At the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, there was a Bing Toolbox workshop that went through various tools offered in the Toolbox.

The "toolbox" section of the Toolbox features:

- Add a Site
- Submit Your Sitemap
- Get an AppID
- New Silverlight Tools

The Add a Site feature lets you submit your domain URL directly to Bing. The sitemap feature lets you submit a sitemap file via Bing’s Webmaster tools. The Get an AppID lets you get started with the Bing API, and the new Silverlight tools section takes you to where you can download the Silverlight software developer kit and manipulate search results with the click of a button.

Also in the Toolbox area are snippets from the Webmaster Blog and the Developer blog.
 

The "Developers" section of the Toolbox features:

- A whitepaper
- Access to the Bing Software developer Kit
- Bing Product Guidelines
- Libraries and apps for getting started with the API, the Bing Maps developer center, and Bing Translator
- Related resources for Silverlight SDK for Bing, PowerToys, and the Code for Green Contest
- Bing API Terms of Use
 

The "Webmasters" section of the Toolbox features:

- Bing product guidelines
- Site submission
- Sitemap submission
- Bing API Web Page Error Toolkit
- Malware detection
- SEO toolkit
- Related resources like the Bing whitepaper, Channel Bing video, and Webmaster help guidelines

The "Ads & Campaign Tools" section of the Toolbox features:

- Access to register for the Ads Pilot Program
- Access to adCenter
- Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tools
- Search advertising tools
- adCEnter adExcellence program
- Resource for all ad tools

Beyond these four main sections there are also navigational tabs for support and community, which can be used to connect with Bing and other Bing users. Community provides access to blogs, forums, media, and events, while support gives you access to FAQs, webmaster help, developer help, and Bing API documentation.

"Today search has become an integral part of our life. Search has become a platform," said Bing Principal Group Program Manager Rajesh Srivastava. "Bing Toolbox is a tool that helps you connect with search. What is Bing’s strategy? What are our goals for Bing? We have to deliver the best, most comprehensive experience for users. Bing is about delivering great results. We are also looking at organizing the results to enhance the search experience. If you are doing a search you have a decision making process in mind. Bing is all about making the user get to their decisions quicker!"

This was a sponsored session, in case you couldn’t gather that from such a quote, but Bing is still new to the search block, and webmasters still have questions. This is all the more reason to pay attention to what Microsoft’s doing, and the features they’re offering in this Toolbox.

On a related note, Bing says they have a "treasure trove" of data and are working to get that info to developers via the Bing API 2.0. They say they’re adding more and more pieces of data to the API that users can extract.

Here are the 7 Proven Ways to get Your Website on Page 1 Organically & then Convert as stated by the presenter Shawn Moore.

1. Content is King
   What your content says, what your images and video show not only give users a first impression, but those items are also important to how a search engine is going to interpret your website.
2. Navigation and Architecture
   Looking into the way that your menus and internal linking structure are important. Can the web crawlers see and index your navigation? Or is it in JavaScript or Flash that may not be as search friendly?
3. Blogs
   Using a blog is just another way to generate more content for the search engines to index and use to rank your website.
4. Quality and Keyword Rich Inbound Links
   The number of links you have is important, but the quality of those links is more important. Get links from relevant sites and ensure that those links are using keyword phrases and not just your website address or business name.
5. Database
   Shawn said that choosing the right database for your site is important. Some are not search engine friendly and that choosing the wrong one will cause lots of issues down the line.
6. Electron Press Releases or Optimized Releases
   These releases give your site more exposure in search engines and the keyword rich links in the content can help increase your rankings.
7. Domain Name Strategy
   It was recommended that, if you can, choose a domain name with keyword phrases in it as it’ll give an added boost in search engines. You can also purchase additional domain names and forward them onto your website. Try thinking about what a user may type into the address bar of their browser and then register that domain for easy access.

Some of the tips are well known, others were a bit questionable to me. I’m still trying to figure out how a certain type of database can hurt a site as it’s all about how the content is displayed on that page and the URLs used that is the part to be concerned with.

Overall, the session was a good one for those just starting out in the industry.

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Here are a few of the tips & thoughts that were shared:

Craig Danuloff

• Invisibility; what can’t we see?
• Every search is a question, every ad is an answer. Keywords simply connectors.
• ROAS is a ‘feel good’ metric. don’t take it seriously.
• Deception – Can you trust what you see?
• Accuracy – What’s the margin of error. Is there statistical significance?
• Banish brand terms as they throw everything off.
• Unlimited power from huge data volumes. Lots of campaigns lots of data and a fluid business environment.
• A change is not a test. Test design, test tracking, scoring test results.
• Apply math and statistics.
• Make a record of changes made to the site.

Brian Cosgrove

• Implementation – Everyone needs to ensure analytics are configured correctly.
• Filtering – Filter out internal traffic or those that come to the site as part of their job.
• Process should be: report, analyze, optimize, measure, repeat.
• How many pages are actually landing pages, how many are not getting visitors?
• Connect landing pages and keywords as a search engine doesn’t always drive traffic to what you think is the best page.

Heather Dougherty

• Use competitive intelligence to identify and analyze sem opportunities.
• Identify trends and seasonality.
• Analyze competitors strategy.
• Act upon opportunities.
• Get the calendar ready and stay ahead of seasonal trends.
• Understand paid vs organic search in specific industry.
• Look at competitors. Paid vs organic. Click thoroughs.
• What is the user intent? Example: Purchase an item or news/research.
• Can use analytics for reputation management.

Michael Stebbins

• What’s in your data? Most analytics have bounce rates, average time, page views, but does yours have conversion rate and cost of revenue per visit?
• The Grim Reaper: Find which 10% of ads are not performing and kill them.
• Find ads with high cost, bad ROI, low engagement, low conversion and those will help find the 10%
• They can either be cut or replaced.
• Don’t keep them hoping they’ll get better.
• Free Research Tool: Microsoft’s Commercial Intent
• Free Research Tool: Google Adwords Keyword too. With this you can even check age range and sex to help target your ad content
• Free Research Tool: Google Ad Planner

Brett Crosby

• Came from Urchin and helped grow Google Analytics
• Wanted to make it easier for non-geeks to dive in and explore. Aka: The shallow end.
• Always setup goals and funnels.
• Customize dashboard for your needs.
• Customize email reports for different rolls in the company.
• Setup goal value. This will help you see values per keyword
• If you can hook up to eCommerce data, it’s even better

The session had great speakers from the technical side of things to the beginner side of analytics. It was a lot of information in a short time, but still very good overall.

Comments

• Advanced B2B Search Marketing – Jessica
• Identify, Analyze, Act: SEM by the Numbers – Thomas
• What’s New with Google Analytics and Website Optimizer? – Ashley
• Global Search for the B2B SEM – Jessica
• 5 Things No One Will Tell You About SEM – Dana
• Search Advertising 101 – Dana
• 7 Proven Ways to Get Your Website on Page 1 Organically & Then Convert – Thomas
• Landing Page Testing & Tuning – Ashley
• Keynote with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella – Jessica
• SES San Jose Expo Hall Photos – Dana
• Measuring Success in a 2.0 World – Dana
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Danny Sullivan Third Door Media Lee
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Robert Scoble FastCompany.TV – Lee

Watch for even more in depth session coverage tomorrow on day 3 of SES San Jose. It’s so good, it’s like you’re here in person! Except you’re not.

Next up is the Google Dance!

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Nadella spoke on how Microsoft approaches search and how the company intends to shape trends in search development and how they intend to exploit them.

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Kevin Ryan Interviews Lee Siegal, SES Keynote

Siegal proposes that the internet culture is perhaps damaging our attention span and he points out the benefits of having intentionality about what we do. Interesting!

Lee Siegal, author of “Against the Machine”

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I’ve posted a few photos from the event to my Flickr account. Here are a sample:

I’ll have more photos from Day 2, later today.

If you’re looking for a re-cap of day one’s panels, then I suggest you take a look here and here.

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How much Search is enough? Aaron Goldman of Resolution Media, Steven Kaufman of Digitas, Robert Murray of iProspect and Bob Tripathi of Discover Financial Services were posed that very question by SES’s own, Kevin Ryan. While television is still the dominant media, search is making it’s way up, currently at 12%, according to Bob Tripathi. Bob described search’s impact with such examples as ad creative supporting TV, Brand building ads, Landing pages supporting a television ad, and a microsite supporting the TV spot. Search marketing has grown by more than 100% in over two years. Ultimately, search is where people go and find things, chimed in, Steven Kaufman. Steven mentioned that brands are getting savvier to the fact that their content is going to live in a lot more places than just on TV.

But Kevin kept coming back to the motherload of questions. Where is the money for Search going to come from? According to Aaron Goldman, one of the things that we need to recognize is that paid search is different than natural search. The budget for natural search isn’t usually marketing money. It’s IT money, Web site development money. Goldman said we’re starting to see that budget come from the creative side now.

Anne Kennedy (Beyond Ink) who helped moderate the roundtable, said that the money for search starts by using measurement. Search is the one medium that’s truly accountable and trackable. According to Aaron, search is now being used to justify traditional media budgets. We’re matching up query volume to TV broadcast. When something goes national we can see the search spike and that way we’re able to show the value in TV advertising. That accountability wasn’t there before.

Top session tips and takeaways:

Steven: Tip one: Recognize the outcome that you’re hoping to achieve and measure everything that you’re doing.

Robert: Recognize the difference between demand capture and demand generation, know your customer’s lifetime value and build in a test budget.

Bob: Educate your organizations. Maximize your spend, and figure out how you can take it further on the web

Aaron: Be open and be fluid with your budget allocation. Don’t just stick it one place and leave it there. From the consumer standpoint it’s all fluid so you have to mirror that with your budgets too.

Kevin: For a lot of people search is the only advertising they do. They don’t have money for TV, they don’t have money for the rest of this.

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Here are a few of the sessions I’m planning on covering:

More Customers, Fewer Costs – Why Marketing to the ‘Long Tail’ Makes Sense
Who doesn’t want more customers and fewer costs? Isn’t that a business’ dream? This session will be interesting as there have been recent stories on how the long tail is not as effective as we once thought. I still believe in the long tail though.

Semantic Search: How Will It Change Our Lives?
What? Change my life? That’s a pretty big promise. However, that’s what search does. It works to give the best results, which continually improve based on users needs. Just think back over the past few years; there has been blog search, universal search and local search all up and coming. Sounds like semantic search is next. Wouldn’t you agree?

Storyteller Marketing: How the Art of Storytelling Matches Up With the Business of Marketing
Ahh, story time. Everyone enjoys a good story, but where does that fall into play with SEO and online marketing? I can tell you a story about most anything, but throw in some package testing and spigot lingo and it’s a bit more difficult.

7 Proven Ways To Get Your Website On Page 1 Organically Then Convert
If it was only that easy right? I’m a bit skeptical here. If there are 7 proven ways, then as soon as they tell us, everyone will use them and, well, you can only have 10 on page 1. I hope this isn’t to high level and just about content, links and the stuff we already know.

Identify, Analyze, Act: SEM by the Numbers
Analytics is huge to a site’s success. How your visitors get to, and interact with, your site is extremely important and the stats hold all the secrets. But finding all the bits of gold that is buried in analytics can be tough to find. Hopefully they’ll show some secrets and insight into the best places to be looking. A little sad though that analytics based on Star Trek doesn’t appear on the schedule.

Google Dance
After a few refreshments Thomas will also be getting his groove on at the Google dance; even if he doesn’t know how to groove well.

Getting Vertical Search Right
Yes, it’s the world wide web, but you don’t have to compete with everyone. Being the best in your vertical is all a site needs to do. But how does one target some, but not everyone?

SEO Rehab & Intervention
Let me grab by celebrity attitude and I’ll be ready to go. I know none of my site’s have issues, but I’ll be sure to find issues in your sites.

Advanced Paid Search Techniques
PayPerClick is like the black sheep in SEO. It’s not organic or social, but it is a proven method for generating traffic and conversions. These paid links are OK! Just be careful not to blow your entire marketing budget in a few days or get a bunch of unqualified traffic. There has to be a happy medium.

SearchBash
More groovin and movin and networkin’ with ya’ll!

With all those sessions, the California palm trees and happy cows may not get enough attention. However, with all the knowledge poring in and great networking, there will be more than enough to keep busy.

If you’re going to SES San Jose next month, what sessions are you planning on attending? If you’re not sure, check out the full conference schedule.

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