I attended Layered Technologies (LT) conference over the past few days. Some highlights of the conference where the SEO insights presented by analyst from Alchemist and some grid computing by some guys from 3Terra. In case you missed the conference, here's my scoop on Alchemist's approach to SEO and 3Terra's very cool (and useful) grid computing solutions.
SEO
Jessie Stricchiola and Jonah Stein of Alchemist Media proffered some excellent advise on SEO strategies and the continually changing search engine landscape. A interesting fact Jessie brought up is that the average length of a search term is growing from 2.7 to 5.2 words within the next 5 years. This has significant implications on what people refer to as the long tail of search. Nabbing that top key term may be very difficult but ranking well for longer search terms may be easier.
Both of these SEO gurus stressed over and over again the quality of content. Having highly focussed content is key to good search results and conversions.
I also sensed they were keenly focussed on improving conversion rates for their clients not just netting the top search terms. In a case-study of LT presented by Jonah, he pointed out that ranking well for the wrong terms does not help your bottom line. He provided data that demonstrated how matching your site to your user's intent can really help with conversions. By restructuring the LT site to match how users were looking for content, Alchemist helped LT boost their conversions by more than 50%.
One thing was clear from both speakers, SEO strategies and analysis is becoming quite sophisticated with multivariate models, A/B testing and more advanced methods for really pinpointing the terms that match your industry and then building sites to convert that traffic into sales.
Grid Computing
3Tera presented information on their AppLogic platform. This is some slick IT and if it works as advertised, the days of provisioning and managing metal will be thankfully over.
Jessie Smart gave me a nice over view of how quickly we can architect scalable infrastructure for our clients. I liked the demo so much, we are picking up a 4 node cluster from GridLayer just to play around with the technology.
The key benefit of the AppLogic platform is that you no longer have to rack and stack servers. You deploy virtualized application instances on to your computing grid. You no longer worry about specs of any specific server just the specs of your grid. Your apps can then use the compute power of your grid as needed.
We will be working with 3Terra and LT to see what types of solutions we can deliver using this new technology. The idea of being able to quickly develop multi-application, scalable, redundant clusters without provisioning hardware makes a guy like me start to drool. Jessie had to wipe my mouth twice during his demo.
How cool would it be to call rackAID on Monday and by Friday your web app is running on a redundant, scalable infrastructure. Two weeks later and after stress testing, your multi-node application is up and running and ready to grow as you do. You no longer worry about servers and server specs, just let rackAID know what you need to do and we deploy it on the grid.
