Online Marketing Blog

In order to tap into the “wisdom of our crowd” and much appreciated readers, we run polls to find out what client and agency side marketers are thinking. Popular polls have included the rating of favorite resources like whether multiple search conferences can exist and succeed to the best keyword research tools.

It’s the end of the year and predictions will soon start to fill the search marketing blogosphere. In anticipation of what the next year will bring to the search marketing industry, I ask this question to stimulate some ideas and conversation:

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This announcement might be a bit early, but I think the last Marketing Sherpa Email Summit sold out pretty quickly. This is an event (in Miami February 24th-26th) that’s near and dear to TopRank’s marketing consulting services which are made up of: search, PR and email marketing. Out of those three “legs”, email marketing is by far the most productive in terms of ROI and conversion rates.

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A whirlwind conference schedule winds up this year with Mediapost’s Search Insider Summit being held in Park City Utah at the Stein Eriksen Lodge Dec 12-15, 2007.  As part of our media sponsorship duties, I caught up with conference chair, David Berkowitz from 360i and the host/MC, Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro for a quick interview:

Please tell us a little about yourself - a mini bio if you will.

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The last day of WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon is literally a gathering in a pub. This is the genesis of how Pubcon was started, an informal gathering of members from WebmasterWorld. Through the efforts of Brett Tabke and the community, it has grown into one of the finest search marketing conferences with thousands of attendees, major corporate sponsors, top notch speakers and a spirit like no other event. There’s a real sense of community and “co-opetition” amongst participants that makes it a great place to learn and network.

Here are my final favorite photos from Las Vegas Pubcon and a few with friends from iEntry afterwards.

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This BIGLIST search marketing blogs update is going up on a Saturday as we had more than enough posts go up yesterday. There are quite a few additions. Enjoy some weekend SEO reading:

• Social Blog Roll - This is a cool tool from Nick Wilsdon of einternet that enables you to stay on top of what’s happening in the search marketing world by polling the blog rolls of popular search marketing blogs and ranking them based on the number of votes they get.

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Jolina and Mike had a great time at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago. Not only is it the windy city, but a festive, cold and snowy one too by the sounds of it.

Here is a recap of the SES Chicago posts in case you missed any:

• Meet the Web Analytics Players
• Igniting Viral Campaigns
• Keynote Speech - Rodney Dangerfield School of Search Marketing
• Keynote – Seth Godin & 14 Trends to Avoid a Meatball Sundae
• Big Site, Big Search
• Actionable Social Media
• Usability and SEO

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Looks like Lee has been working hard trying not to get in trouble out there in Las Vegas at the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference this week. At least, his posts show he has been productive!

Below are the Pubcon session overviews, photo posts and video interviews with other folks hanging out in Vegas. Lucky!

Pubcon 2007 Sessions:

• Pubcon Keynote: Craig Newmark of craigslist
• Pubcon Session: In House SEO
• Pubcon Session: Enterprise SEO
• Pubcon Session: Blogger Reporter Panel
• Pubcon Session: Press and Public Relations Campaigns

Pubcon Photos:

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It was my first Microsoft party last night and it turned out to be a doosy. I went with Rich Ord, Mike McDonald (who won a Zune) and Tiffany Doughty from iEntry (WebProNews). We arrived at about 7-7:30 to see lots of familiar faces. There was a Guitar Hero competition, sushi, glowing drinks, mini hamburgers, a huge outdoor patio and from 55 floors up, the view was amazing. There were bad Billy Idol and Gwen Stephani lookalikes, dancing, a little debauchery and plenty of conversations.

There were indeed a few photos that I could not upload to Flickr. However, please enjoy these:

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The last session of the day for me was “Press and Public Relations Campaigns” with Robin Liss of Reviewed.com and Joe Beaulaurier from PRWeb. Moderation duties were scheduled to be handled by Brett Tabke but were switched at the last minute to Melanie Mitchell, VP of SEO/SEM at AOL. Sorry Brett, but I don’t think anyone had a problem with the switch.

Robin presented a case study for a promotion on the iPhone her site wirelessinfo.com did using multiple channels including Digg and a YouTube video that went viral. Joe presented the multiple media format press release options offered by PRWeb.

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If someone has a better photo, please link in the comments

On day three, the last day of sessions at WebmasterWorld Pubcon here in Vegas, I participated on a panel called, “Search and Blogging Reporters Forum” with Rand Fishkin and Andy Beal.

Moderation duties handled by Mike McDonald. Basically, it was a round table-style discussion about blogging in the SEO industry as well as blogging as a marketing tool. There were some good points about using blogs as a public relations tool as well as some debate about hosting team blogs separately or all under the company domain name.

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I met Melanie Mitchell at last year’s Pubcon and was amazed at what a job being a Vice President of SEO/SEM at a company like AOL must be. The insights she shared in a keynote presentation at the WebGuild’s Searchnomics conference were impressive so I was fortnuate to get a few minutes of her time to do a short video interview on what she does for AOL and what some of her challenges and accomplishments have been.

Be sure to check out the TopRank SEO video channel on YouTube for interviews from Pubcon and many other search marketing event.

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Different regions of the country have very different ways of saying the same thing. Maybe it’s because our country is spread across such a large land mass, because we’re a melting pot or maybe it’s because we all love creating new words and coining new phrases.

Whatever the reason, there are various ways to say the same thing and most often the word chosen is dictated by the region, creating an opportunity for every website to capture more visitors, if they are indeed optimized for the variations.

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