SES Chicago 2005 Keynote Address – Danny Sullivan

Danny from SearchEngineWatch is a fabulous speaker, and this keynote address was packed out.

Danny’s view are that we all united by search. We’re all different people and we wear black hats, white hats, organic, paid or a mixture of them, including a growing number of in-house search engine marketers.

“Who Loves Ya Baby?”

Anecdotally, search of all types are in demand and recent articles talked about the difficulty in hiring good search people. It’s not just the search engines that are fighting for talent. Swearch was born in the depths of the ad downturn, so today’s not a bubble. Search is now a fundamental advertising medium, just like TV, Radio, Print & Outdoors. Search marketing has demand filling and reverse broadcasting, and will change, evolve, move to new devices, but it’s not going away.

“Communities & Community”

We all have our hangouts:

1. Mailing Lists: I-Search, SEM 2.0, etc
2. Conferences: SES, PubCon, Ad:Tech
3. Forums: WebmasterWorld, Digital Point, SEW Forums
4. Blogs: SE Roundtable, SEO Book, Threadwatch
5. Organizations: SEMPO, SMA, Dallas

We have also been growing across our cliques (e.g. when Ian Turner went missing).
Cross community effort was instant. SEMPO, SMA, other efforts at uniting for a common good.

“Community Rewards”

Weather reports are getting more regular
Nofollow tags – Love it or hate it, we got more control over our pages – further indexing control to come?
Google Sitemaps
Yahoo Site Explorer
Google Sitemaps Stats!
Google Base

“Love It, But Want More”

Blogging community can monitor all their new links in Google Blog Search, but why can’t the longer established search marketing community get more important web search info. Maybe further indexing control to come.

Yahoo Site Explorer gives some but needs to give much, much more.

Time to go past URL feeds and into content feeds for all, esp. with rogue spider issue.
Ad reps as friends, not foes.

“Outsiders Recognize Community”

The focus is not only on the search engines so much, anymore. Search Marketers are getting into the spotlight and it’s without them being some unusual sub-species.

“But reputation problems remains…”

Despite gains, many people will still see us as the used car salespeople of the web.
There are two challenges: scummy companies and trespassing content

Scummy companies, the law will sort out, and trespassing content, we can help with..

“It’s the right thing not to do”

If not because it’s just wrong to respass, consider the consequences.

“Foot Soldiers / Fuel”

I’ve spoken before of search marketers as the foot soldies that have built search. More to the point, you’re what fuels the search engines. The drive to success they are all having.

http://www.frappr.com/seos

Be Pumped up, 2006 should be exciting as ever.

Please pick a day for Search Marketing Day and next time, let’s see a search marketer win the apprentice.

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