually decide that your site has little worthwhile content. You may not be too happy with the results of that decision.

Thanks to all the presenters and organizers!

Related posts:

1. Test Management Track (iii), SIGiST Israel 2008
2. Test Management Track (iv), SIGiST Israel 2008
3. Test Management Track (i), SIGiST Israel 2008