5 Takeaways from PubCon

pubcon 2010Back to reality after a great week in Vegas attending PubCon.

Really quickly I wanted to share, in no particular order, my top 5 takeaways from the week.

1. “Likes are the new links” – this was a quote from Bruce Clay during the week’s best session. Bruce was part of a panel that discussed Google Caffeine and May Day. Bruce thinks that when you add up what Google did with Caffeine (increasing the size of the index) with the fact that they have to account for social in search results plus the fact that a greater percentage of links are spam – the currency for validating sites will change from links to personal recommendations.

Whether or not you buy it, it’s definitely thought-provoking. I’m going to be testing this one while following it closely.

2. Local is everything – More and more search results have the top organic listing below the fold (most of them local). This will eventually be the new normal as Google deploys this layout for more keywords. Making sure your business is optimized for local search will mean the difference between gaining or losing organic traffic. It’s that simple.

3. Blekko = Buzz – It may have been just my imagination, but there were a lot of people talking about, and trying, Blekko. Matt Cutts even mentioned it in his keynote. All I could think was, “How long until Google buys them?”.

4. Page speed is on the clock – I had read a bunch of posts about the importance of page speed. I’ll admit, I haven’t done a ton to adopt this strategy. After last week I am a believer. Page speed should be improved whenever possible. It’s good for the users. And it’s good for SERPs.

5. Three that made me think – No offense to anyone else, but the three best speakers I saw were Scott Stratten, Rae Hoffman, and Tim Ash. All three brought it. They made me think. They gave me some helpful tips. I was impressed by each of them. If PubCon could get more people like them the conference would be much better.

Did you attend PubCon? How did your takeaways compare? Did I miss anything? Let’s chat in the comments below.

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