Last week I served on two hot seat panels, one at SEMPDX and one at Software Association of Oregon Tech Pub in Corvallis. Site reviews can be hard in a group setting because often times the search marketing education level varies dramatically for participants so making the content relevant can be difficult. Both of these panels went really well and, upon assessment, I found some universal truths that may be helpful to search marketers as well as the business person hoping to glean helpful information from site reviews:

#1 Search marketing is a hot topic! Not that this is an enormous surprise, but with all the unhappy economic forecasts, business owners are looking to search to help them get an edge.

#2 Web site campaigns (SEO, SEM, other advertising campaigns) are ultimately managed by individuals with little knowledge or understanding of search. This makes it all the more important that as search professionals we do what we can to educate and help business owners make informed decisions about their search investment.

#3 40% of search queries have local intent-WOW! Don’t forget local efforts. Ranking in local search algorithms can be less expensive than ranking in the overall algorithms in many cases. If your business is driven by local, learn about these tactics. Check out David’s notes from the SEMPDX Hot Seat, David has created some amazing research around the topic and is a highly-respected expert in the area. Download David’s PowerPoint here.

#4 There’s a shortage of women in the search profession;) As a speaker on the search circuit and as the Marketing/Membership Chair of the SEMPDX Board of Directors, I am surprised at the percentage of women in search marketing, especially on the technical side. About 18% of speakers at the shows are women, if you’re a web developer or web marketer and you’re a woman, get some education, experience and get involved on the search side.

#5 Websites need fresh content. You can’t just build it and they will come. Keep your content fresh through site updates, blog content, site reviews and images. Google loves it, your visitors love it.

#6 Everyone learns at Hot Seat Site Reviews. My background is as a reporter and my specialty was initially content development (which morphed into website usability, analytics and search). Though I engage very talented technical folks to help me do my job, I’m not an enormously technical person, my strength is on the marketing side. At one of the hot seats, I learned how important load time (for a hood river real estate website) is to search, not something that I was taking into consideration as a piece of my search strategies. Even if you’re a seasoned search professional, become a member of SEMPDX and learn how to be even better at your job.

#7 Sites with partial or limited SEO can still be profitable and fully optimized sites can miss business goals. In a perfect world, everyone would have a perfectly optimized site, but don’t lose site that the goal is business growth and that is, ultimately, the goal.

#8 It’s still important to talk about the basics. At the SAO Hot Seat, I asked how many people knew what a title tag was, in a room of about 50 only a handful did. Link building and SMM are nearly irrelevant exercises unless keyword research and some foundational optimization efforts are made.

#9 Business owners are frustrated with search. I heard from several participants who were frustrated about how to start with a search marketer and, just as importantly, weren’t sure what to expect from engaging with a search marketer. This is why SEMPDX is so important, the board of directors and advisory board of this group are happy to help educate so business owners can avoid the pitfalls of bad search marketers (sadly there are still many out there, but they’re getting easier to spot).

#10 Business owners are not sure how to choose a search marketer. I’ll be doing a post next week about this topic, but here’s a good approach-the proof is in the pudding;) Any good search marketer should have case studies and references that show they have provided search marketing success for other clients. If they don’t, go find one who does.

#11 Search marketers love their job. I have been involved with web marketing since 1996. It is such an exciting field and it changes so rapidly that we are required to attend search conferences regularly to stay on top of trends and changes in the algorithm. Engaging in a search campaign is often invigorating for business owners, it ignites their passion for search as well as for the overall growth of the business. It can really be a lot of fun.

#12 There is no substitute for a professional. Search marketing is a discipline that requires a lot of time and education to learn. As a business owner, if you have a great deal of time to invest, you should. However, if you’re busy with the day to day running of your business, hire a professional to help you grow your business with search marketing.

PS Shout out to all the great panelists at both events, Scott Hendison, David Mihm, Todd Mintz, Scott Fish and Andre Jensen.

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