Here is a brief recap from the ‘Managing a Local/Mobile Search Marketing Campaign’ session.

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Chris Silver Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts
Jenny Halasz, SEO Manager, Acronym Media
Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive

Jenny Halasz:
Jenny provided some advice for setting up a mobile. The first step is to determine your resources (money, etc). You then need to use simulators to view your current site from a mobile perspective. After determining your resources, build a dedicated mobile site, but make sure to link back to the HTML site for users who may want to view the classic view. Other tips:

• Have a ‘skip to content’ link near the top.

The SMX Local & Mobile Conference kicked off this morning with Michael Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local Search giving the keynote speech.

Michael’s speech was titled “The Future of Local Search – Google’s Strategic Vision”. Michael started off by saying that Google is not the best at local search and went on to show how concierges are the best and how Google strives to be a local searcher’s concierge. This is a great analogy and Michael paralleled the two very nicely. A concierge (and Google) must be discreet (deal with privacy properly), understanding of your needs (offer alternative searches), multi-lingual, and transactional. Google and concierges must be knowledgeable of the hyper-local (the hotel and immediate areas), the local (the entire city), the country, and be able to offer help from their network of colleagues (Google Universal search).