Last Friday I attended and spoke at the Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit in San Francisco. The idea of the conference was to cover technical SEO topics and help train developers and others. The 100 attendees (or so) were a mixed bunch; developers, SEOs, managers and the like.

The event was coordinated by Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia. The sessions covered site architecture, Microsoft and Open Source Stacks, and working with rich, interactive content. In addition to the sessions, there were round table discussions in which attendees had a chance to ask the experts questions, in small groups. In fact, having a fairly small group allowed many to get their questions answered one-on-one.
 

The day went something like this...

• As people trickled in, I helped get them signed in, handed out Bing t-shirts and asked "could you spell that for me?" quite a bit.
• Vanessa Fox kicked off the event with "Developers Are A Vital Key in Search Acquisition" and got everyone in the mood.
• Next up, Maile Ohye discussed Site Architecture and best practices. She also fielded quite a few questions (actually she answered questions throughout the day) and gave a great, informative presentation.
• Dennis Goedegebuure from eBay.com spoke about how eBay fixed some of their issues... I can't really give too much detail here or I'll be forced to pronounce Dennis's last name 50 times. But he did give us this awesome gem: New-Pulse.ebay.com
• Then it was time for the most delicious meal in the world, well at least in the conference world. :) There were some serious raves about the little white cookies
• After lunch, Cesar Serna, Nathan Buggia and myself spoke to the the very loud and boisterous "Microsoft Stack" group while Kenny Hyder and Todd Malicoat spoke about the "Open Source Stack." Ok I'm lying here, we had 9 people in our session (and a couple of them were there to show their support) but they did have some great questions. I heard that the Open Source session was great as well, and from the laughs coming through the room dividers, I'm sure it was awesome.
• Yay! Cookie break!
• For the last official session of the day, Vanessa Fox and Damien Bianchi spoke about Flash, Silverlight, Javascript, etc. I heard the discussion got pretty heated towards the end but unfortunately I missed that part of it.
• Finally we got to the round table discussions. [see photo above] These were really great and led to a lot of interesting interactions. Well, except for the fact that Mystery Guest was the only one to sit at my table "Microsoft Technologies: IIS and ASP.Net" and she had no idea what either were. heh. Other than that they seemed to go over very well. Even after Vanessa let everyone know there were appetizers, beer and wine, many people decided to keep talking rather than eat and drink. huh?
• Before I had to run off to the airport (only to find my flight an hour and a half delayed) I chatted with some great people and had more yummy food and a beer. I definitely wish I had been able to hang out with the group longer.

Personally, I got a chance to meet pretty much everyone attending because I helped check people in. This was great for me, since sometimes the developer in me kicks in and I find myself standing in a corner, staring around the room, thinking I should probably go talk to someone. heh.

The venue was beautiful and the greatest part was that the people were genuinely engaged and interested in learning. Sometimes at large conferences it can be difficult to participate in the sessions... or perhaps it's simply that people are intimidated to ask a question in a large setting? Either way, there were many interesting questions, lots of people sharing and many smiles.

Really, overall I had a great time and have to say that the food at the event was absolutely superb. I think I may even go on record by saying that it was the best food I've ever had at a conference (sorry SMX Advanced, you used to be my favorite!). I also seriously think that having awesome food and drinks helped people to stay engaged and the drinking definitely helped get people talking. :)
 

A few takeaways

• Google will now show sitelinks for individual pages, not just home pages (we noticed this the night before actually!)
  
  
• If you have a porn site, separate your family friendly and adult images into different directories. heh.
• You don't have to have your keywords in a directory specifically, as long as it's somewhere in the URL
• Check out New-Pulse.ebay.com - this was demo'd by Dennis Goedegebuure from eBay. This is a great tool to see most popular searches, most popular stores and the most watched items per category. Seriously cool stuff.
• You can get an internal search box on Bing based on
  • Query volume (not sure what the number is though)
  • Simple site search - the search can't use javascript, etc
    
    
• There's one lady at Microsoft who picks all the photos that show up as the background on Bing.

The Technical SEO

In general, I'm a huge advocate of helping and training developers to understand SEO more in-depth. Often I picture a harmonius world of developers and SEOs holding hands and working together. (yea, yea quit laughing - it could happen!) Developers hold the key to many SEO projects and the more they know, the better.

I'm really hoping that the "SEO Developer" becomes a trend in the industry. Sure, there are many SEOs who are quite technical but there are only a small number who can also claim to be developers. I've personally always liked the term "Technical SEO" and often use it when describing what I do.

At the Jane and Robot Summit I was asked whether I felt it helped me as an SEO to have been a developer. My answer was swift and loud, "YES YES YES!" Now, I don't think that all SEOs should be developers, but it has definitely helped me. I explained that I think I often look at a website from the inside out, rather than the outside in. It helps when doing site audits (or well anything really) if you have in-depth knowledge of how everything works technically.

I definitely hope that we have more technical SEO conferences, workshops, summits, conventions, trainings...whatever you want to call them. Helping developers to understand SEO is a very good thing in my book. The more you know, the more you grow! (ok... cheesy)

Now I have a few questions for you, my dear reader (yes I'm assuming there may be only one - especially with the PageRank hubub going on next door):
 

1. What's your stance on SEO Developers, or Technical SEOs? Take them or leave them?
2. More seriously, do you think it helps an SEO to have a development background?
3. Can developers and SEOs live in peace and harmony (and do we really want them to?)
4. If you were at the event, please add anything I may have missed!

Also, check out twitter and #janeandrobot to see what other's said about the day.