Brian's Blog

Pubcon Las Vegas 2009 Highlights – Top 5 Pubcon Highlights.

Where should I start? I’m not sure what I enjoyed more, the people and networking (aka parties) or the seminars. If you are not aware “PubCon is four days of leading edge education and networking in over 90 sessions featuring 200 expert speakers in Social Media, Affiliate Programs, Search, and SEO/SEM. In its 8th year, PubCon was founded out of the rich and diverse base of WebmasterWorld forums.”

Great networking party at the MGM Grand

In addition to the four day Tuesday through Friday conference, I attended the first ever Monday Pubcon training program. I sat in on the SEO (Organic Search Optimization) & Marketing Track. Anyone interested in catching up on the lastest in SEO should consider this extra day. Well worth the $$

Top 5 Pubcon Highlights

1. Page load speed will become an important Google ranking factor in 2010. Check out this interview between Mike McDonald of WebProNews and Google’s Matt Cutts. Matt mentions a Google resource to determine how fast your site is loading.  Matt also talked about several additional tools including Page Speed (a Firefox extension) and WebPageTest.
2. YouTube is the second most popular search engine; BUT only about 41% of search marketers include YouTube as part of their Internet marketing plans. This is a huge opportunity for anyone trying to increase traffic and online opportunity.
3. Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) has big plans for bing. He hopes that the new search engine will capture 51% of all search market share.  Well, there’s only one way to go… up.
4. Social media is HUGE, but still only accounts for a less than one percentage of all referrals.
5. If you are ever in the need for a late night pizza, you can call Zappos. Actually this is part of a story keynote speaker and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh used to explained how he and his team built Zappos into the giant that it is today through the development of a strong culture of customer service.

Source = Chitika Research. Referrals -- Search still dominates Social Media

As a final note I’d like to thank my Spanish and Irish friends for another great time in Vegas.