New Media Conference in Israel, Google Ranking... SEO Tips

I'm still in Israel and as you all can see have not blogged in almost a month!  Too much "vacation mode", but I am back on the saddle.
Continuing, as promised, with the Sphinncon highlights and all the new things I learned about new media, SEO, google rankings, lead generation, online marketing, PPC etc.
I managed to jump from conference room to conference room because there were two different tracks going on the same time and I wanted to hear as much variety as I could.  Ok, so here are all the tidbits I picked up - without further ado.
SEO TIPS
+ Gil Reich of http://www.answer.com/ said that you can't trust google searches when hiring SEO consultants. You need references.
+ Uri Breitman of TBWA/DIGITAL - said you need to check keyword searches analytics every day - there are always new queries for keywords.
PAID SEARCH TIPS
+ Chris Sherman- Executive Editor of Search Engine Land & President of Searchwise - said to always test your landing page- and keep optimizing it.  (Landing Page= the page where people are first brought to where the purpose is to persuade the customer to make a sale.)
+ Alex Chernowsky- landing pages should NOT be the homepage - visitors will get lost.
Leads ---> Sales ---> CPC.  Need a BIG prominent title - highlight a word.  Need trust indicators on your site if you are selling something.  Some examples are icons like - McAfee secure, 100% guarantee, media, cnn.com etc.  Then, have a "call to action" at the bottom.
Side Note:  CTR= Click Through Rate
This next idea is awesome!!!.....
+ Dan Perach- PPCPROZ- a mobile phone feature - you can google local businesses and then call the links straight! The "links" are dialable.
+ Asaf Paz- A Google Seminar Leader, WEBSEM- who is a certified AdWords trainer added that 97% of new visitors do NOT convert.  It's a cookie-based link (called Remarketing) so  it can last only if that user stays on the same computer.
Also, he adds, that before trying to drive more traffic by PPC, you need a good CTR, which So first you must have a good site- a good "landing page" before bringing people to it.

More to come... LOTS more to come.