Search Meetup with Gillian Muessig - SEOmoz

A search meet-up with the CEO and Co-founder of SEOmoz - Gillian Muessig! Wow! I had been waiting for such meet-ups in Bangalore and now the wait was over. It was my first meet-up with one of the most popular name among the Internet Marketing community. So here we go on to the coverage of search meet-up on 30th October 2009.

I reached to the venue at J.S. Towers, in HSR Layout at 2 pm although the event was to be started at 3 pm :). I utilized the time by meeting the attendees and exchanging introductory information. Then clock ticked down to 3 pm and we got the update that Gillian is on the way and she will be arriving shortly. While we awaited anxiously for Gillian, we had a small round of talk where each person introduced themselves and their objective for coming to this meet-up. There was a mix community of people the SEO guys, bloggers, content writers, start-up individuals, web marketers, SEM’es and other related ones.

Its 3:25 pm now, she arrived along with James and we could feel the cool excitement breeze in the hall by her smiling presence. Her greetings to the audience began with traditional Indian style which I do not usually see. That’s cool start! She is keen on taking the SEO initiatives at international level and well acknowledge the great potential of community to shine in.

I have compiled the further details in precise points for ease of understanding which is as follows:

1. Its high time now for Indian companies to look forward and provide SEO services in their own umbrella and get acknowledgement for their work.

2. Where possible Indian companies should think about white labeling SEO services and overcome from doing it behind the scenes.

3. In this period of financial crisis it is the right time for SEO market to knock the doors of customers and help them in bringing business.

4. People should be encouraged to visualize the amount of money spent on PPC campaigns and their ROI Vs natural search engine optimization. The value of natural search definitely needs to be adopted at a higher scale than the current one.

5. We need to take search engine optimization to international levels and make better practices to visualize the benefits of natural search closely.

6. According on one estimate the 88% of money spent on PPC campaigns bring in <10% of clicks, while 12% of strategic SEO can bring in >90% of clicks.

7. New TLD’s to observe brand protection and infringement issues which should be carefully considered by people who are opting for it.

8. In the coming years there will be strict action against spamming, manipulating results activities and link purchasing.

9. Important criteria’s to consider while doing an SEO project – Trust/Authority of domain accounts for 35% weight age, usage data 10%, on page and keyword factors 30% and page level link 25%.

10. Avoid keyword cannibalization and eliminate the duplicate content.

11. Landing page optimization ideas for e-commerce website should have 3 definite structure left hand side consisting of menu items, center one for images and right one for reason as to why a visitor should stay on this page. This tip can bring in 14% rise in conversion rates.

12. Breadcrumb for e-commerce websites should clearly indicate the status of shopping stages and how much still further they need to go in order to complete it.

13. Twitter accounts to have recognizable naming conventions to create popular and unique identity over the web.

14. If your email conversions are falling look then most probably there is a problem with landing page optimization.

15. Top 4 countries engaged in social media activity are Russia with 85%, India 78%, US 59% and UK with 59% share.

Finally Gillian had an energizing QA session with all seo guys, copywriters and other marketing people. All the individuals got sound fundamentals, realistic insights and recommended action that needs to be taken to deal with their current issues. Lastly she puts emphasis on bringing major events and conferences like SMX and others to India which will open up new channels of information exchange and opportunities for Indian talent to score new heights of success.