Can you find Tech Ed 2008?

for those of you who have been following my blog, you have seen my post several posts about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and what I have learned so far. I think the best way to learn something is to apply it and so I tried applying what I  have learned thus far on finding the Tech Ed 2008 website.

What is Tech Ed 2008?

Tech Ed is Microsoft's biggest conference of each year for professions Developers and IT Professionals. This is the 16th year Tech Ed is running, and for the first time ever it is split into two weeks, week one for Developers and week two for IT Professionals. Read more about Tech Ed 2008 US. I have been attending Tech Ed since 2005 and love all the great information I have learned, the people I have met and the cool things that Microsoft and partners showcase during the week long conference (this was the case for the last 15 years, this year it's 2 weeks long).

Is the Tech Ed 2008 website search Engine optimized since roughly 80% of traffic comes from Search Engines?

To find the Tech Ed website has always been a struggle and this year, I wanted to look more into why and post what I think might be some solutions to help the Tech Ed team, so that people can find their website easier. This is my most favorite conference by far, and it's a shame that it's not easy to find.

Let's take a look at Google's result's then Live Search and then find out what he HTML code tells us:

For Google.com you can see the search result looks fine, and we were able to find our link, both in the paid section and the organic section as you can see below:

Let's analyze this in steps:

1. Notice we searched for the keyword: "teched 2008." The title came back fine.

2. The body below the title reads: "In either case, you need to be a part of the Microsoft Tech·Ed North America 2008 experience. For the first time, Tech·Ed has expanded from a one-week ..." which has nothing to do with what TechEd is. The second and third links are the same with not very helpful content.

3. The paid link (i.e. sponsored link) has the right information.

4. By the way the same is true if we changed our keyword to: "tech ed 2008."

Now let's take the same keywords and search on Live Search, you can see the picture below:

 

Let's analyze this in steps:

1. Notice we searched for the keyword: "teched 2008" same as on Google.com.  The paid link (i.e. Sponsored link came back fine). But the first result is not event Tech Ed 2008. That's sad :(

2. The body below the title reads: "Technology in Education International Conference & Technology Exposition"  this is not the Tech Ed 2008 website. The second link is not Microsoft Tech Ed either. The third link is. bummer :(

3. The paid link (i.e. sponsored link) has the right information.

4. Now you wonder what happens if you search for: "tech ed 2008." (notice the space between the word tech and ed).

Let's analyze this in steps:

1. Notice we searched for the keyword: "tech ed 2008" same as on Google.com.  The paid link (i.e. Sponsored link came back fine). But the first result is not event Tech Ed 2008 US. And we are searching on Live.com not a localized search on live.co.za. That's sad :(

2. The body below the title reads very well and describes the conference in Africa, but doesn't mention our US conference.

3. The paid link (i.e. sponsored link) has the right information.

Recommendations on how to make the Tech Ed 2008 website Search Engine optimized

Once I found the Tech Ed 2008 US website and I went there, the next thing I did is use the right click and view source option inside IE 7 and below is what I saw:

1. I found a <Title> tag: <title>Microsoft Tech·Ed North America 2008</title> which was great, so now we know where the title comes from. So Great job Tech Ed 2008 website developer!
2. I didn't find a <H1> tag which could have been like: <H1>Microsoft Tech·Ed US 2008</H1>, which is what most people would search for. Tech Ed 2008 website developer, you could have included a <H1> tag.
3. Then I looked for a description tag (i.e.<meta> tag) and I found: <meta name="description" content="Microsoft Tech·Ed 2008 Developers">. Tech Ed 2008 website developer, the description in your<meat> is too short, please add more content here like:

   <meta name="description" content="Be a part of the experience! Microsoft Tech·Ed North America 2008 is the best way to stay current on today's Microsoft technologies. Featuring plenty of sessions on the latest and forthcoming versions of Microsoft's key products – you will be able to see products in action and stay ahead of the curve. " /> (this is the <meta> tag the African Tech Ed 2008 team used, and that's why you see them come up first when you search for "tech ed 2008" on live search.

   If your <meat> tag content is too short, the search engine skips to the longer description area and in your case it's the <p> tag and gets the description from there (in your case the bold section below):

   <p>Are you an IT professional looking to increase productivity? Are you a developer seeking the latest tools? In either case, you need to be a part of the Microsoft Tech·Ed North America 2008 experience. For the first time, Tech·Ed has expanded from a one-week conference into two separate conferences held back-to-back in Orlando, Florida. <br><br></p>

4. Across the board for all Tech Ed website I was not able to find a sitemap. Sitemap's are very important, they tell the search engine crawler where to crawl and if you update the sitemap the crawlers most search engines offer a ping service where they can come back and crawl your site again to pick up new content. Think of inviting everyone to a party and not giving them directions, they will be excited to come, but will not be able to find you. There are many tools out there that can help you generate a sitemap as well as you can create your own. If you have a robots.txt file you can use that as well. At the very leas, I wish the Tech Ed 2008 website developer, would go to http://webmaster.live.com site and open an account and upload the sitemap for the Tech Ed 2008 website, so the Live Search engine crawler can go out and crawl the Tech Ed 2008 website.

These are just my ideas and I wish I would be able to find the Tech Ed 2008 web developer to help him see by making these small changes he will increase the chances of more people attending the best conference ever (I think so anyway).