SES San Francisco 2010 – Day 1
One of the members of the Just Search team, Julie Cheung recently won tickets to the SES conference in San Francisco, one of the largest Internet Marketing conferences in the world. As part of her trip to the SES conference Julie has decided to blog about the seminars she has been attending, updating all our readers on the interesting things that are happening.
Day 1
I was really excited to win tickets to the SES San Francisco conference and I have come here to represent Just Search as a company. There were many seminars on the first day, and far too much information for me to place in one blog post. Therefore I have decided to update you on the best bits from my day.
Spending on Internet Marketing
Interestingly they stated that money changes everything. In the US, currently 34% is spent online but only 12% represents media spend. These figures are set to massively increase and the prediction is that this will double by the year 2014, because technology is changing fast. This again further proves that even after the recession spending online is still increasing at a fast pace.
Search marketers becoming performance marketers
One interesting topic discussed was how search marketers are now becoming more performance marketers. Search is only one channel of obtaining traffic, there are many other forms of obtaining traffic meaning that search marketers also need to be mathematicians, who understand data and have ability to find trends within the data.
The future of Search
There were many ideas about how search will evolve in the future, some key comments include:
• Search results in the future will be real time and connected – The use of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has resulted in twitter and blog results appearing in the search results. In the future, results are going to be influenced by those in your social networks. People we know or trust may influence the search results.
• Convergence of new technologies – Search in the future may be influenced by user behaviour. Search in the near future will be far more portable than simply on a PC. This will result in mobile searches outpacing PC searches, with most of the focus being on local based targeting, as mobile users will more often than not be looking for local not national services
• Today, search is keyword dominated – The future will be leveraging information through devices such as camera search, voice searches and social led searches.
These changes mean that marketers will need to think more outside the box when creating an online marketing strategy. Marketers will need to think about the following:
• Setting aside budget for testing and innovation
• Invest in data systems and skills – Employers will need to invest in more skilled workers who are able to analyse large volumes of data
• Think outside the PC – Think more about mobile devices that will be used now and more importantly in the future
Perhaps one of the best parts of the seminar is the questions and answers section. One great but simple question we all wanted to ask was ‘where SEO is going’? Below is an answer from Brian Kaminski, the CTO at iProspect.
Brian defined SEO as: “the aiding of generating useful information, if you see it like that. Stating that SEO is going nowhere as long as it continues to benefit users”
Conclusion
I really enjoyed my first day and met a lot of interesting people. I also took plenty of pictures which I will be hoping to share with you all over the next few days. It’s interesting to hear key speakers discuss the future of search, and how mobile search will affect search marketers in the near future, something that is food for thought for Just Search and our competitors here in the UK.
Tomorrow’s line-up seems equally as good, and I look forward to seeing what the day brings. I will be updating you all as soon as I can through Twitter and posts through Just Search UK.
Below are some images from my first day at SES
Me with Bruce Clay
Wendy Sturgis, Yahoo
Julie Cheung
SEO Programmer
