Collapsed Lungs & Micro-hoo: SES London

[Luis]

Keynote - Nick Carr (and friends)

Kevin starts with a rather shocking announcement that Nick Carr has been unable to make the show due to a collapsed lung. He has, however, recorded a video discussing the events of the last few weeks (Micro-hoo and all that).

Nick argues that Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is an indicator of a huge shift in the way that the internet works and, indeed, in the way that the global economy does business. He points to the way that the arrival of centralised power sources allowed the industrial revolution to step up a gear, as it removed the need for localised stores. He then suggests that computing in the future will be centralised in so much as services will be provided via the web, whilst the software companies will become media companies, funded by ad revenue.

This is certainly a fascinating argument (and one that I'm sure is explained in a much more eloquent way in his book, The Big Switch). However, it's interesting that the idea of the cloud has taken a knock recently. That's not to say that it won't happen, just that it may take a little longer than some think.

Nick also touches on the way that the internet is influencing the spread of wealth. When a company like YouTube can be bought for more than $1 billion dollars when it had less than 100 employees, it does make one wonder how the hell the rest of us are going to get a piece of the pie. However, as with all these things there are holes - he cites Skype as being an effective company due to the number of employees, but it's also one that had to admit recently that it was overvalued by $1 billion.

Nick's speech was definitely thought provoking, and Kevin now invites an all-star panel, including Mike Grehan, to discuss what the Micro-hoo deal (if it comes off) is likely to mean for search and the web in general. Paul Doleman of iCrossing feels that this isn't actually competition for Google, considering how the two companies have already managed to combine the software capabilities of Microsoft and the social excellence of Yahoo on several projects. In other words, it's not just about search.

The rest of the panel, whilst not putting it in exactly the same way, tend to agree that this is way bigger than search. (Although Mike suggests that it would be better for humanity if he ran all the major engines. Hmmm.) What he does point out is that Google is in many ways in the utility business, providing services, whereas for the last few years Yahoo and Microsoft have concentrated on content/media. What everyone agrees on is that merging the two cultures would be very difficult. The words sh*t and Sherlock spring to mind.

Another thing the panel seems to agree on is that where this deal could succeed is in the merging of display, search, & any other form of advertising or media to provide consumers with the best possible experience. Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now points out that search is likely to look very different in 10 years' time, and also that search engines have come and gone in the past, so trying to say that Google will rule for ever is almost certainly pointless.

What no one touches on is the validity of the other potential partners that have been mentioned since Yahoo suggested that it didn't want to accept the Microsoft deal. I ask the panel what they think of these offers. They don't even mention AOL, but Paul & Bryan seem to agree that a tie-up with News Corp could be very interesting.

When the issue of privacy crops up, Mike points out that companies are currently allowing the engines to crawl data that they almost certainly shouldn't (like this). Several other members of the panel suggest that whilst privacy is an issue, if the sharing of personal or behavioural data results in a better consumer experience, then people are likely to welcome it. Stats I've seen back this view up, so it seems like what's needed is a mix of education and better use of this data.

Session 2: News Search SEO

Greg Jarboe starts this session with the rather startling suggestion that anyone who missed his session at last year's SES on optimising press releases didn't miss anything, as the whole ball game has fundamentally changed. He demonstrates this by showing that when the Microsoft bid for Yahoo was announced (yes, that again) it showed up as a huge spike in Google Trends but, more interestingly, the news stories and blog posts covering the story showed up on page 1 of the SERPS, thanks to Google's Universal Search (yep, that again too).

But despite this, the official press release from Microsoft was very hard to find in the SERPS (yet managed to spark over 10,000 stories). The lesson here? It's not enough to just optimise releases - you need to move into the sphere of old-fashioned media relations, focusing not just on mainstream media, but also blogs. Personally, I think this is obvious but not that easy. I'd suggest that the type of people attending this event are simply not going to have the PR muscle to build relationships with The Guardian or the BBC. Where I'd argue there is scope for our industry is in crafting content for clients on their own blogs that will then be picked up by the mainstream press due to its relevance.

Next up is Lee Odden, who explains his theory of Pull PR, which is essentially the intersection of PR (traditionally a method of pushing content out) and SEO (which is about pulling people to your content). Within the first few minutes of his presentation, Lee refers back to Frederick Marckini's keynote from yesterday on at least three occasions. I know that I raved about Frederick's speech, but I do have a feeling that the rest of the conference could just end up being sessions where people take much longer to explain ideas and themes that Frederick covered in a matter of minutes, and in a much less engaging way than he did. I just hope that I'm wrong.

Lee does have some very useful tactics on how to practically optimise PR content, including the idea that you should coach people who are likely to be interviewed on how to make sure that they use keywords when they are; this will mean that those articles, which essentially promote your brand or your client's brand, have a better chance of ranking highly against the relevant term. He also reiterates a point Greg made, which is that including images with releases makes journalists' jobs easier and improves your chances of being featured. To combat duplicate content issues, you should always host a press release on your own site before sending it out via the news sources, being sure to highlight the fact that version on your own site is the original one.

The final speaker is Tim Gibbon of Elemental Communications. If nothing else, it's nice to hear a British accent at a British show, as so many of the speakers are American. It's not that the speakers from the US don't have great content, it's just that there are so many great talents here in the UK, it's a shame that more of them aren't being given the spotlight. (And no, I'm not bitter that I'm not speaking. No really, I'm not!)

Anyway, Tim reiterates the fact that it's not enough to send out press releases - it's much better to have PR-worthy content on your own or your client's site. This is a tactic that we've had great success with at Altogether Digital, with blog posts being picked up by national newspapers & trade publications alike. It's not necessarily for everyone, but if there are people who have the desire and ability to write, then you could be well rewarded for allowing them to do so.

In the Q&A Greg highlights a site called NewsKnife, which tracks all the sources that Google News is pulling content from. He also suggests that it can be a painful process to submit a site to Google News, but my personal experience is that as long as you follow their guidelines, it's pretty simple and doesn't take that long.

Ciarán