Looking For Feedback on Pubcon

I am a SEO Loser and have not yet made it to one of the big SEO/Webmaster Conferences, but this post is for those of you who have attended Pubcon, SES, AdTech, Affiliate Summit or any of the other conferences directed towards our industries.

Are the conferences worth the money you spent in travel, hotels, time away from your business, or other expenses? Do you think there is a direct or indirect return on your investment and if so how long until you see this return?

If there is one tip you could share with us Loser SEO types from the recent Pubcon in Vegas, what would it be?

I look forward to your comments.

Important Tips From the 2006 Las Vegas Pubcon

Over at Ibnu Asad’s blog they have put together a nice collection of tips from the recent Pubcon conference. The information that is at these conference is very valuable and any non SEO Loser would be attending them, but I have to read and stay up to date via the various blogs of visitors and panelist.

Hopefully you were at the conference, but if you might have missed these SEO Tips they will be of interest to you.

The Title and How it Affects Your Traffic and Rankings

The Title, is a part of the code of your website that resides between the tags and also shows up in the top header portion of the browser that is visiting it. This title is a very key element to getting search engine rankings as well as traffic from these rankings.

Most search engine visitors scan the results page looking specifically for a title that catches their eye and appears to be targeted to their search. The title , on the first page, that most likely matches their search query will usually be the first one they click. When you are making your titles, and I hope that you do put thought into creating titles that are unique for each page. Make sure the title is related to the on page content that you are delivering on that specific individual page. If your site is about Mortgages and you have a page that specifically talks about Heloc Loans, make sure that title properly reflects that individual page.

If you do not have unique titles across your page, search engines can consider the page Duplicate Content and that page will be filtered and most likely not help your traffic. It could even end up in the supplemental index. When updating your titles, also consider unique, on-content, meta keywords and descriptions as well. Again, to not be flagged as duplicate content.

When writing your titles and meta tags, I would suggest that you put your primary keyword at the front of these. Make your title “Mortgage information and advice on Interest Rates, Terms, and More” Instead of “Information and advice of different types of Mortgages” or “Jimmy’s Loan Company” or “Home Page”.

Remember, your Title and Meta Description are like a free Adwords ad. They are the copy that you are using to try and convince a search engine visitor to choose your site. Make them appealing to that visitor, and you will have a higher CTR (Click Thru Rate), and you will also likely see improved rankings in the search engines from have unique titles on each page.

Are You Looking for Daily Recaps From Pubcon

I was not able to attend Pubcon in Las Vegas this year, likely because I am a SEO Loser. But I found a couple of sites providing recaps on the events.

SEORoundTable is providing an excellent recap of the all of the events with a lot of detail on what they are seeing and hearing. If you have not visited SEO Round Table before, it is a site that you may want to get used to visiting.

SockMoney is an great blog that is doing a small recap of the events and their comments on them.

Update: Dan Zarrella from DanZarrella.com is also Live Blogging from Pubcon. Thanks for sharing Dan.

Update 2: Chris Winfield, President of 10e20webdesign.com, is also at Pubcon blogging about the event with pictures. You can find Chris’s blog here.

Update 3: Looking for another option for staying up on the happenings at Pubcon? Joe Duck is covering Pubcon as well and includes many great pictures in his flickr account. Enjoy.