Last Friday I attended and spoke at the Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit in San Francisco. The idea of the conference was to cover technical SEO topics and help train developers and others. The 100 attendees (or so) were a mixed bunch; developers, SEOs, managers and the like.
The event was coordinated by Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia. The sessions covered site architecture, Microsoft and Open Source Stacks, and working with rich, interactive content. In addition to the sessions, there were round table discussions in which attendees had a chance to ask the experts questions, in small groups. In fact, having a fairly small group allowed many to get their questions answered one-on-one.
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The day went something like this...
- As people trickled in, I helped get them signed in, handed out Bing t-shirts and asked "could you spell that for me?" quite a bit.
- Vanessa Fox kicked off the event with "Developers Are A Vital Key in Search Acquisition" and got everyone in the mood.
- Next up, Maile Ohye discussed Site Architecture and best practices. She also fielded quite a few questions (actually she answered questions throughout the day) and gave a great, informative presentation.
- Dennis Goedegebuure from eBay.com spoke about how eBay fixed some of their issues... I can't really give too much detail here or I'll be forced to pronounce Dennis's last name 50 times. But he did give us this awesome gem: New-Pulse.ebay.com
- Then it was time for the most delicious meal in the world, well at least in the conference world. :) There were some serious raves about the little white cookies
- After lunch, Cesar Serna, Nathan Buggia and myself spoke to the the very loud and boisterous "Microsoft Stack" group while Kenny Hyder and Todd Malicoat spoke about the "Open Source Stack." Ok I'm lying here, we had 9 people in our session (and a couple of them were there to show their support) but they did have some great questions. I heard that the Open Source session was great as well, and from the laughs coming through the room dividers, I'm sure it was awesome.
- Yay! Cookie break!
- For the last official session of the day, Vanessa Fox and Damien Bianchi spoke about Flash, Silverlight, Javascript, etc. I heard the discussion got pretty heated towards the end but unfortunately I missed that part of it.
- Finally we got to the round table discussions. [see photo above] These were really great and led to a lot of interesting interactions. Well, except for the fact that Mystery Guest was the only one to sit at my table "Microsoft Technologies: IIS and ASP.Net" and she had no idea what either were. heh. Other than that they seemed to go over very well. Even after Vanessa let everyone know there were appetizers, beer and wine, many people decided to keep talking rather than eat and drink. huh?
- Before I had to run off to the airport (only to find my flight an hour and a half delayed) I chatted with some great people and had more yummy food and a beer. I definitely wish I had been able to hang out with the group longer.
Personally, I got a chance to meet pretty much everyone attending because I helped check people in. This was great for me, since sometimes the developer in me kicks in and I find myself standing in a corner, staring around the room, thinking I should probably go talk to someone. heh.
The venue was beautiful and the greatest part was that the people were genuinely engaged and interested in learning. Sometimes at large conferences it can be difficult to participate in the sessions... or perhaps it's simply that people are intimidated to ask a question in a large setting? Either way, there were many interesting questions, lots of people sharing and many smiles.
Really, overall I had a great time and have to say that the food at the event was absolutely superb. I think I may even go on record by saying that it was the best food I've ever had at a conference (sorry SMX Advanced, you used to be my favorite!). I also seriously think that having awesome food and drinks helped people to stay engaged and the drinking definitely helped get people talking. :)
A few takeaways
-
Google will now show sitelinks for individual pages, not just home pages (we noticed this the night before actually!)
- If you have a porn site, separate your family friendly and adult images into different directories. heh.
- You don't have to have your keywords in a directory specifically, as long as it's somewhere in the URL
- Check out New-Pulse.ebay.com - this was demo'd by Dennis Goedegebuure from eBay. This is a great tool to see most popular searches, most popular stores and the most watched items per category. Seriously cool stuff.
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You can get an internal search box on Bing based on
- Query volume (not sure what the number is though)
-
Simple site search - the search can't use javascript, etc
- There's one lady at Microsoft who picks all the photos that show up as the background on Bing.
The Technical SEO
In general, I'm a huge advocate of helping and training developers to understand SEO more in-depth. Often I picture a harmonius world of developers and SEOs holding hands and working together. (yea, yea quit laughing - it could happen!) Developers hold the key to many SEO projects and the more they know, the better.
I'm really hoping that the "SEO Developer" becomes a trend in the industry. Sure, there are many SEOs who are quite technical but there are only a small number who can also claim to be developers. I've personally always liked the term "Technical SEO" and often use it when describing what I do.
At the Jane and Robot Summit I was asked whether I felt it helped me as an SEO to have been a developer. My answer was swift and loud, "YES YES YES!" Now, I don't think that all SEOs should be developers, but it has definitely helped me. I explained that I think I often look at a website from the inside out, rather than the outside in. It helps when doing site audits (or well anything really) if you have in-depth knowledge of how everything works technically.
I definitely hope that we have more technical SEO conferences, workshops, summits, conventions, trainings...whatever you want to call them. Helping developers to understand SEO is a very good thing in my book. The more you know, the more you grow! (ok... cheesy)
Now I have a few questions for you, my dear reader (yes I'm assuming there may be only one - especially with the PageRank hubub going on next door):
- What's your stance on SEO Developers, or Technical SEOs? Take them or leave them?
- More seriously, do you think it helps an SEO to have a development background?
- Can developers and SEOs live in peace and harmony (and do we really want them to?)
- If you were at the event, please add anything I may have missed!
Also, check out twitter and #janeandrobot to see what other's said about the day.
I really think it helps to have a development background in SEO. There are so many opportunities for onsite optimization that it is quite valuable and time efficient to be able to go in and tweak the code and content to your liking, rather than being one step removed and needing to get the webmaster (or someone else technically inclined) to change it for you.
Right, it gives you more power if you're able to do things on your own.
I have always been a developer and in the last few years have gotten into SEO, I really have no idea how people with no developer/technical background can do SEO effectively. I find that using my developer background makes doing all the minor and major SEO tweaks easier!
Simple, we learn what we need to know to be able to do what we need to do.
Agreed- I have been doing SEO for a year and a half with a Marketing background (which parlays very nicely into SEO and of course SEM). The moment I started doing SEO and asking for changes with our development staff was the moment I realized I needed to be able to do these changes.
I can perform most of the necessary changes needed for SEO but also I wish I could edit the design of pages much better because as we all know a great looking site converts. I have made it a goal to start taking Web Design classes so I can know much better how a website should function from the inside out!
I can say that if I had more development background it would certainly help me with SEO
Knowledge is power. If an SEO knows about development, the possibilities become more clear. If developers know about SEO, the bells and whistles of Flash and Silverlight will be used in the right spots, not just because it's shiny.
I completely agree! For years I developed websites without even thinking about SEO. I sometimes wish I could go back and fix so many sites to see the change in ranking!
Amen to that! Great coverage and post.
Hi Jennita,
The new Pulse that I showed, which is pulling in all kinds of data from the blogs that we follow, is actually on a new another location than you've linked in the post: New-Pulse.ebay.com
I explain in my blog post why I had to roll back the original Pulse, after I launched this new application.
Great post on the whole day.
Cheers
Dennis
Sorry about that! I fixed the link. :)
Great post - the technical aspect of SEO can be a difficult one to talk about sometimes as developers often aren't imersed in SEO like we are so it's great to see a conference and post about it.
In answer to your questions:
Tom,
I agree 100% that it's best to have an SEO team that consists of both technical and marketing focused people. Luckily we have that here at the moz and it makes for a well rounded team. It's also nice to be able to learn from your counterpart and even teach when needed.
It's also not the norm to find someone with technical skills, who is also a good writer. These two rarely coexist. And yet both of these skills seem to be essential to SEO.
Oh! and I'm not so sure about #3. The developer in me wants to scream "them's fightin words!" :)
i brought two of our developers, a QA engineer, and our director of product management along with me to the event ;)
in my experience, everyone involved in the product development lifecycle needs to have a similar knowledge base when you're building search engine-friendly applications. SEO has to be baked in from the moment a product is a twinkle in the PM's eye, through til launch, and involved in any subsequent tweaks to the product, as well.
i thought vanessa did a great job pulling that conference together. and for $50, it was easily the best value of any conference i've attended.
I completely agree!
I've been teaching SEO to intern classes here at eBoost for a while now. I have previously been very light on the technical aspects of SEO, basically just viewing the source code, showing them where the title tags are, very basic, while focusing more on the theories behind keyword research and how to apply it to onpage optimization and link building.
But this round, I'm having them learn HTML and create their own websites (having been inspired by Danny Dover's blog post about learning SEO). We're choosing very long tail keywords based on topics they are interested in and attempting to get high rankings by the end of their internship.
They are still getting all the SEO fundamentals but are now able to apply it in a much more immediate way. We're just about a week into the process and I can already see a much higher level of engagement and level of excitement about SEO.
I think there has to be at least a basic knowledge of the technical stuff for any SEO. Even if you're not making the changes yourself, you should still be able to check the source and server files to make sure the implementation is correct.
-Evan
Every knowledge is welcome.
But if you're a freelance SEO, developer's experience is not welcome, it's MUST.
How many times have we all had that phone call that starts with "We've just launched our beautiful new website a month ago but it's not showing up in Google...."
A quick scan of a few pages shows kilometre-long query string URLS, a common title tag on all pages, "junk" system-generated description tags etc etc...and in one case, a developer had left in place a noindex, nofollow tag on all pages...which for once the SE's actually respected.
So yes, at least the basics of coding, database development, URL rewrite and 301 redirects is certainly fundamental...and when you do come across these issues, the ability to "talk the talk" with technical/web developers who "know everything about SEO" (which funnily enough never translates into the actual site they built) is essential.
And, when you are brought in as an SEO adviser at the very beginning, the ability to spec things out in a form that developers can understand (hmmm...sanskrit?) means your client can minimise development costs and your are handed a site that actually works for the big G, Ya-who? and now bad-a-Bing.
So yes, although you don't need to be a propellor head, a sound knowledge of the technical aspects of coding, SQL database development and HTML/XHTML/XML is a must, if only to allow you to spot a "dog" of a site early so that you can steer clear from submitting an RFP (or point them to a competitor hehehe).
Jen,
You forgot URLs for Maile Ohye and Damien Bianchi. At the moment of writing this comment there is blank a tag (href="").
Doh! thanks :) I'll get that updated asap.
Being a developer definitely helps SEO. Its' not just knowing the technology, it is convincing other people that your way (the way of the SEO) is the best way to go.
I'm always fighting with our designers whenever they want to use Flash because most things they want to do are possible using javascript and css. It just takes longer, especially when you're coding it in such a way where you're placing content so the spiders can easily decipher it.
Hi,
Do you have a suggestion for program utilization for the most easily detectable jpg and video encrypted content by search engine spiders?
Thanks,
TammyLyn
I can't imagine having to ask someone else to do all the tweeking and changes you want on a website. Yes it helps to be knowlegeable about both.
1. Call them whatever you want, I think it's imperative that there are those out there who understand development, databases, servers, etc. from an SEO perspective.
2. I think all SEOs should have a basic understanding of development, but I don't think all SEOs need to *be* developers. I think one of the biggest strengths in our community is that we all seem to have different backgrounds and can look at issues from different perspectives.
3. Oh lordy I hope so!
4. I wasn't there, but if anyone blogged/took notes on the Microsoft Stack session, I'd love to pass those on to my devs!
Your final sentiments are lock-step with my understandings of what it takes to be a truly successful SEO. Developers have a strong idea of how the web works, thus allowing them to discover creative but grounded SEO solutions. I do hope that "SEO Developers" catches on.
Good post Jennita. I agree with kpaulin - some level of tech knowledge is absolutely necessary.
As a solo consultant I recently found myself getting far deeper into the coding and database than I really wanted to. When I asked the client to put me in touch with the developer, I was told he (the developer) was currently serving time in prison. Alrighty then! I learned a lot, but I also burned through a lot of time that could have been better spent, and the whole thing wouldn't have been necessary had the developer been more aware of the ramifications of what he was doing.
I can definitely see a need for cross-training - developers need to learn more about how what they do can affect SEO, and many SEOs need to know more about how the technical side of things can impact rankings - and how to work around problems they run into. But all in all, kp is spot on - I don't see how you can call yourself an SEO without a decent level of technical skills and plenty of resources you can turn to if you get in a technical bind. Technical SEO is definitely a cool title.
Lately I have noticed many more SEOs are very development savvy while the number of developers who know much about SEO seems to be increasing at a much slower rate. I suppose this trend is good for the SEO industry so you wont hear me complaining.
(to all the developers out there, just remember..ignorance is bliss!)
its a shame that i missed it, its great to see more grass roots events being so successful, hopefully will get a chance to attend at the next one, or next year
Thanks for the great post, Jen!
I have to say that I really enjoyed this event. The smaller, more intimate size, particularly the breakout table sessions after the presentations were awesome. A group of smart, talented, driven marketers and site owners gathered around a table sharing their experiences, best practices and questions.
Bravo, Vanessa - hope these become a regular occurrence (and thanks to the Bing crew for hosting!).
Thank you for the post and the things you have shared with us.
I started to build websites in 1995, in full HTML. I have been working as an SEO consultant since 2006, and I cannot see how I could have done it, without knowing how the site was built up.
From my point of view, you cannot really say that you are an SEO consultant, without knowing at least the basics in programming a page. However, you do not need to know all the languages to be a good SEO too!
I remember when Nathan first came on the scene at SEOmoz...
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-hey-new-guy
"he's bound to be an important engine ambassador and he's a heckuva nice guy to boot."
hehe. I'm very glad he's proved us right :) Can we see another follow-up video talking about Bing this time around?
haha! That's awesome, thanks for the reminder. :)
From the content, it looks like the Jane and Robot Developer Summit was a worthy replacement for the postponed O'Reilly Found conference that didn't happen in the immediately previous days.
Much SEO focus has leaned heavily towards marketing in recent years, and to activities such as link building. It's nice to see some spotlight now going back on to some of the technical aspects for a change.
Seriously! The conference was great, and although I was disappointed that Found didn't happen, this really was an excellent replacement. Awesome, knowledgeable speakers and curious, engaged attendees. Plus like I said, there was ridiculously great food and drinks as well. :)