Post SES Malaise

I've been at SES New York all week, and I am BEAT. I was going to drive in and hit the Oldtimer's session this morning, but tunnel traffic had a 40 minute backup at 9, when it should be clear, so I gave up and worked from home instead.

I took the bus in for the show every day this week, and I have to tell you, I'm *still* a little car-sick. I knew I had some motion sickness issues, but I didn't realize what a wuss I truly was until Tuesday night. I really can't handle travel by road, unless I'm driving!

The show wasn't bad. It did a good job of fortifying the basics for me. But I do think I'm ready for SMX advanced next year. Here's a solid example of things I already knew that I learned three or four more times during SES:

• Match your landing pages to your search ads and keywords.
• Microsites are good in B2B search.
• Microsites are bad in B2B search.
• Test a lot.
• Short forms generally convert better than long ones.
• Use analytics and keep tabs on your highest performing keywords, your CPA, etc.
• Google STILL owns the lion's share of the search marketplace.
• SEO is important.
• Black Hat SEO is bad.
• Jason Calacanis doesn't hate SEO, he is an SEO. (Really. He said so himself.)
• Mahalo is good. (Says Jason)
• Viral marketing is good for building buzz.

And yes, it really did feel that basic, that disparate, and occasionally, that biased. I did learn some new stuff, but not much. I was particularly annoyed by the "Igniting Viral" session, which lumped WOM is as viral. I don't think WOM and viral are the same. "Elf Yourself" is viral. Blogs and Twitter are WOM. Agreed?

The best part of the show for me was hooking up with former co-workers from DigitalGrit. More on this in a later post, but it was AWESOME seeing everyone again.