United Kingdom

Last week, I attended SES London 2009. For those of you who couldn’t attend this must-attend event, here are the ten top stories from the conference and expo held at the Business Design Centre in Islington:

1. The top story was the opening keynote by Matt Mason, author of The Pirate’s Dilemna: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism. Chloe Temple of Tamar covered the keynote in her post, “SES London 2009 – Day 1 summary.” She wrote, “SES London 2009 kicked off to a flying start, with an interesting choice in keynote speaker, Matt Mason, who gave us a summary of his book The Pirate’s Dilemma. Not specifically targeted to an SEM audience, Matt presented his idea that businesses should embrace piracy rather than going to war with it.”

Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed Mason after his keynote about the history of piracy as well as its pros and cons. Mason reiterated why it is important for companies today to embrace piracy by competing with it. Mason also talked about the future of piracy and how he would like to see copyright laws changed to reflect the new information economy.

Matt Mason – Author: The Pirate’s Dilemma, speaks on piracy at SES London

2. The second top story of SES London 2009 was the Orion Panel on SEO — Where to Next? Paul Madden, an SEO Consultant in the UK also known as SEOidiot, covered the session for Search Marketing Gurus in a post entitled, “SES London – Orion Panel – SEO Where to Next?“

3. The third top story of SES London 2009 was the Orion Panel on Measuring Success in a 2.0 World. David Wilding of the Epiphany Search Marketing Blog captured the news in his roundup of “Search Engine Strategies London 2009 – Day One.” He observed, “One point that may surprise many that don’t work day to day in the world of SEO is the view of Google Analytics that came across in this question and answer session.” It was called, a “jack of all trades” and a “one size fits all solution.”

I interviewed John Marshall, the CTO of Market Motive, who was one of the panelists in this session. Marshall said Google analytics is a limited tool. John indicated that in a 2.0 world, there are details on your website that don’t actually live on the website, such as YouTube videos, and Google analytics doesn’t analyze this data. Marshall advocated a more realistic approach to measuring data and is a big believer in using competitive analysis. John also cited particular competitive analysis vendors that he likes.

John Marshall, CTO, Market Motive, on measuring success in a Web 2.0 world

4. The next top story was written by Mel Carson, Microsoft’s adCenter Community Manager for Europe. He wrote a post for the Microsoft adCenter Blog and Forum Community entitled, “IAB Search Engine Marketing Best Practice Session – SES London.” In his post, Carson said, “Islington’s Business Design Centre is a hive of search marketing activity, with sessions on SEO, PPC and Social Media all contributing to a vibrant learning pot.”

5. Another top story was by Magne Uppman of Uppman.net, which was entitled, “The Twitter Wave At SES London.” According to Uppman, a Norwegian online marketer, “Since the last time I attended a major conference, Twitter has really grown big. In fact, you can now get a pretty good glimpse of the news and tips presented only by following the conference on Twitter.”

6. The next top story was Rand Fishkin’s post on the SEOmoz blog, “Some Interesting Tips and Tidbits from SES London Day 1.” According to Fishkin, the CEO of SEOmoz.org, “For the first time in a good while, I managed to spend a few hours sitting in sessions here in London, re-absorbing some information and even picking up a few new bits here and there. Short post, but I figured if it’s new/interesting to me, it might also be enjoyable to others (hopefully).”

7. Another top story was written by Philippe Schaillée of SearchCowboys, entitled, “Social Media Optimization – SES London 2009.” The Dutch blogger wrote, “Everyone’s on the Social networks. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace have become household names.”

8. The next top story was written by Zac of the Apple Pie & Custard blog. It is entitled, “The foundations of Video SEO.” According to the UK blogger, “Yesterday at the SES Conference in London Amanda Watlington and Joseph Morin discussed the best practices for optimising your video content.”

9. Another top story, which appeared in the Efficient Frontier Blog, was entitled simply, “SES London.” It said, “London this week saw the spectacle that is Search Engine Strategies. As the first big search conference gracing the 2009 London Calendar, industry analysts observed it with a keen eye as the benchmark for confidence in the sector. Delegate numbers certainly looked healthy on both advertiser and agency side.”

10. Last, but not least, was the blog post by Andrew Girdwood entitled, “PRWeb UK launches during SES London.” According to Birdwood, “Search Engine Strategies was a good event to launch at. PRWeb now have a UK offering.”

These were just the ten top stories from SES London 2009. For a comprehensive list, go to the Search Engine Strategies Blog. And these are just the initial video interviews to be posted to SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on Youtube. If you want to be alerted when new videos are uploaded, just subscribe.