Australian SEO Conference StealthCon

Australian Search, whilst a small industry, has a group of very passionate individuals who go to great lengths to meet like minded people and talk about the current state of play in the Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation industries.

After hearing about the success of events like PubConference and SES being held in the US and the UK, Chris Dimmock (Chris_D) and Warwick Bone (Woz) have organised StealthCon, a series of events for webmasters and SEOs to come together for beer, networking and a good old chin wag.

I interviewed Woz about the up-coming StealthCons.

So how did you guys come up with the idea of StealthCon?

StealthCon follows the original concept of PubConference, which was the first informal gathering of SEO Webmasters for drinks and networking in the UK. What started out as an innocent “wanna get together for a drink?” ended up as quite a large number of people converging on a Pub in the UK to talk the hours away. Many friendships and business relationships were formed in that initial event, which has been replicated in various forms around the world.

The idea of an Australian event had been floating around in my head for some time, and I suspect the same was the case for Chris, but we had been too busy to organise anything. Then Chris started the whole thing off last year by organising a dinner and drinks session to coincicde with a visiti to Australia by Shak, a well-known international operator in the Adwords arena at the time. 

This year we decided to organise things properly starting with the Melbourne event earlier this year. We figured that the format worked so why change anything. Besides, most Aussies traditionally go to the pub on Friday nights anyway, so Stealthcon is really just a formalisation of current 'industry best practice'.

You have held the Melbourne StealthCon, judging from that, how are you expecting Sydney and Brisbane to go?

From the response so far I suspect both Sydney and Brisbane will go very well.

How do you think StealthCon has impacted on people in the search industry in Australia and what can people expect to see/hear/find out at these types of gatherings?

Impact = networking and camaraderie. Australia is such a far flung country and SEO is such a small part of it, just being able to meet up with comrades and put faces to names, and names to nics, is a big plus.

The question is not what people can expect to take away, rather what they can bring. Often in the middle of a seemingly innocent discussion, someone will say something that will set off a few light bulbs in people’s minds. Those moments are what it is all about. But you have to give to receive.

So how do you think Search in Australia is different to say the US or the UK and does this come up at your events?

Hmmm, SEO is SEO, the world over. There can be major differences with non-English speaking countries, but with Aus, apart from the culture, there is not much difference. Spelling and words are different, something you have to think about depending on target country, but basic techniques are the same. Hence, what we discuss is pretty much the same the world over.

So can anyone interested in search come to your events, do you have to register or can you just turn up and chat (and drink)?

Sure. Anyone interested in Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation is welcome. Registration is not necessary, but prior notification to woz@stealthcon.com would be appreciated for numbers.

The next StealthCon is being held at the Belgian Beer Cafe - The Rocks, Sydney 2nd June 2006, from 5PM onwards.

The Brisbane event is TBA so keep your eyes peeled and be sure to visit http://www.stealthcon.com/ for updates.

Google Creates Death Ray

I always wondered what Sergey and Larry did in their 20% time!

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2073281060516.gif

No More Commissions for Australian Media Buyers says Google

According to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, it looks as though Google is stopping the act of paying media buyers a 10% commission in
Australia.

It seems most of the media buying agencies interviewed for this article don’t seem to mind the move by Google as it levels out the playing field

Google Trends out of Beta

Google has brought its Google Trends program out of beta, giving an insight into search behavior through worlds most used search engine. Google Trends enable a user to see a graphical representation of the difference between two search queries. Searches are shown in a timeline with relevant news items (taken from Google News) inserted at peaks.

An interesting addition is the ability to break down search trends into cities, regions and languages, giving users the ability to drill down, getting a more refined search result.

Google Trends does not give an amount on searches however; savvy marketers with the right tools can get a rough idea of amounts. Whilst this new addition to Google’s toolbox is not a definitive guide to the world’s searches, it will definitely help marketers and business owners get a little more insight to Google’s search data.

Free Webcast on Small Business Search Engine Marketing

Hostaway, a global leader in hosting services who opened an office in Sydney last month are offering a free Webcast for small businesses to learn about search engine marketing and how to increase traffic to their websites.

Some of the items covered in the Webcast include

– Growth of local online advertising and how it affects small businesses
– Your business is online, now how do you get noticed?
– Importance of having a presence on search engines
– A step-by-step guide on how to use SEM to drive traffic to your site
– Common search marketing mistakes to avoid

John Lee, Vice President of Global Marketing and General Manager of Hostway had this to say about small businesses trying to make headway in the search space.

"The simple fact is that search engines have become consumers' starting point for researching products and services. If small businesses don't have a presence on the major search engines, they're missing a great opportunity to connect with customers at the exact moment they are looking for what these small businesses sell,"

To register for the May 23rd Web seminar, "How Search Engine Marketing can Boost Small Business' Revenue," please visit http://www.hostway.com/webinar/sem.html.

Anzwers

I have been using www.anzwers.com.au as my main search engine for the last couple of days and it has been an interesting experience. I must admit, it did take a little getting used to (not going to Google or Yahoo straight away) but after a couple of days using another engine for my primary searches, it seems fairly natural.

Anzwers have kept their UI (define) very clean, having the search box in the middle of the page and their directory headings down the left hand side. They have a funky little feature under the search box that allows you to search for homes, cars, jobs or holidays.

It seems they aggregate data from the most popular search terms and sites and list these in an order of popularity. This I think tends to add to a sheep mentality keeping the big boys big and the smaller companies on page 5478. They don’t offer any widget’s like a toolbar so I had to add them as my homepage which was kind of annoying, but I got over it after a couple of days.

One very strange aspect of the site is that they only show news, image and local search tabs after you go to one of the genre search tabs mentioned above. Personally I think it makes sense to offer these facilities on your homepage. I say this because I found this facility only after three days of using this engine.

Even stranger is that these facilities are on a subsidiary engine of Anzwers called Ansearch. It seems a little strange to me that they don’t just integrate the two engines into one clean, easy-to-use system.

One thing I did notice about Anzwers homepage is that some of the links do not work. I clicked on the ‘advertise with us’ link and it bounced me back to the homepage. Call me crazy but I don’t think it’s a great idea to not let people find out about your advertising programs.

I thought Anzwers was a bit slow (especially when compared to the likes of Google and Yahoo) to bring up their serps (define) and their Australian results brought back more relevant results than their international results.

All in all Anzwers is a good engine for Australian searches but I would go somewhere else for international results.

Update – I wrote to Anzwers asking them to conduct an interview with me about where they are heading in the future but I haven’t heard anything back from them. Will let you know if I hear anything.