We actually have a wireless signal here in the room, so I can post while the session is still going on. Nice.

It may seem odd for “Small Business SEM” to attend the “Big SEO” panel, but I do work for a larger company now and I do SEO for some larger companies, too. Plus, when I speak on the Small Biz panel, we always get about 20% people from big companies spying on us … so turnabout is fair play, I say!

These are my session notes, which are not necessarily everything the speaker said or talked about, but they are the things I chose to write down (type, actually).

Panelists

Bill Hunt, Global Strategies International
Marshal Simmonds, New York Times/About.com
Tanya Vaughan, Hewlett-Packard (Q&A only)
Brendan Hart, National Geographic (Q&A only)

Crazy attendance! SRO – people lined up around the outer walls, two and three deep in places. (Update – people were lined up OUTSIDE THE ROOM and a special speaker was placed out there so everyone could hear! See photo!)

Bill Hunt

Integrate SEO into the Organization
– share SEO best practices with people across organization; at some large companies, the marketing team has never met the web team
– segment your program: brand-level programs, group-level programs, corporate-level programs
– Steps to Effectively Deliver Search at Scale
— current audit of search success
— spiderability of site
— link popularity
— algorithm compliance – focus on basics, not chasing the algorithm
— teach standards and best practices
— implement the SEO program
— have analytics and reporting in place; not just are you ranking, but is the right page ranking for the right keyword?

Marshall Simmonds

NYT Challenges
– how many documents? (roughly 11 million?)
– email registration wall
– paid registration wall
– getting journalists/guides/etc. in the process
– rigid IT dept.
– company ego
– getting them to “get” search
– resistance to change
– what will it take to get things done?

Methodology for Big Brands
- organize
- analyze
- educate
- execute
- track your results

Organized: set up SEO team for each web property; engaged everyone from marketing to tech to editorial and even sales
Analyzed: set priorities, identified areas where small changes could lead to big results, such as
– put “New York Times” at end of title tag
– moved registration wall to 5 pageviews (“opened the floodgates” with this change)
Educated: in-depth training sessions for each dept.; diff. training for each dept.
Execute & Track Results – metrics saves jobs!!!

[tags]sesny, sesny2007[/tags]