Incisive Media has announced today that Danny Sullivan will continue to work with the popular SES conferences.

Incisive Media and Danny Sullivan today announced that both parties have signed an agreement to continue to work together to produce the market-leading Search Engine Strategies series of conferences and exhibitions (http://www.SearchEngineStrategies.com).

From Danny’s blog, News On My Plans For Next Year:

In short, I’ll be chairing the SES NY 2007 show, co-chairing the SES SJ 2007 event and participating in the SES Chicago 2007 conference. Aside from this, I also intend to continue writing about search via a new search blog of my own plus do some events on my own.

Coverage:

SERoundtable

Cre8asiteforums

Search Engine Watch Forums

More and more people in the USA are getting on board with this issue. Here are some recent updates:

The telecom slayers

For more than a year, telecom (Verizon, ATT) lobbyists, who include former Bill Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry, have outgunned Scott and his ragtag army of bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs and consumer-rights activists on Capitol Hill. But on this fall day in his bare-bones office in Washington, Scott is grinning in victory. He knows he has succeeded in tripping up the lobbying goliaths with a simple weapon that couldn’t be more appropriate in the battle over the Internet: a low-budget video posted on YouTube.com.

Phone and cable companies have spent more than $100 million on lobbyists, Astroturf groups, political campaigns and PR firms.

Here is the list of Senators and their stand on the issue. A surprising number of them are “waffling” (4) or haven’t made public how they’ll vote (53).

$100 million spent by phone and cable companies to charge us extra fees to get faster access to the Internet.

Does this represent how you feel? Would you rather that money be spent on fighting poverty, cleaning the air or research that saves lives?

Mainstream TV is presenting Bill Moyers and The Net at Risk.

The future of the Internet is up for grabs. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively eliminated net neutrality rules, which ensured that every content creator on the Internet-from big-time media concerns to backroom bloggers-had equal opportunity to make their voice heard. Now, large and powerful corporations are lobbying Washington to turn the World Wide Web into what critics call a “toll road,” threatening the equitability that has come to define global democracy’s newest forum. Yet the public knows little about what’s happening behind closed doors on Capitol Hill.

Please speak up and take a stand on what’s really important. Even if you don’t want Internet freedom, does it mean you want all that money spent on this particular change or are there other things worth supporting and spending your money on?

If you want to stand out in a crowd, be yourself. I have a passion for creative thinkers, funny writers, belly button ponderers and those who give more than they take. Here are some writers who impress me.

In no particular order:

Aaron Wall thinks a lot. His recent Inadequacy & the Chance to Change is sexy as hell. I could easily find myself wanting to sit for hours on end sucking in every word and getting high on all the ideas and possibilities he ceaselessly generates just by expressing whatever’s on his mind at the moment.

Inadequacy is just part of being human, but many companies create products or services which claim cure us of the flaws of being. When we buy into these systems, we are not just buying into the product / program / service, but we are buying into the pot of gold at the other end of the rainbow. The belief that things can be different and better, and the sense of relief that brings. Wherever there is a real or manufactured sense of inadequacy there is a large targeted market.

Sigh. Right on.

Lisa Barone. Where did she come from? Suddenly there’s the Bruce Clay blog and this clever writer who covers the industry, offers it to us in witty blog posts and makes me feel good every time I read her latest one. The point being, she makes me feel good. She’s also totally tuned into SEO-land.

Knowing how you play gives me a good idea of how you work. If I’m a client reading your blog or a competitor trying to learn how you run your company, that’s invaluable information. I want to know that you’re the kind of person to think outside the box, that you’re wacky with an abundance of energy. It’s also a great way to distinguish yourself from all the other SEO bloggers out there and to show what your company is really about.

(P.S. I hope we get to meet someday Lisa!)

Andy Beal is bold and a risk taker. We get to watch. He went from working for others, to diving into my world of consulting and being his own boss. He’s a better marketer than I am (everybody is, really.) With Andy’s Marketing Pilgrim blog, he goes from industry reporter to educator to humble guy asking for help with something. He drops cute hints, such as:

I’m spending a couple of days with Yahoo.

Take me with you. I can cook. I own Rachel Ray pots.

Andy Hagans has his hands into so many website ventures (adventures) that I decided to link to a page that takes you to some of them (though it didn’t hit them all.) More known for his and Patrick Gavin’s Linkbuildingblog and the popular Text Link Ads system, Andy is on my list because there’s just no stopping this guy. He has generously referred my usability consulting services to people, which I truly can’t thank him enough for.

Honorable mention are two other men whose writings are cutting edge, insightful, smart and useful. I find myself pointing people to them often because they share so much information. Kudos to Chris Garrett and Nick Wilson.

What stands out about Andy, Patrick, Nick and Chris, for me, is their energy. They’re young, some with new families. They’ve reached a whole new market of web developers and swung it around to do their bidding.

Chris McEvoy, of Confusability-fame, looks for the truth in much the same way that X-Files ‘ Muldor did. If it’s unsuable, he will force common sense or re-write the damned thing so it’s practical to use. Chris is unique. He speaks his mind, even if he’s poking fun at the usability industry, or causing it to think. I keep an eye on him, just to see what he dreams up next.

Rosie Sherry is a female software qa engineer who tests, measures, analyzes, and is one my few remaining ties to my old job title of QA Usability and User Interface Engineer for VerticalNet. I read everything she writes. I pretend she’s in a cubicle next to mine, and we’re the only women in the traditional sea of male software engineers. Just kidding. Maybe. I’m also glued to StickyMinds, but Rosie is my hero. She’s a mom. She’s a techie. The UK is lucky to have her.

Kathy Sierra writes for Creating Passionate Users. If you’ve never been to this site, you’re missing out on tremendously thoughtful, insighful writing. Kathy is my favorite writer there. Her bio mentions her love of Dance Dance Revolution, which my daughter is totally ga-ga over. Not that this means anything. It’s just fun to think Kathy could visit and feel right at home.

He who reduces fear better than the competition can, potentially, stop competing on price, convenience, or just about anything else. Reduce my fear, and I’ll be grateful forever.

She’s speaking to me. My friend, Ammon Johns, knows this better than anyone.

These are a few of the sexy, smart writers I admire. There are, as you know, a great many others out there. One or two read this blog and I expect to receive a “What about me?” note. I purposely singled out a few, but I could be here all day, sending compliments to industry standouts whom I admire and respect. The talent pool is growing and thanks to blogs, we get to know you all.

In case nobody has said this to you all lately, thank you.

I love bookstores. I love their rows and wall displays of knowledge and adventures waiting for me to find them. Sometimes I have to hunt for books because the bookstore forces me to work at it.

There’s a silly little bookstore in a quaint town nearby that is so full of books that the owner no longer bothers to put them away or organize them with precision. You stroll into a room crammed with stacks of books on the floor, in all shapes and sizes. Nobody minds when you plop right down into what looks like a book fort, to curl up with whatever happens to be lying around that day.

You won’t get in and out of that bookstore quickly and you may not find what you want. You may remember the experience, and you may hate it or love the odd-ness of it. Bookstores got the idea that people like to come in to read their books, and maybe that will lead to a sale. At first, I thought this was crazy.

I’m a book and magazine fanatic; the type who will pull from the back of a pile of magazines just to get to the one that nobody has touched or bent yet. At bookstores, I don’t want to read a book that was cracked open by somebody else. I want to be the first one to hold it, hear the creak of the binding as it meets its first human, and feel the brand new pages.

I got over some of that neurotic behavior when some big brand name bookstores placed chairs, benches and couches in their stores for reading. This was fun until they also introduced the Friday evening poetry reading or Saturday night band events inside the store. Add to this the coffee shop and pastry counter and you have a bookstore nightclub. If you want to read, you have to go back home to do it in a quiet environment.

Is this what customers want?

Perhaps. Amazon online is a bookstore where you can also buy everything from video games to shoes while you’re there. Every book page has “noise”, in the form of blogs, plogs, used books, wish list, recommendations, votes, excerpts, combination offers, baby registries, tags, and well, you get the idea. It’s not a quiet place to buy a book. It’s a carnival!

It works for them, but will it work for you and your online business?

How customer service oriented is your web site?

If you want to prove you are customer service oriented, there are many ways to do it without losing control of your website property. Online, despite the joys of wrestling with Amazon, most prospective customers want to be able to process your offers without pain.

The following are some ideas and suggestions you might apply to your own business and web site requirements.

Please continue reading How to Prove Exceptional Customer Service from Your Web Site Business , Part Three of the Ecommerce Usability Series presented by The Usability Effect

This caught my eye. A global web design company in a city near me has advertised a job opening for a Search Engine Optimization Engineer. The requirements are listed for the position. Of the 15 expected duties and responsiblities listed, the third one is this:

Consult with clients on website usability, to improve the end-users’ experience, and conversion rates to true customers of the client.

I was surprised at the request for knowledge of website usability. The other duties were typical for an SEO. I know a great many SEO’s and SEO companies and only a handful of the better ones even acknowledge the need for website usability for their SEO clients.

Some outsource, some do it in-house. Many of them perform user interface usability and stop there, as if this is enough. I don’t know any who offer user testing, either remotely or in labs (they may exist, but I can’t think of any SEO that offers this.)

Do they offer performance testing, before and after design quantitive testing, or automated performance testing of Internet applications for their clients? How about task analysis, user persona development, or cutting edge user centered design practices in persuasion, emotional and information design?

Where are accessibility and mobile testing offered, or does this not count in search engine marketing services? And if not, why? A lot of people use handheld devices to search for things and audio is used in ways other than assisting those with handicaps.

I doubt the company advertising this job even understands their item number 3. The usability part of the job is a position by itself, if they want it done properly.

All that aside, the union of search engine optimization and marketing with usability is just beginning to be accepted in some companies or discussed in the same sentences. Usability and SEO have been perceived as opposites that can’t live in the same house.

That thinking could leave you without a job or remove your company from the competition.