I finally found a few minutes to blog after returning from Pubcon to an over-flowing inbox, voice messages, and rescheduled meetings. It was a great time, as always, with lots of knowledgeable speakers. Here are 3 points that seemed to be stressed by multiple speakers and attendees alike:
1) Buying links is not a good long-term strategy. Google (and the other major search engines according to Matt Cutts) are cracking down on sites who buy and/or sell links. Will buying 1 link get you black-listed from Google? Probably not. However, they have already cut the legs out from under many sites who sell text links based on PageRank. This means that you will be paying for a link on a site that now carries very little weight in terms of passing Link Juice (how PageRank is passed from one page or site to another), which was still a buzz word this year. It is humorous that if you search Link Juice on Google you find a bunch of sites selling links to increase PageRank!
2) Video content is entertaining, good for links, and good for business. There are many new Video search engines such as Blinkx who are tinkering with making Video content much more indexable, searchable, and findable based on the content within the Video. VSEO is ramping up.
3) Creating a buzz using Social Networking websites is one of the best ways to gain links. Pretty much everyone agreed that the traffic from reaching the front page of Digg will not convert very well (depending on the site’s goals), but it can dramatically increase the number of links to your site. A little tip: After the buzz has passed and all the incoming links are to /page-with-story-that-got-dugg.html, you may want to consider 301 redirecting this page to one that will better convert the visitors.
If you have specific questions about this post or other topics discussed at Pubcon, you can contact me through the SMT Contact Form.
Tags: pubcon 2007, buying links, google, matt cutts, buzz, vseo, online video