Pubcon Las Vegas 2015: Branding, Mobile, and Beyond

Tandem Interactive's Organic Search Manager/Editor Kimberly McSweeney at Pubcon Las Vegas 2015.

This year, I was fortunate enough to attend Pubcon Las Vegas with Joe in the beginning of October, and to say that I learned a wealth of knowledge during those short four days would be an understatement. For those who may not know much about Pubcon, it is the world’s leading online marketing conference and has been named a must-attend conference by Forbes, and I have to say – they hit the nail on the head.

If you missed Pubcon you arguably missed the largest sharing of SEO/SEM and PPC knowledge to ever take place under one roof. With daily speakers, such as the leaders of the search marketing industry, this was the place to be for those who do SEO and/or have a business or startup.

After day one at Pubcon, it was clear that the theme for the year was branding. Pretty much, if your company is not creating content that serves consumers and gets your name out in the world as a reputable company that is not just there to take your business, you are not doing enough to meet the needs of users. Users don’t only want answers to their questions, they want answers that exceed far beyond the question they asked. Although this may sound impossible, with amazingly engaging content – it isn’t. As Founder of Seer Interactive Wil Reynolds put it, if you are not creating the best piece of content ever written on a subject, you are not doing content right. Users want content that will serve them in a way that will make them better. They want to read your content and be able to take something from it that makes them better, smarter, and…well…serves their egos.

“People don’t buy products, they buy better versions of themselves.” – Wil Reynolds

Once you have the most amazing piece of content created – you need to socialize it. Coupled with creating the best optimized content, socializing content will help build your brand. If you write amazing content and no one can see it on multiple social media platforms, your brand is not going to be engraved in their brains. Users’ minds need to constantly see your ads, your helpful content that answers their questions, your videos, your photos, and logos on Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and whatever the new social media platform will be, in order for them to build awareness of your brand, as well as trust.

Of course, every business with a website wants to know about mobile. As the industry leaders put it at Pubcon, if you are just now thinking about mobile, you are behind. If you are thinking that mobile is going to be big, you are behind. Mobile is here. Mobile is now. If your site is not mobile-friendly you can bet that users are going to your competitor who is mobile compliant. Not only should your site be mobile- friendly already, but if your mobile load times are slow – you can bet users are moving on to a competitor. It may be sad for you and your business, but it is true. With every new generation, attention spans are decreasing and demands are increasing – you need to take the heat and turn it into fire for your company, or get out of the kitchen.

Pubcon Las Vegas 2015 featured the following keynote speakers and hyperlinked is Tandem’s live-blogged coverage for each:

Rand Fishkin: Founder of Moz:  SEO In A Two Algorithm World

Gary Illyes: Google: Generations XYZ

Wil Reynolds: Seer Interactive: The High Cost of Free Traffic

Daune Forrester: Bing: Data is the New Oil

John Brown & Richard Zippel: Google AdSense: Open Format Q&A

Guy Kawasaki: Canva: 10 Tips for Perfecting Your Marketing Campaign in the Age of Social Media

Other Pubcon Sessions Covered by Tandem:

Micro-Moments with Google’s Matt Rogers

Google’s Leo Sei Unmasks AdWords Automated Scripts

Jeffrey Eisenberg (chief Executive at BuyerLegends.com) and Alex Harris (creative director at AlexDesigns.com): High Conversion Landing Pages and the User Persona, The Most Popular Tools for Creating Landing Pages and Campaigns, 8 Measurement Terms for Buyer Legends

Frederick Vallaeys on Google Quality Score: What It Is and How to Improve It

Frederick Vallaeys: AdWords Scripts: Automation and Bid Management, Pubcon Tracks Conversions with Frederick Vallaeys

Michael Gray (Atlas Web Services president and owner of GrayWolfSEO.com): Top WordPress Plugins to Clean Up and Speed Up Your Site

Barry Adams (founder of Polemic Digital): Barry Adams: Crawl Waste & Optimization

Perfecting PPC Ads with Brad Geddes

Google+ Local can Kill Your SEO Strategy

Sure, everyone wants PPC and everyone wants content. After a while, you may be hassling your marketing agency on why you are not number one in Google yet, but how does your Google+ page look? The reality is, is takes a lot of time and patience to rank in Google organically via a content strategy. At the end of the day, your site’s fate falls in their hands. One of the best things that you can do, is build out your Google+ Local page.

Google+ Local is an extremely crucial element of your local SEO strategy, since it drives your company’s results on Google Maps.

Think about it: If I want to find the best Italian restaurant in Miami, Florida, and I search Google for just that, if your Italian restaurant does not have a Google+ Local page with reviews, you might not even show up in my results.

One of the biggest pitfalls for businesses when it comes to using Google+ Local, is thinking that you can just create your listing page and be done; never sharing and updating content, and never completing Circle Outreach. Without Circle Outreach, even if your posts are set to “public”, your reach will not be as wide as it could be.

When completing Circle Outreach, think of your consumer demographic. If you are an Italian restaurant in Miami, essentially you could add any Miami resident to your Circles; so search for “Miami Circle” and try to find some residents and maybe even business offices surrounding your restaurant, to add to your Circles.  Building out your Circles will allow the content that you share to reach those people, allowing them to share your content or +1 it if they choose. It will also create brand awareness for your company by word-of-mouth, or by people in your Circles converting into customers.

Using your page to create brand awareness: After you setup your Google+ location page, it is important that you do not forget about it. Updating it is part of what makes your page relevant and can drive reviews. If you are an Italian restaurant, make sure that your address and phone number are correct. Then, add pictures of your cuisine, share events that will be taking place there, add photos of the interior, exterior, parties, and etc. Create posts of specialty menu items and chef’s specials.  The more that you share, the more that the people in your local Circles will see, and the higher your chances of gaining customers who will leave reviews will be. When you share content, make sure that you include keywords that target your industry; you can even hashtag them in your posts. Another content sharing tip: share content from your Facebook or Twitter, so that you draw a following on there as well. 

Perhaps one of the most important Google+ Local practices for your business – encourage consumers to leave a review.  The reviews will show in Google search results and can convert online local search consumers into in-the-door customers. For even the most competitive industries, having a lot of Google reviews (that give you a good star-rating) WILL get customers in the door.

Example: Search Google for “personal injury attorney” and these are the results that you will see (in Fort Lauderdale, FL).

These results are not organic search results in terms of content, they are organic in the sense that they are Google+ location pages (Google Maps) and the location's Google+ reviews. These results, in a perfect world, are easier to result as a facet of organic results, rather than content oriented organic search results. As a consumer, you would most likely choose the attorney with the highest rating, from the highest amount of reviews.

Tandem Interactive can help build out your Google+ location pages, so that you receive reviews and get customers in the door.