Nine Irresistible take aways from SMX Advanced London Day One

It was a busy day yesterday at SMX in London, unlike previous years this was the under the ‘Advanced” brand which made a huge difference, there was less of the SEO 101 content we all know so well and more actionable suggestions and plenty of coverage of topics that we’re new to me.

But what if you weren’t there, or where overwhelmed by by the sheer volume of live tweets?

Well Jaamit has done some great live blogging, which has some great run downs, but I’ve tried to make it even quicker with my nine takeaways from the first day.

1. Wolfram Alpha is impressive but it’s easy to be dismissive. I know a lot of us have written off Wolfram Alpha but during the keynote from their Barak Berkowitz, Managing Director it really reminded me how powerful the site could be if it had any reach. Google really ought to buy them or do their usual trick and copy their technology.
2. Microformats are going to get really important – at the moment microformats are a bit of a fringe hobby for a few SEO’s but across the day it really became apparent how structured data is really going to become even more important. If you haven’t subscribed to Richard Baxter’s blog where he regularly discusses microformats you should get on it!
3. Just producing multimedia/social media content isn’t enough, there’s a whole area  of technical optimsation that goes with it. It’s still early days particularly around Video SEO but you need to be up to speed on Google Video Site Maps and Media RSS which has wider support with the other engines.
4. Exploring Google Patents is normally something I leave to the rain-man SEO types but Google’s Reasonable Surfer Patent will confirm a lot of the ‘gut feelings’ you’ve had about onsite link optimisation. And it’s not very often Google confirm a gut feeling!
5. Influence Finder may not be the perfect Link Building tool but anything that makes your life a little more efficient has
6. Google Suggest should be a part of your keyword research methodology if it isn’t already, if you want to do this on a substantial scale have a look at this slide-deck which will show you how.
7. Mechanical Turk from Amazon which allows you to pay a huge workforce on a per task basis has a huge potential to help your SEO efforts. Unlike most off-shoring which are risky you can use this huge work force to carry out the repetitive tasks which eat up your time.
8. If you’ve got a quality competitor who have got their URL structure right you can use XENU link sleuth to spider their whole site and use that data to get keyword ideas.
9. Link Building every year gets closer and closer to public relations, if you’re not investing in public relations skills and experience your link development efforts will become increasingly ineffective.

Related posts:

1. The Five Best Slide Decks from SMX Advanced London
2. Time to learn from SMX Advanced London and A4U Expo Munich!
3. Get 15% of on your SMX Advanced London ticket
4. SMX Advanced London 2011: Link Alchemy – Creative Ways of Conjuring SEO Gold
5. Speed and Performance – SMX Advanced London 2011