(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz discussed "igniting the SEO training fire." He says companies have to create a "culture of SEO." They need to test campaigns.

He notes that 88% of all clicks take place on organic (not paid) results. He cites the following as important metrics to keep track of:

- visits from search engines

- # of pages drawing at least 1 visit

- time and human resources spent on SEO

- total lifetime value of customers acquired from SEO

- trend lines of search traffic and conversions

Melanie Mitchell of Folio Investing spoke after Fishkin. She says, "Everyone in the company plays a role in SEO." But not very many companies are set up to do SEO in a good way. You have to make sure everyone knows their role. She says to do the following:

- Set up training
- Define your goals up front
- Tailor training sessions based upon people
- Define intended audience
- Define documentation objectives
- Ask: What’s relevant to each department? (Ex. design team, advertisers, etc.)
- Develop a course, outline and track it

She says it requires ongoing training. You have to set internal standards, provide tools, and have a measurement track — pages indexed, search referrals, user behavior, etc.

Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts spoke after that. He says to consider visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners. Custom training is needed because everyone learns differently.

Spencer’s own company starts with the 3 pillars of natural search optimization:

- site indexation
- content optimization
- link building

Educate your staff on technical areas. Spencer says that even if you work with an agency, you should know what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

Dave Lloyd from Cisco adds that the aim of your training should be behavior change. Possible topics of training include keyword research and landing pages. He says you should invite and engage with bloggers.

If you’re struggling with budget cuts, this is all advice that could save you a good amount of money in some hard times. Abby Johnson contributed to this report from SMX West. See what other experts had to say on the topic here.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

 John Battelle

Battelle is, of course, a well-known tech journalist and author of The Search.  He’s the founder, chairman, and CEO of Federated Media, too.  Short of people like Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer – who would be rather less objective – Battelle’s probably about as qualified as anybody to make predictions.  So with introductions out of the way, we’ll move on to the meat of his keynote.

Battelle started by talking about some Google-related issues.  He does, for example, believe the search giant has benefited from all the content newspapers put online, but doesn’t see the for-profit corporation buying any paper companies.  Instead, if a transaction occurs at all, its Google.org arm might instead be the one to step in and make an acquisition.

Then there’s the matter of market dominance.  Battelle doesn’t think Google will lose its lead any time in the near future.  He made the interesting prediction that Microsoft will "buy" search just as it bought distribution for Windows, though, which could result in an exchange of five or ten percentage points.

As for a more general industry outlook, Battelle said, "We’re still really early in the search game."  He compared the average searcher’s current situation to being stuck in a foreign country where they have to communicate by pointing and poking.  Leaps in natural language processing should fix this.

Finally, for the marketers out there, Battelle added, "If you’re making media online, you need to be making that kind [engaging] of media that’s called conversational marketing."  He pointed to the presence of Dell and Comcast on Twitter as examples, and has a book called The Conversation Economy on the way with more details.

WebProNews anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro, said,"search helps identify who we are and what we’re interested in."

He presents a case study that looked at the Internet nave compared to the Internet savvy. The Internet naive had the same amount of brain activity while reading compared to searching. The Internet savvy had more brain activity while searching then they did reading text.

"Search has come to the point where we do a lot of it by habit," said Hotchkiss.

Larry Cornett

Larry Cornett, VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo, said the best way to receive feedback is to talk to users and find out their search behavior. Find out about users search experiences and get feedback about product launches.

Yahoo visited six different cities in the U.S. and asked 150 consumers about the ideal search experience.

Key themes they heard were:
Information overload
Text overload
Impersonal experience

Cornett says the average user doesn’t respond well to hundreds and thousands of results. Text-heavy search results pages provide meager decision-making information. Users need to repeatedly reintroduce themselves to search engines.

Users want:
The Internet supports their life activity and search needs to keep up.
Understand true intent
Provide richer, more relevant experiences

Ramez Naam, Group Program Manager-Live Search, Microsoft, said understand your customers and it will help to improve your product.

Searchers behave in whole tasks:
Query
Click
Convert

Most customer time is not on single-queries. Most search sessions are less than 3 minutes, but most time is spent on difficult searches. Think long term relationship and brand.

WebProNews anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

 Chris Bennett

Gab Goldenberg, the owner of SEO ROI Services, recommended building a following by means of piggyback distribution.  He supports the concept of guest content, too, suggesting that reputations and relationships will build on themselves.

If you’d rather take a more direct approach to attracting eyeballs, Goldenberg likes advertising techniques including video banners and text message opt-in lists.  Facebook ads, community ads, RSS ads, and the sponsorship of whitepapers or podcasts are on his list of approved ideas, as well.

Chris Bennett, the owner of 97th Floor, then stated that it’s important to know why you’re using social media.  Is it a matter of figuring out links, branding, or promotion?  Regardless, you’ll want to research by keyword, URL, industry, and niche, and he noted, "Social media is a visibility platform."

Next, Bennett gave some more specific tips, saying the "best stuff in social media is news and current events."  He pointed out that StumbleUpon is growing really fast, and recommended the Twitter marketing tool known as EasyTweets.

Content quality also matters, according to Bennett.  He said, "Having really good content can make up for having a shaggy account."

WebProNews anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

The speech started with a comparison of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to children – they may disappoint, but Sullivan loves them, anyway.  The "love" theme then continued as Sullivan explained that Google’s genuine fondness for search is why the giant’s been so successful.

In the future, Sullivan thinks Google would do better still if it shows real-time CPC for ads, reveals the AdSense split to publishers, and solves the map spam issue.  But focusing on more services like Google Book Search and Knol may not be productive, as Sullivan said, "Google is not a media company and needs to be careful."

On to Yahoo, then, which Sullivan called the little search engine that should’ve.  To support this label, he pointed to the loss of talent and general disarray it’s suffered.  Sullivan hopes Yahoo manages to keep innovating – he likes SearchMonkey and Search Pad – and simply not anger its advertisers any more.

Yahoo may not have to worry about all that, though, since Sullivan sees some sort of Microsoft deal as inevitable.  "We know that they want it and we know they’re going to get it," he said.  Which won’t help the Redmond-based corporation’s "very bad reputation of being too dominant," but Sullivan also pointed out that some people are rooting for Microsoft because they want to see competition in the industry.

Anyway, Sullivan believes Microsoft can sharpen its game by picking (and sticking to) a brand name less awkward than Microsoft MSN Windows Live.

As for some smaller issues, Sullivan doesn’t see why Google and Yahoo don’t offer Twitter search.  He pointed out that the great apps Urbanspoon and Chowhound are running unchallenged.  And Google hasn’t really done much in the mobile arena at all.

Sullivan then wrapped up the keynote by discussing search and the recession.  He believes the true effect of the recession has yet to be determined, but advised using analytics in the event things get tighter.  Sullivan also said, "Search marketing is still in its teens but is widely recognized as one the most effective forms of reaching people."

WebProNews anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Ryan Gibson

Ryan Gibson, Director of Marketing, The Rimm Kaufman Group, said to "Look at all the data to understand how your customers are finding you."

Offline look at TV, radio, print and other media. Online look at social media, content, search and email.

It’s important to understand that it’s a step-by-step process learning how customers come to you.

Different marketing channels will initiate customer interactions. Capturing offline conversion is key. Work to understand where the value lies for you.

Chris Knoch, Principal Consultant for the Omniture Best Practices Group, said impressions leads to clicks, which leads to conversions.

Know your site’s micro conversions, including product views, cart adds, cart removals, checkouts, cost per step metrics and step-to-step conversion rates.

If you tie offline and online, you will generate more leads.

Dustin Engel

Dustin Engel, Vice President, Strategy & Media, Range Online Media, said, "Search has actually become part of consumer behavior and conversion path."

Search has a symbiotic relationship with all other marketing activities. Attribution adoption among brands creates more flexibility and diversification.

Quick tips:
Know what starts the conversation and what closes sale — first and last touch
Weigh less value equally across all paid touchpoints
Pass branded term value upstream
Move towards complete online ecosystem insight
Create your own secret sauce
Incorporate offline spend and footprint data