Impressions from the first “SEO conference 2009” and awaiting Webit during fall.

Ivan Petkov

Beginning. Saying that internet is an integral part of our everyday lives is the same as saying that the water is wet. We got so used to the global network, that a part of it is a virtual copy of our lives. Behind this internet experience there are many new and unknown for the simple user topics. One of them is the subject of this article.

Who, where, when? On April 10^th, the first of its kind event was organized in Bulgaria – “SEO conference 2009,” which gathered professionals, developers, bloggers, and internet enthusiasts in one place. They discussed the newest trends in this interesting field of the global network. The conference was organized by famous figures in the field like Ognyan Mladenov, Plamen, Tomov, GEO, Martin Hristov, Martin Popov, Lili Grozeva, Stanislav Dimitrov, who were also the lecturers. They presented the different topics of the conference in an interesting way and with the sense of humor.

SEO? In English, please! Probably by now you are asking yourself what SEO means. It is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization and basically it provides a choice of techniques, with which a website can position itself better in the results of search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, etc, which alternatively brings more users to the website and makes it more popular. The optimizers themselves say that they are experimenters by spirit, who needs to constantly adjust to new conditions and learn. Google’s algorithm, which is an undoubted leader in search engine usability in Bulgaria, changes 400 times per year and most of those changes are not even announced. This makes 1 to 2 changes per day!

SEO for humans or machines? The programs, which track the renewal of website content and its indexing are called “crawlers.” So actually, every optimization is done for those crawlers. Some say that whatever is good for them is also good for the users. Others say that it should be written for people not for crawlers. Actually the truth is in the middle – without a unique and current content, even the best optimized website cannot hold users interested and on the other hand without optimization for search engines, even the most interesting and useful content cannot find its target audience. As they say in the SEO field: “Content is king” but they also advise “Write for people, optimize for search engines!”

Links are everything! There are many factors, which influence the popularity of a website. We can optimize it but still there will be something missing and this is the so called links, which show the search engines that the content of the website is interesting and is “cited” through links. The bigger and more competent is the website, which quotes your website, the more important your site becomes. It is the same thing in life – it is one thing to be praised in the neighborhood and it is another thing to be recognized by a prestigious international organization!

What else? PPC! Except for content, a website needs popularity. For a new, just starting website, fast popularity can be achieved by Pay Per Click campaigns or in other words – advertisement, in which the advertiser pays every time a click on his ad (banner, text, etc) had brought a new user to his website. SEO is a slow and long process, which does not provide immediate results. This is where PPC ad campaigns come to help. Combining PPC and SEO can lead to very good results.

“Black” SEO. This is something like black magic on the internet. It is a jargon for an unfair SEO practice, which aims to trick the search engines and get ahead of competition. One of the lecturers said that it is important to remember that there are working and non-working SEO practices. If you use forbidden practices and the search engines punish you by not showing your website in the results, then this practice was bad and extremely unsuccessful, especially if we are talking about a business website. So be careful with black magic because it is not only dangerous in life but on the internet as well.

So what about the conference? It was very interesting and useful – a place where you can meet new people and hear new ideas. The most useful thing of all was the discussion, because of the idea exchange and the different points of view. The lecturers were competitors and this was a stimulus to approach the subject with responsibility and professionalism and not with useless marketing. There was a lot to learn. At the end, there was time for questions and answers, advises and recommendations, which gave the opportunity to the visitors to take part in the discussion. It was very good and you can see some videos and photos is you would like. It is impossible to recreate everything from the SEO conference. The organizers promised another similar event during Webit in Fall.

Instead of a “Conclusion.” SEO is a field, which develops very fast due to its big application in the global network of business, information, entertainment and communication fields. This short article does not aim to describe an event or to define a concept but to set a beginning. So this is not a conclusion but a more of a “To be continued…”