SES Local Los Angeles – Day 1 Knowledge Nuggets

I’m not attempting to recap the entire conference, but I’ve tried to pick out only the most helpful or useful bits of information shared, and I did not intend to slight anyone by leaving out their presentation.

All Speaker Bios and links to their businesses
Entire Day 1 agenda –

Session 1-
Local Search: Why Your Business Needs to Be There and How
Zorik Gordon, President and CEO, ReachLocal
Gib Olander, Director of Business Development, Localeze
Eric Stein, Director, Local Markets, Google
Ethan Stock, Founder & CEO, Zvents
Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
Moderator: Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink

Gib Olander-
68% of consumers prefer store visits to shopping online, but 58% will do online research first.
40 to 60% of all small businesses still have no website, so there’s lots of room for growth.

Eric Stein –
Google local offers photo results now in local search, (ala Universal Search). Sponsored links can now appear right on the map. Local businesses can/should use content and coupons in the local business center.

Note: I asked a followup question hoping for a little clarification (hints?) of the local ranking algorithm, and got nowhere.

Eric implied that I was trying to get algo secrets, (ME?) but I wasn’t. I simply wanted to know about local what is already known about regular google organics, i.e. links, titles etc. and SEO-101 factors.

Ethan Stock- check out Zvents, which is free (for now) and seems to offer a lot of opportunity

Chris Tolles –
Cofounded DMoz – Topix has community bb’s available by feed (for a fee) and local search market spending is projected to increase to 7.8 Billion by 2011. Whoa!

Session 2 –
Local link Love
Sage Lewis, Founder and President, Sage Rock
Ian McAnerin, CEO, McAnerin Networks
Matt Stoddart, EVP Sales, LinkWorth, LLC

Sage Lewis –
Create products or services that benefit the local community, ASK for links after you have something linkworthy. Nobody wants to link to useless junk!

Matt Stoddard – Linkworth
link tip – search “city/state associations” to find places to join, and when you join, you get links.

Join local groups at the big boys like Facebook and Linked In.

Use Technorati and Mybloglog for finding local bloggers.
Google Enterprise Search appliance owners can get links back with testamonials that are not nofollowed

Note – So spend two grand and get a free link from a Google PR7 page. Huh! -Nice catch, Matt!

Ian – He mentioned using “directory indicators” to find places to add links. For example, search for “carpet cleaning” + “add url” or “add a link” or “subbit a site” etc. to find places to add urls. Follow that formula accordingly – nice tip, Ian, but not as nice as your “Super secret linkbuilding tool” – the TELEPHONE! Very true!

Session 3
Local Keyword Research – Laying the Foundation for Success Nico Brooks, VP, Search Engine Marketing, Local Matters, Inc.
Liana Evans, Director of Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance
Andrew Shotland, Proprietor, LocalSEOGuide.com
Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster
Moderator: Kevin Newcomb, News Editor, Search Engine Watch

Liana – Brainstorm out loud when beginning, and do so non judgementally, then refine from there. Use local slang / ling for keyword targeting, (like maybe “Rip City” for Portland?) and bid on phrases that come from your customers mouths.

Nico – check out comscore qsearch, Hitwise and other informational resources

Andrew – Look at Yelps “alternative navigation” which seem to be sort of “doorway links”, but claims they still seem to work. (Note* – Yes they do)

Matt – Don’t bother with zipcodes as keywords, but people are using words like “near” combined with city, and we’re seeing an increase in local referral phrases with the city names – (like like “east Portland” etc.)

LUNCH – (Note – It was awesome – Thanks to SMX for raising the bar for chow quality at all search conferences beginning with June’s Seattle show.)

Session 4
Industry Overview by Kelsey Group Analyst Team
Neal Polachek, CEO, The Kelsey Group
Matt Booth, SVP and Program Director, Interactive Local Media
Peter Krasilovsky, Program Director and Senior Analyst

The theme for this one was “holy crap there’s a lot of opportunity here” as they cited figures on US local searches 7.8 billion dollars spent in 2011 to over 110 billion dollars spent globally

All three of them went through stat after stat, and cited merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition. Nothing specific, to note other than, “Wow, what growth!”.

Session 5
Keynote Jake Winebaum – President RH Donnely Interactive (after selling Business.com)

Generic local search experience will change – plumbers don’t need maps, Lawyers don’t need coupons, etc. (That’s good to remember)

He explained RHD’s digital strategy (They own Dex too, apparently!)
Biggest nugget was that he pointed out that Google made their billions with ONE product, and the industry really needs simplification so business owners can understand them.

Session 6
Investing in Local

Mark Gorenberg, Partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Kara Nortman, VP, M&A, IAC/InterActiveCorp
Nick Veronis, Managing Director, Veronis Suhler Stevenson
Moderator: Matt Booth, SVP and Program Director, Interactive Local Media

30 minute session –
I admit to not paying attention here, because instead I accidentally learned that MSNbot does not follow 301 redirects… sorry 😉

Session 7
Keynote Address
Jay Herratti, President, Citysearch
20 – 25 mil uniques per mo and 10+ mil on insiderpages.com
Citysearch is actually profitable!

Session 8

The Leading Edge: Real Estate in Transition
Daniel McCarthy, Chairman and CEO, NCI
Jorrit Van der Meulen, VP of Partner Relations, Zillow
Niki Scevak, President and Founder, Homethinking
Moderator: Peter Krasilovsky, Program Director and Senior Analyst

The moderator just asked questions of the panel – This was a session where I expected to hear about some local search specifics, but instead got commercials about each presenters company.

Session 9
The last session was supposed to be Cutting Edge Demos – Local video Apps, but nstead we got another pretty commercial presentation for a company called MobilePeople, that talked about some technology that may have been cutting edge for mobile, but I was hoping to see the video stuff.

I didn’t catch her name, and the apps looked fairly cool, but despite everyone saying over and over that “2008 is the year of mobile”, I have a hard time believing it based on the slow internet performance of most US handhelds.