Searchcamp.in : Afternoon session, second day

Some lively discussions as we moved from the presenter-audience mode. Anyone who had questions aired them and there were experts in the audience answering them. Obviously, Google had the most questions. Next on is a discussion between what companies expect out of SEM/O agencies. CEOs of Sulekha & Bharatmatrimony in talk with Vivek (communicate2) and Rajesh (Position2).

Yet another presentation from the pinSTORM folks

That’s the third one! And the topic is ‘Search marketing on steroids’. More marketing talk following  Vikram’s on what efrontier was doing. But it is nice to know what the PPM companies do behind the scenes – the tech & methodology being followed basically.

Complexities in PPM

That’s what Vikram is talking about now. And his company Efficient Frontier is taking a new algorithmic approach for the optimal performance of a client’s PPM campaign.

Searchcamp.in- Second day starts

Ratan K K from pinSTORM’s got a intriguing title – ‘Song and dance for a click’. Says internet spend in 2010 will be $44 billion and 23 will be from search.

Searchcamp.in : First day sessions come to an end

A nice quiz brought the day’s proceedings to an end. Actually, there ’s much more planned for the whole evening – party & dinner at a cool karaoke coffee pub. Hmm, gonna miss that one Will be back tomorrow morning.

Afternoon sessions at Searchcamp.in

Starts with a panel discussion. Interesting topic – whether to have SEO/M inhouse or outsource it. 4 of the panelists are from SEO/M companies with a lone wolf b’day boy Venki. But the audience’s gonna support the loner!

Preso on web analytics

Trinadh Rao who is now with Franklin Templeton is on stage now. Nice start saying just tracking referrers etc using Google Analytics isn’t exactly web analytics. It doesn’t just stop with bringing in (lots and lots of) traffic. You will have to track, analyze where visitors go, why/how they convert/not convert (buy/not buy) etc.

Interesting stat – Only 20% of visitors from a SE click through to go to a second page. Will have to see how the different Zoho service pages (which have nothing but just 4 or 5 bulleted points) fare here!

Mahesh Murthy from pinSTORM

Interesting views, ‘8 Trends for 2008′.|

• move to pay-for-performance (CPA/P4P)
  • better clickfraud metrics
  • quality traffic. clients will take issue with GYM etc for crappy traffic
• traffic instead of just top SERP positions
• ‘pay per organic click’ – new term/model!
• country specific SEs, not just Google. Sensis for Australia, Yandex for Korea, Baidu for China etc
• cross engine SEO/M mgmt. again, not just Google
• SEO and SEM to merge – agencies will (have to) start doing both
• P4P will xtend to other media
  • more than PPM – even per pixel basis
• India will be central. think no doubt abo’ it, given that the conference is literally packed!

Nice tips to track SEO …

… emerged during the first preso’s discussion. Particularly for phone calls – have unique phone numbers assigned for each campaign.

And Prabuddha reco’ed having an org like SEMPO here to put a proper perspective on SEO/SEM in India, minimize the frauds being committed.

Searchcamp.in kickstarts

   Nice being here with the TKF guys once again. After a light sandwich & the intro talk by Kiruba, Prabuddha of SEOGuru starts with ‘how to know the returns of SEO’.  Hope to have a productive weekend