Search Marketing Expo Sydney
SMX Sydney 2009 in the News
A lot of news and views came out of SMX Sydney this year, here are a selection of Video interviews, newspaper articles and Blog posts.
We will add more as we catch them.
Blog Posts
SMX Sydney – Standout Speakers, Sessions & People. Glenn Murray, divine write - April 6th 2009
http://www.sitepronews.com/category/kalena-jordans-blog/ By Kalena Jordan - April 2009
http://www.ask-kalena.com/personal/smx-sydney-day-1-recap/ By Kalena Jordan - April 2009
http://www.ask-kalena.com/personal/smx-sydney-day-2-recap/ By Kalena Jordan - April 2009
http://eliteseo.com.au/blog/2009/04/smx-sydney-2009-recap/ By Elite SEO - SEO Brisbane April 2009
http://www.divinewrite.com/blog/seo/smx-sydney-standout-speakers-sessions-people/By Glenn Murray April 2009
WebPro News By Chris Crum - Tue, 04/07/2009
Newspaper
Searches frustrate surfers - Simon Canning, The Australian IT - March 30, 2009
(Interview with Rand Fishkin) Sydney Morning Herald - Maria Nguyen April 3, 2009
Marketers not hooked to social media
Video Footage
Rand Fishkin on “theinterzoneTV”
Dennis Yu on “theinterzoneTV”
Bruce Clay on “theinterzoneTV”
Newspaper Articles
Search to usher in the mobile marketing revolution?
The unique properties of mobile search could be a key piece of the mobile marketing puzzle – but it
risks being stymied in Australia by high mobile data charges, according to Rank-Mobile founder
Cindy Krum. Ahead of her presentation at the Search Marketing Expo next week in Sydney, Krum
spoke to CommsDay about the marketing potential of mobile search and future directions the technology
might take.
Because the mobile platform can offer carrier-specific ‘on-deck’ content search
and specialised search applications in addition to transposing conventional web
search engines, argued Krum, advertisers must open their eyes to a gamut of new
ways to channel users to their sites. But they also have new opportunities to tailor
their content. “Mobile is one of the most personal marketing platforms,” she told
CommsDay. “It knows who you’re calling, it knows your calendar… and it knows
what you’re searching for online. That makes it really great for marketers because we
can really take that information and tailor our marketing message with it.”
In addition, Krum continued, mobile search is frequently employed outdoors,
opening up opportunities for industries that see little benefit from conventional search activity on
home PCs. “People like restaurant [owners] are really missing out on the mobile opportunities…
people use mobile search when they have an immediate need to fill,” she said. “Companies that
haven’t done a particularly good job with internet marketing really have a huge opportunity with
mobile… there’s a lot of market share to be moved.”
However, Krum warned that high data charges in Australia are likely to be a real stumbling
block, with users wary of big bills for browsing. “That’s going to really slow down the adoption of
mobile marketing, because there’s such a disincentive to search,” she said. “In the US, we’ve just
got all of the carriers offering flat-rate data pricing… that’s kind of the tipping point.”
Looking to the future, Krum forecast a more device-agnostic search paradigm. “I see mobile
search going to a lot of different devices, because I see more and more devices becoming webenabled,”
she said. “I see the search engine starting to take those devices into account more. Even
within that, different devices have different demographics… the search engines can detect what device
you’re on, so they could start to include that in the algorithm as a means of personalisation.”
Communications Day - Petroc Wilton
Dig deeper for search metrics, urges Datalicious
Online search remains the prime channel for drawing traffic to websites but companies must get
smarter in evaluating the success of their search management efforts, argues Datalicious MD Christian
Bartens. The firm, which aims to improve search campaign management and optimisation
through via its Omniture platform, has already scored a high-profile win in the Australian telco
space via a contract with Vodafone.
“Everybody starts their session online with search. That’s the most important channel, whether it
be paid search or organic search, to get traffic; and there are so many things that companies can still
optimise and do better,” Bartens told CommsDay. “[There are] common mistakes companies make;
one of those is having your web analytics package, where you have all the insight on what is working
and converting for you, separated from your search management platform, the one that decides
how much to spend on each keyword. Because you have these silos, this separation, you lose a lot
of insight and you waste a lot of money.”
Bartens highlighted several advantages arising from integrating the two systems, including the
ability to build custom metrics for all parts of the online conversion process rather than just the final
stage, and the opportunity to differentiate between results from paid and organic search. “If I’m
looking at a platform that only helps me report and optimise the paid results, I’m missing out on
what’s happening in the organic area, which is where a great majority of search responses originate
from,” he said.
Other benefits, suggested Bartens, included the capacity to concatenate campaign responses and
examine cross-channel behaviour rather than just attributing success to the first or last touch point,
and to eliminate the duplication of conversion results that could arise through the use of multiple
discrete reporting tools. “If you keep these campaign platforms separated, you will never be able to
get true de-duplication; you will never be able to find out what channels need to work together to
achieve the final result; and you will never have this rich set of metrics to determine whether your
campaign result was a success or not,” he concluded.
Bartens will be speaking at the SMX Sydney conference next week.
Communications Day - Petroc Wilton
