Best of social & analytics tracks at SMX London 2010

The session wasn't truly eye-opening. The more regular tips and tricks were thrown at the audience. To sum up:

Hypothesis is Key. Conversion Science is knowing what to test:

- identify bottlenecks

- analyze them and setup multiple ideas on why they are there

- share your ideas with stakeholders

- create testing plans and

- then deploy the necessary experiments. 

The video pie is growing, quickly

The second session today, named "Advanced tactics for promoting YouTube videos", was a very refreshing one. With Dara Nasr, Avi Wilensky en Ciaran Norris on the panel, we didn't expect any different. Just a few quotes of that session:

- Video takes up to 1/3 of web traffic and will increase to 90% in 2013 (Cisco)

- At this moment we count up to 2 billion online video streams

- Every minute 24 hours of new video material is uploaded to youtube

- Video is 50 times more likely to appear in search results

- Share your video content, since more than 10% of all YouTube views were embedded on social websites

- If possible, create your own channel on YouTube and engage with your target group. YouTube offers free, brand sponsor channels and partner channels. 

- Use YouTube Insight for Analytics data, Captions for adding subtitles and Feather to cut down bandwidth use

- Make your headlines in YouTube 'Exclusive'

- Put thumbnails in the middle

- Let the comments roll

- If people embed the video, think how you can drive traffic to them

The best quote of this session came from Ciaran Norris: "If you get someone to watch you're video twice, you're hooked". He then showed the public a few very popular video's that went social and did the trick they were designed for. Here's one of them:

"If you can't figure out an action after looking at a report, don't use it, it's crap." (Pere Rovira)

For those of you who know Pere Rovira, he's a laid back Spanish guy with tons of analytics experience. Pere was speaking in the 'Top ten customized search analytics reports' session, together with Alex Cohen, Tami Dalley and Will Critchlow. We've summed up the best information about this session below. I can recommend visiting SEOInsight to because they wrote an extensive coverage of this session. 

- reports won't get you higher ROI, acting on them will

- keep the periods between reporting and acting on them as short as possible

- don't get obsessed with the quality score on a keyword level, just look at how your campaign is performing money-wise and settle when you are satisfied.   

- don't focus on the numbers at the specific moment, but look at the changes over periods. 

- don't focus on Click Through Rate, but get insight in your 'Return On Ad Spend' to define success. 

- be careful with first click attribution: "It's like giving your first girlfriend the credits for your current marriage'. Look at the distilled custom external javascript file which allows first touch tracking. 

Will Critchlow had the best presentation in this session, which is included right below.

The Art Of Measuring Local & Mobile Search Results

This session was all about how to get the most out of your local and mobile strategy. With Martijn Beijk, Mike Belasco and Christine Churchill as speakers, the quality of the presentations was at its best. 

Mike Belasco started out with the "Local 7-pack", the Google Maps result with 7 companies you get when performing a local search query. He explains that it is difficult to identify traffic and measure conversions from local 7-packs and local search queries in general. Not only are search engines telling us not to use tracking numbers, most conversions don't happen only either. The data Google provides via Local Business Center (LBC) is incomplete and there are no great rank checkers for the results in the 7-pack. 

Together with Martijn Beijk, Mike showed us a way how to track traffic from the 7-pack with Google Analytics:

1. Use a 'local vanity' URL as your URL in your Local Business Center

2. Create a 'tracking' URL

3. Setup a '301 redirect' from your vanity URL to the real 'tracking' URL

4. Update your Google Analytics (GA) code snippet to allow # instead of ? to denote URL parameters

5. Configure Advanced Segmentation in GA to view results. 

Mike Belasco, Martijn Beijk and Christine offer more tips and insights in their presentations, some of which are included right below. 

- 20-40% of the search queries done on Google are with local intent

- mobile and location based services like foursquare and gowalla will take a bigger portion of the marktshare the next few years

- track offline conversions by using phone call tracking, coupons or discount codes, in-store surveys, buy in store options

- use conversion attribution to give each source the credits the deserve for delivering the visitor and making the conversion happen

- optimize on the names of your employees. We all search on peoples names, why not get a share of that traffic

- don't just include a contact form on your contact page. Also add address info, phone info and add Google Maps for driving directions. 

- make sure the phone number is presented in a common format, so machines like Google and Skype can recognize them as phone numbers. 

Want the best of SMX presented to you live?

On June 17, search marketing firm Indenty will be organizing the event 'Search Marketing Insights Session' in the Amsterdam Arena, where the best of what has been presented at SMX London will be presented again, complemented with other hot topics in the Netherlands. The event will host various speakers in a setup that is similar to the SMX. 

If you're situated in Holland and would like to visit the event, register here and use the code 'COWBOY' to get discount.