Well, SMX West 2015 is almost over–well at least it is for me, as I’ll be headed out during the last day of this San Jose conference back to Dallas/Fort Worth after more than a week on the road speaking at multiple conferences. I spoke at the awesome SearchFest conference in Portland, Oregon on Friday, left Portland for California, and finally on to San Jose for SMX West 2015. I spoke about SEO Audits at SearchFest and then on the HTTP vs HTTPS panel at SMX West.
So, during the SMX West conference, I noted several different things. I always love meeting new people, especially those who are new to the industry and just getting started. I also noted that there are a lot of new faces. And, of course, I love seeing old faces, people I haven’t seen in years. A quick shout out to Debra Mastaler and Chris Sherman.
Here are 7 things I learned at SMX West this week. Most of them “interesting”, others more serious.
1. Gary Illyes from Google needs to lighten up a bit–and let Danny Sullivan joke with him. Seems as though Gary was a little bit too ‘uptight’ in my session today. But I’m sure that will take some time, as he gets to know that us search guys aren’t those “stuffy suits” that you find at other conferences.
2. If you redirect a URL within the same domain, 100 percent of the “link juice” and other ranking factors will pass to the new URL. Notsomuch with 301 redirects from one site to another or content on one domain to another. There are some cases where the ranking factors or “link juice” will not pass as much as it will internally on a site. If you 301 redirect http to https, as is the case that’s recommended in our session today, 100 percent of it will pass.
3. Windows Phone users generally don’t use cases on their phones. They simply don’t have the options that others have. Every Windows Phone user I saw or talked to at SMX West didn’t have a phone case. And that, apparently, is a good thing according to Duane Forrester of Bing.
4. You should make it a point to attend as much of the conference activities as possible. You never know when you’ll miss something important. Like being complimented by THE Duane Forrester of Bing.com, in front of hundreds of people. Apparently Duane thanked me for being his mentor in this industry. I am honored to have helped you out back over 10 years ago. Thanks, Duane!
5. April 21st is going to be a milestone in Search. That day will go down in Search history as the day that the first time Google publicly announced a big upcoming algorithm change, so far in advance. Mobile search is going to change on that day, apparently. And it might even affect mobile branded searches and mobile non-branded searches, as well. One SEO told me that that will be huge for affiliates. I won’t go into details here, but if mobile branded searches are affected by the upcoming mobile algorithm change, well, it will be interesting to see what happens on April 21st.
6. There are crawlers going around all over the place at SMX West, you never know when one will appear. As in the case of Jenny Halasz, who had one crawler appear right on her table during a session. It was alive, and crawling:
A giant spider just crawled across my table at #SMX. #freakedout but I can’t move b/c projector at end of my row!
— Jenny Halasz (@jennyhalasz) March 4, 2015
7. And finally, no matter how many contests I enter at conferences, I never seem to win the really great schwag. Like the XBOX One and Apple Watch given away. Oh well, maybe next time.