SES Chicago 2006 recap
I'm just back from the last day of the Search Engine Strategies conference. Actually, I just woke up from my much needed post-conference nap. A lot of today was Q&A sessions; great stuff, but pretty detail-oriented, so instead of drilling down Day 4, here's my general recap.First of all, hats off to the organizers. No, I'm not trolling for link love; this was very likely the most educational event I've ever attended, and I'm not even in the SEO industry. It isn't a cheap conference, but when even small companies are spending thousands of dollars on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, the knowledge to do it right is well worth the cost.
I was very happily surprised by how often usability came up at the event. The major search engine companies are building crawlers to emulate how real people search for, judge, and use information. Design for your visitors, and you'll be designing for search engines, especially as they evolve. Design, usability and SEO are really starting to converge, and that's good for everyone.
