My Think Visibility Highlights

I had a great if exhausting time at the think visibility conference on Saturday (3.30 am starts are not recommended though unless you want to experience hot flushes by tea time). I left very inspired and ready to try out a few new strategies. I enjoyed and took something from all of the talks I attended but heres a few of my highlights.

First off was Tim Nash (@timnash) with a physical demonstration of how page rank can be distributed or made to flow in a particular direction. This was done using buckets of water to represent the flow of the green bar. I think different SEO’s visualise page rank in different ways and its a subject which can get very muddled if over analysed. It was refreshing to get a clear picture from Tim.

Tom Smiths (@everythingabili) social media talk was an interesting look into how companies can learn to interact with social media and actually get something out of it. By engaging in conversations with their customers across a range of social media outlets they can get their message to a wider audience and learn more about what their audience / customers want. Tom discussed at length how clients should be encouraged and guided through social media channels in order to help there business.

I was looking forward to Dave Naylors (@DaveNaylor) talk and he didn’t disappoint. He reminded me not to be complacent when link building. Even if a link is coming from a respected offline source their reputation amongst the search engines may not be up to scratch so research thoroughly. Caution when link building and content by the bucketful are what I took from that one.

Guy Redwood (@eyetracking) from simpleusability.com did an interesting demonstration of how users navigate through search results and websites using eye tracking technology. I was especially interested in this as we are currently conducting our own eye tracking research. The results of the demonstration showed a turn around in user behaviour away from the F shaped focus of user vision which was previously taken for granted by web designers and marketers. It was also quite scary to see how quickly users navigate through search results, you’re listing only has a fraction of a second to impress.

Patrick Altoft (@patrickaltoft) gave a good talk on link building using social media amongst other things and I think I wasn’t the only one who left inspired to go and create some viral campaigns.

All in all it was a great conference and I hope it becomes a regular event.