My "Don't Fire Me Rand" Recap of SES New York
The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Now that I've had the weekend to recover from a week of too many drinks, too few sleep, too many new names and faces to remember, and just the right number of familiar faces to recognize, I thought I'd share with the mozdience what I was up to all week (partly because I love you and partly because Rand is making me, and I like my job and don't want to get fired). My partners in crime (Scott and Jane) will be putting their versions up on the blog later today--that way, you'll get to experience SES NY from the SEOmoz point of view.
Sunday night (April 8):
Scott, Jane, and I flew into Newark and took a lovely sky train, train, and subway ride to the Hilton hotel. After checking in, we grabbed a bite to eat at a "moderately priced" restaurant (moderate according to the hotel; each entree averaged about $30) and met up with a couple friends of mine who were also visiting New York. We had some beers in an Irish pub, ate late night hot dogs at Gray's Papaya, and then headed back to the hotel, where we drank for a bit with Cameron and Neil before going to bed early (early being about 3:00 am--trust me when I say that this is the earliest I went to bed all week).
Monday (April 9):
The three of us met back up with my friends and did some sightseeing. We hopped on the subway and took it to Battery Park so we could see the Statue of Liberty.
Sunday night (April 8):
Scott, Jane, and I flew into Newark and took a lovely sky train, train, and subway ride to the Hilton hotel. After checking in, we grabbed a bite to eat at a "moderately priced" restaurant (moderate according to the hotel; each entree averaged about $30) and met up with a couple friends of mine who were also visiting New York. We had some beers in an Irish pub, ate late night hot dogs at Gray's Papaya, and then headed back to the hotel, where we drank for a bit with Cameron and Neil before going to bed early (early being about 3:00 am--trust me when I say that this is the earliest I went to bed all week).
Monday (April 9):
The three of us met back up with my friends and did some sightseeing. We hopped on the subway and took it to Battery Park so we could see the Statue of Liberty.
We encourage you to get some NYC condoms.
After seeing the Statue of Liberty (and getting yelled at by a security guard ["Ma'am! Don't chug yer watuh!"]), we walked through the Financial District, saw Ground Zero, ate at a deli, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and got cheesecake at a diner, took the subway to Central Park and explored a bit, poked our heads into the New York Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs in the lobby, and then headed back to the hotel.
From there, Scott, Jane, and I went to see Les Paul perform with Greg, Barb, Dax, and Cesar from WebGuerrilla and Todd Friesen and Phil from Range. The music was awesome and we had a kick ass time. Jane scored an autograph from the infamous Les Paul for her father-in-law.
After the concert, we went to the Old Castle and drank with various SEOs. On our way back to our rooms, we met Guillaume Bouchard, our sometime guest blogger on SEOmoz. We also ran into Jarrod Hunt and Neil, who was sporting some super sexy pajamas:
The K-Swiss shoes are a nice touch.
After seeing the Statue of Liberty (and getting yelled at by a security guard ["Ma'am! Don't chug yer watuh!"]), we walked through the Financial District, saw Ground Zero, ate at a deli, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and got cheesecake at a diner, took the subway to Central Park and explored a bit, poked our heads into the New York Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs in the lobby, and then headed back to the hotel.
From there, Scott, Jane, and I went to see Les Paul perform with Greg, Barb, Dax, and Cesar from WebGuerrilla and Todd Friesen and Phil from Range. The music was awesome and we had a kick ass time. Jane scored an autograph from the infamous Les Paul for her father-in-law.
After the concert, we went to the Old Castle and drank with various SEOs. On our way back to our rooms, we met Guillaume Bouchard, our sometime guest blogger on SEOmoz. We also ran into Jarrod Hunt and Neil, who was sporting some super sexy pajamas:
The K-Swiss shoes are a nice touch.
We had a good laugh at Neil's expense, and then went to bed.
Tuesday (April 10):
Let the conference begin! I was a bad mozzer and only went to one session, which was Ads in a Quality Score World. I wanted to try and hit some PPC/advertising sessions at this conference because I sucked ass at our little moz experiment with AdWords, and I want to get more well-versed in the wily ways of PPC.
Per Rand's request, I'll share three things I learned from this session, and will present a question I have:
What I Learned:
Is there a specific time frame to test your ads? Is it recommended that I test ads for an entire month, and then compare them to other ads I'm running for the same amount of time to see which were more successful than others?
After the session, Scott, Jane, and I met up with several SEOs to attend a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman. We had a lot of fun--thanks to Scott Orth for organizing the group and getting the tickets.
When the taping was over, we went to the dinner hosted by Vintage Tub and Bath, Hitwise, Range, Pepperjam, BizResearch, and Performics. The dinner was a blast--combining good food, great drinks, champagne and cheese, and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots is a recipe for success. The dinner was also the first time we reunited with Rand for more than five minutes, asGeraldine Mystery Guest and other SEOs had been keeping him from us all week.
You know you want to be a mozzer.
After dinner, we headed back to the Old Castle, where we met Chris Hooley and Graywolf in the flesh. Both guys are, as Hooley himself would say, wicked awesome (Graywolf taught me the correct way to say Long Island ["LonGuhEYEland"]). Several drinks later, we finally dragged our alcoholic asses to bed.
Wednesday (April 11):
The first session I attended was Getting Traffic from Contextual Ads.
What I Learned:
Is there a standard conversion rate for contextual ads? What constitutes a successful conversion rate?
The second session I went to was Creating Compelling Ads. I think I arrived a bit late to this session, since I only have notes on two speakers' presentations.
What I Learned:
I'm actually going to steal a question that someone from the audience asked: For the display URL, do you recommend having domain.com/item or item.yourdomain.com? I forgot who answered the question, but he recommended simply testing which one performs better. He also cautioned to make sure the page only has that item (specifically target that item; otherwise, you could get rejected and have relevance issues).
After this session wrapped up, I met up with Jane and we went to tape an interview with Michael McDonald for WebProNews. We talked about social media (or, rather, Jane talked about social media and I sat there like an idiot because she's the social media guru at SEOmoz). I have no idea when it'll be aired, so keep an eye out for it.
With the video completed, I dashed over to catch the last part of the Landing Page Testing and Tuning panel.
What I Learned:
What does Jamie mean when he said there is no single optimal page, only an average optimal page? I'm assuming he's referring to a general set of guidelines that, on average, equate to an optimal page, but that there's no single formula for success?
Anyway, the mozzers reunited at the MSN dinner, which was at an awesome Cuban restaurant (awesome because there was a dude at the bar whose sole role was to make mojitos all night long). When we got back from dinner, we ran into Neil and started making fun of him for being so lithe. And then I realized the following:
I can pick him up!
The three party mozzers hung out at the bar for the rest of the night. Jane and Scott called it a night while I hung out in the hotel lobby with several SEOs and watched Dax pick the lock on the lounge piano and start playing briefly before getting yelled at by security. The shit proceeded to hit the fan as every SEO in the lobby started arguing with two security guys and a hotel manager about our right to hang out in the lounge. It was amusing and crazy, and I'm sure the whole fracas is up on YouTube somewhere, as one SEO was keen enough to videotape the ordeal. After that, I hung out with some Best of the Web guys (Brian and Greg), Andrea Schoemaker, Cameron, and Guillaume until roughly 6:15 am.
Thursday (April 12):
Hey, guess which two female mozzers forgot to set their alarm? We did, and consequently missed the SEO Ladies who Lunch. Jane felt guilty and decided to attend a couple sessions, while Scott and I met Mystery Guest at the MOMA to get our modern art on. Oh, and WebProNews put up a video that quoted me from a phone interview they did with me a week ago. You could drive a truck through my pauses. Check it out if you want to hear me try and sound smart, and if you want to see WebProNews misspell my last name (two e's, dudes!):
Afterwards, we spent an Evening with Danny Sullivan, then Scott had dinner with some folks in Chinatown while Jane and I met up with Rae Hoffman, Tamar Weinberg, and Lisa Barone for dinner, drinks, and debauchery.
The prettiest and smartest bloggers in SEO
After dinner, we schmoozed in the Hilton bar, then moved over the the Old Castle for more drinking and mingling before dragging ourselves to bed at around 5:00.
Friday (April 13):
Sweet sassy molassy, the conference is almost over. Jane and I checked out of our room and caught the tail end of Rand's presentation for the Link Bait session. I missed him referencing my super awesome Worst College Mascots linkbait for Drivl. The rest of the session was, per usual, fantastic. I've seen the Link Bait session three or four times, and even though I could practically recite everyone's presentations, it's one of my favorite sessions because the energy is high, the humor is great, and the audience has a great time.
Once the session wrapped up, Jane, Scott, and I got some lunch and hung around until it was time to fly out. Aaaaand, that about summarizes my week at SES NY.
I'd like to finish this absurdly long post (sorry folks, I'm long-winded) by making some shout outs to SEOmoz readers Risa Borsykowsky, Joe Whyte, Kevin Gleeson, and Sam, (whose last name I don't remember, but she's super awesome so Sam, if you're reading this, bug me and I'll give you a link). It was really cool meeting people who regularly participate and contribute to our blog, and they're all great, fun people.
Anyway, that's about it. The week was long, I got no sleep, my liver hates me, and I got a taste of what I want to learn about PPC and advertising...so basically, I had a great time.
Tuesday (April 10):
Let the conference begin! I was a bad mozzer and only went to one session, which was Ads in a Quality Score World. I wanted to try and hit some PPC/advertising sessions at this conference because I sucked ass at our little moz experiment with AdWords, and I want to get more well-versed in the wily ways of PPC.
Per Rand's request, I'll share three things I learned from this session, and will present a question I have:
What I Learned:
- According to Joshua Stylman from Reprise Media, your quality score impacts your costs throughout the day. Google uses historical data to determine whether or not a kw is relevant, which impacts how much you pay for that keyword.
- Andrew Goodman from Page Zero Media said that Google assigns two quality scores: one affects your minimum bid (your keyword status), while the other affects where you rank.
- Jon Mendez from Otto Digital said that you need to craft your message according to the needs of your users and not your own. He stressed that you always need to be testing and optimizing.
Is there a specific time frame to test your ads? Is it recommended that I test ads for an entire month, and then compare them to other ads I'm running for the same amount of time to see which were more successful than others?
After the session, Scott, Jane, and I met up with several SEOs to attend a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman. We had a lot of fun--thanks to Scott Orth for organizing the group and getting the tickets.
When the taping was over, we went to the dinner hosted by Vintage Tub and Bath, Hitwise, Range, Pepperjam, BizResearch, and Performics. The dinner was a blast--combining good food, great drinks, champagne and cheese, and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots is a recipe for success. The dinner was also the first time we reunited with Rand for more than five minutes, as
You know you want to be a mozzer.
After dinner, we headed back to the Old Castle, where we met Chris Hooley and Graywolf in the flesh. Both guys are, as Hooley himself would say, wicked awesome (Graywolf taught me the correct way to say Long Island ["LonGuhEYEland"]). Several drinks later, we finally dragged our alcoholic asses to bed.
Wednesday (April 11):
The first session I attended was Getting Traffic from Contextual Ads.
What I Learned:
- Chris Bowler (I didn't catch who he works for) said that content CPCs are more affordable. This may change over time, but if you're looking for inexpensive, efficient clicks, it may be an option over expensive keywords.
- Anton E. Konikoff from Acronym Media had great bullet points in his presentation. He stressed the importance of your ads being in the top positions. Visitors may ignore ads that fall beneath the 3rd/4th position as opposed to search, because they are not actively looking for you.
- Don Steele from Comedy Central had some really cool examples of how they have successfully used contextual ads to drive traffic to their site. Contextual ads are great for branding--they bid on keywords surrounding key programs and internet buzz. For shows, they'll bid on keywords pre-broadcast for branding purposes and post-broadcast to build traffic.
Is there a standard conversion rate for contextual ads? What constitutes a successful conversion rate?
The second session I went to was Creating Compelling Ads. I think I arrived a bit late to this session, since I only have notes on two speakers' presentations.
What I Learned:
- Vic Drabicky reminded us that the goal isn't to get every click, but every profitable click.
- Darren Kuhn recommended testing your ads by creating 4-6 new creatives with different message types (official site language, capitalization and punctuation, price points, free shipping, product guarantees, etc), placing unique tracking on each creative so that the conversion and CTR can be traced, and disabling auto optimizers (currently not an option on MSN) in order to get an even sample. Track which ad outperforms the rest.
I'm actually going to steal a question that someone from the audience asked: For the display URL, do you recommend having domain.com/item or item.yourdomain.com? I forgot who answered the question, but he recommended simply testing which one performs better. He also cautioned to make sure the page only has that item (specifically target that item; otherwise, you could get rejected and have relevance issues).
After this session wrapped up, I met up with Jane and we went to tape an interview with Michael McDonald for WebProNews. We talked about social media (or, rather, Jane talked about social media and I sat there like an idiot because she's the social media guru at SEOmoz). I have no idea when it'll be aired, so keep an eye out for it.
With the video completed, I dashed over to catch the last part of the Landing Page Testing and Tuning panel.
What I Learned:
- Tom Leung from Google said that 1st time tester pitfalls include too many combos, making your conversion goal too far out, making your variations too subtle, and stopping your tests too early.
- Scott Miller from Vertster recommended increasing page visibility to grab attention, which will decrease the bounce rate. If you increase the ability for your site to capture attention, you'll increase your conversions.
- Jamie Roche from Offermatica said that for most companies, optimization doesn't happen on one page, but across multiple pages/sessions; therefore, it's essential to optimize for different user groups.
What does Jamie mean when he said there is no single optimal page, only an average optimal page? I'm assuming he's referring to a general set of guidelines that, on average, equate to an optimal page, but that there's no single formula for success?
After this session, I headed to the Webmaster Radio booth in the exhibit hall to make a complete ass of myself. I was supposed to talk about the search engine ranking factors in Rand's place, because he was MIA. The only problem was that I had nothing to do with the ranking factors, so I wasn't sure what to say. I think I mentioned how it was a huge success and that Jeff made the factors look super sexy with his awesome design. That's what you get when you make me fill in for you, Rand. I say things like "super sexy." Ugh.
Hanging out at the Webmaster Radio booth
Hanging out at the Webmaster Radio booth
Anyway, the mozzers reunited at the MSN dinner, which was at an awesome Cuban restaurant (awesome because there was a dude at the bar whose sole role was to make mojitos all night long). When we got back from dinner, we ran into Neil and started making fun of him for being so lithe. And then I realized the following:
I can pick him up!
The three party mozzers hung out at the bar for the rest of the night. Jane and Scott called it a night while I hung out in the hotel lobby with several SEOs and watched Dax pick the lock on the lounge piano and start playing briefly before getting yelled at by security. The shit proceeded to hit the fan as every SEO in the lobby started arguing with two security guys and a hotel manager about our right to hang out in the lounge. It was amusing and crazy, and I'm sure the whole fracas is up on YouTube somewhere, as one SEO was keen enough to videotape the ordeal. After that, I hung out with some Best of the Web guys (Brian and Greg), Andrea Schoemaker, Cameron, and Guillaume until roughly 6:15 am.
Thursday (April 12):
Afterwards, we spent an Evening with Danny Sullivan, then Scott had dinner with some folks in Chinatown while Jane and I met up with Rae Hoffman, Tamar Weinberg, and Lisa Barone for dinner, drinks, and debauchery.
The prettiest and smartest bloggers in SEO
After dinner, we schmoozed in the Hilton bar, then moved over the the Old Castle for more drinking and mingling before dragging ourselves to bed at around 5:00.
Friday (April 13):
Sweet sassy molassy, the conference is almost over. Jane and I checked out of our room and caught the tail end of Rand's presentation for the Link Bait session. I missed him referencing my super awesome Worst College Mascots linkbait for Drivl. The rest of the session was, per usual, fantastic. I've seen the Link Bait session three or four times, and even though I could practically recite everyone's presentations, it's one of my favorite sessions because the energy is high, the humor is great, and the audience has a great time.
Once the session wrapped up, Jane, Scott, and I got some lunch and hung around until it was time to fly out. Aaaaand, that about summarizes my week at SES NY.
I'd like to finish this absurdly long post (sorry folks, I'm long-winded) by making some shout outs to SEOmoz readers Risa Borsykowsky, Joe Whyte, Kevin Gleeson, and Sam, (whose last name I don't remember, but she's super awesome so Sam, if you're reading this, bug me and I'll give you a link). It was really cool meeting people who regularly participate and contribute to our blog, and they're all great, fun people.
Anyway, that's about it. The week was long, I got no sleep, my liver hates me, and I got a taste of what I want to learn about PPC and advertising...so basically, I had a great time.
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