• by Aaron Goldman , Op-Ed Contributor, December 13, 2007

This session is always interesting. Marketers in the room are asked to offer up their site/program for critique. Today, Gord and Matt Kain from 24/7 Real Media led the crusade and, after a little hesistation, a few brave marketers volunteered.

First up was eLuxury.com. Their challenge was getting buy-in from the rest of the organization to make the changes to the website (and CMS) necessary to improve SEO performance. Gord and Matt shared tips for creating a business case to rally the rest of the company around. Pick one battle to fight (eg, a core term or group of terms to optimize a page or a section around) and measure the lift. Then use the results to prove the value.

The next case was Homestead.com. Major challenge was limited content on the site. Gord suggested building out widgets, RSS feeds, and other alternate forms of content that will drive link popularity. Matt picked apart their current keyword selection process, emphasizing the need to focus on terms that provide market opportunity (relevancy and volume) not just terms that currently drive traffic (which is what Homestead was using to decide which terms to optimize for.)