This is my first San Jose-based Search Engine Strategies where I was an exhibitor rather than attendee.  It was an interesting experience – especially since I only attended one session. Instead of live blogging it (my laptop was in use at the booth), I took GASP hand-written notes. By the way - it was a great session, and is covered by MarketerInsight - which saves me the trouble of trying to understand my handwriting.

The first thing I noticed was that the exhibit hall seemed pretty empty. There were several booth spaces that were uninhabited, with one or two having signs that were removed just before the show started. For those of you who have lived the exhibitor life, you’re familiar with the long white paper signs that signify your 10 x 10 part of the show floor. That’s a pretty expensive sign, actually – and depending on the show, can run upwards of $10k or more. If you make that kind of investment to exhibit, there must be a real reason why you wouldn’t show up, right?

The next thing I noticed was that there were a lot more industry niche specialists attending SES. It’s really interesting since SEO was a niche specialty less than a decade ago. Maybe I wasn’t aware of the trend to specialize by industry, but it became really clear as I talked to people at the PRWeb booth.

Speaking of talking with people at the booth – the traffic was steady and contacts were very engaged. It has been my experience at previous SES SJ shows that many people in the exhibit hall were tchotchke-seakers: those collecting pens, pads, rubber frogs and tee shirts from every booth while laughing off the booth staff. Not this year. Few of the attendees were just seeking freebies – although many were asking about special offers for show attendees.

And I couldn’t say anything about Search Engine Strategies San Jose without bringing up Search Bash. Brandy and team at Webmasterradio.fm out did themselves again this year! The Alice in Wonderland theme, characters, music and basic party chi were all superb.  Li Evans AKA StorySpinn has a great collection of photographs of Search Bash 2009 on Flickr.

Last week, I was updating some bids in my Adwords account and saw a new little icon next the bids on in the keywords view. Although I can’t be certain, it looks like a little key.

Since I didn’t get any notification that there was a new feature, I had no idea what it meant or what it would do. So, being curious, I clicked on it.What resulted was a light box with several different bid levels and associated impressions listed.

That was last week. This week, it now includes estimated clicks and impressions at different maximum bids for keywords that have (I would guess) accumulated enough data to support a projection.

Although interesting as a concept, I am a bit skeptical about the application. For instance, the keywords that I looked at were primarily brand phrases, where my bid levels (one would think) do not need to be very high, given that I have a 10/10 relevancy score, average position of 1 and plenty of budget for the ads to be shown all day long.

The bid simulator, however, suggested some outrageously high bid levels! Here is a screen cap of one of my brand phrases – notice the top bid it recommends is extremely high. Why would I want to risk paying up to $36 per click on a brand term to get an additional 31 impressions?

I recently participated in a case study with Google on their Conversion Optimizer tool in Adwords. The case study was published, and there have been a fair number of associated articles that link back to the Adwords blog article, which quotes part of the discussion. At this date, fifteen links now go to the post, including an article at WebProNews, and it has a PR of 4. Pretty cool stuff. Read the various articles here:

Conversion Optimizer – Google Adwords Blog

Using Google’s Conversion Optimizer – WebProNews

Back in early June I went to the SMX Advanced meeting in Seattle (see several live-blog posts from that event). During a session break, I went to the show floor and was going from booth to booth. At the Google booth, Courtney was talking to several visitors about the value of the conversion optimizer. I had recently set up a number of campaigns and had seen some great improvements in visibility, conversion rates and lowered cost per conversion. Although a bit rude, I jumped into the conversation and shared my experience.  Courtney asked for my business card, and reached out to me right after the show to start working on the study.

Here are some things I learned from participating:

1. Don’t be shy. If you have a good experience with a company’s product, tell them. Also, tell them you would be happy to participate in a case study.
2. Ask for what you want. I wanted to get exposure for PRWeb’s services – not just the results that I got from using their tool. I really wanted a solid description of our services included, and they provided that as background to the case study story. I also wanted a link from Google. So bad I could taste it. Instead of just having them link our URL to our domain, I specifically asked for an in-content link with my target keywords, pointing to the URL I wanted. Kaching! DONE!
3. Follow up and keep the ball rolling. I have been on the other end of case studies – and it’s easy to get distracted with day-to-day work. If you want the visibility that a good case study can provide, be persistent (and friendly) with the company providing it.
4. Be picky. There are other case studies I have not participated in. Why? Well, either it would show the pale under-belly of what I am doing, it would not bring value, or there are political reasons not to participate.
5. Be in the know. If you work for a larger company, do  your research – there may be someone else in the organization who is working with a vendor who might feature your company. Reach out to your colleagues and see what opportunities there are. Also, be certain to help with guiding inbound linking and company positioning so that you do get the exposure value that you want.

Although it can be a fair amount of work to participate in case studies, they can be a great solution for both getting visibility and providing value to a valued vendor. And if you are looking for inbound links – a great way to get those, too!