Although a bit chaotic, lunch was good and full of great conversations with other search professionals. After recapping this morning’s sessions and beginning to explore the expo hall, the afternoon sessions were very busy.

Session #3 – Link Building Fundamentals

Speakers:

1. Debra Mastaler – President, Alliance-Link – @debramastaler

Moderator – Christine Churchill – President, KeyRelevance – @keyrelevance

This session looked at how to reach and get quality links, create anchor text to build authority and how to avoid mistakes that will hurt your credibility.

My take:

This session discussed some basics as well as dove into some advanced techniques. This is an item that always needs refreshing as the market changes. One thing is for sure links are still a big part of SEO.

There are many tools and tactics you can use to help you increase good, quality links:

• First step have good content to link to
• Clicks show you deserve to be there
• Gifs and Memes – Be unique and use hashtags relevant to the business.
• Tools to use:
  • Check my Links Chrome Extension
  • Ranktank.org
  • Talkwalker Alerts
  • Google Alerts
  • SEM Rush
    
• Avoid blog networks or less qualified websites

Top distribution channels:

• B2C
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Google+
• B2B
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Google+
  • SlideShare
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest

Take aways:

• Good links can have good results
• Relevancy and quality is key
• Ask questions before getting into a linking partnerships – Is this a good site? Is there too many ads? Is the site tied to a network? Is it mobile?
• Avoid unnatural links
• Keep up on your backlinks – Cleanup bad links to your site that you might not be aware of (check your Search Console)
• Don’t over do it
• Avoid guest writing on bad or lacking websites
• #1 ways to get your content out and linked is email distribution
• Use images and media to promote links

Click the link below to see Debra Mastaler’s presentation:

The Art & Science of Building Links By Debra Mastaler

Session #4 – Using Paid Search & Social Together to Deliver the Ultimate Knockout Punch

Speakers:

1. Sahil Jain – CEO & Co-founder, AdStage, Inc., – @sahilio
2. Maggie Malek – Head of S- Pamela Parker – Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land – @pamelaparkerocial Media, MMI Agency – @MagsMac
3. Tara Siegel – Sr. Director of Social, Pepperjam – @TSiegel21

Moderator – Pamela Parker – Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land – @pamelaparker

This session involved how to apply your hard-earned expertise to marrying search and social media advertising together.

My take:

What a fun session! Focus was on helping look at your campaigns holistically, from the brand and business goals. Meet together as a team in the beginning, bring all of your teams together, whether they are at the same agency, brand or not and share the data. Share things like seasonality, trends, etc.

Take aways:

• Do not set your campaigns up, and just forget about them. Optimize and test! Creating personas together is key to helping engage and drive action.

• Trying to reach millennials? They spend 57% of their time online on Facebook. Trying to reach females? They make up ⅔ of the Instagram audience.

• Need to look at everything holistically instead of silo – social, display, email, traditional, search… all of it!

• Targeting needs to be consistent, right people, the right message. 

• Nobody likes clickbait, so don’t be that.

• Wondering how to win at the relevancy score? Use specific targeting and make your messaging for that. Update ads regularly in order to keep this up.

• Search queries can help trigger audience development through Facebook… that’s right your Google searches can help put you into audience segments through social.

• Social and search together can help increase the number of touch points through the decision making process – Ultimately increasing number of qualified business leads!

• Social retargeting can also help move consumers down the funnel to becoming a customer.

• Creating personas is key to developing the proper strategy and messaging for your audiences.

Click the links below to see their presentations:

How to Reach Ideal Customers Using Advanced Search & Social Tactics By Sahil Jain

Paid Search & Social: The Ultimate Knock-Out Punch By Maggie Malek

Using Search Techniques to Win at Paid Social By Tara Siegel

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