The Basics of SEO/SEM
The speakers were great, but “the basics” is right. This was very basic and unfortunately not in-depth enough to really teach much. It was simply a rehash of what most marketers should certainly know, and yet only enough to generate more questions for a true novice.
The real issue was that we had four speakers on the panel (moderator Joel Barry/LatinMedios.com, Alexandre Kavinski/Hotlist, Paulo Henrique Araujo/Motorola, and Andre Snitcofsky/Latin3), and no one had enough time to really get into anything. There were only slight variations in the content of each speakers presentation, but those variations actually brought out one larger concept that often gets missed by SEO and SEM teams:
Know your goals and Know your audience.
Know your goals would seem obvious, but what the panel really appeared to be getting at was a concept of “emphasizing the word marketing in Search Engine Marketing.” Don’t forget, despite the prevalence of direct marketing in the paid search space, there is a lot of room for more traditional advertising goals. Those goals should also be progressive for new players in the space. There’s a learning curve, so take your time, look at your results and grow slowly.
The natural focus for “know your audience” was research and a wonderful recommendation of researching key terms for your audience by going to user forums should be heeded by the attendees; current data and competitor trends seldom point to the future as well as user generated content.
The most interesting part of the workshop though, was brief discussion about emerging platforms and the many new issues these platforms will generate for search. With more powerful mobile phones, wifi enabled portable PlayStations, XBox live, and Google’s own research into search through your TV remote, come many new issues for marketers. And yet, “Know your goals and Know your audience” will still ring true.
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By search engine optimization on 2008 09 15
