Online Marketing Blog

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.

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.

As the Global SEO Program Manager/Diva for one of the largest companies in the world, Tanya Vaughan from HP has a tremendous amount of responsibility and knowledge about enterprise SEO. We caught up with Tanya after the Enterprise Search Engine Optimization panel at Pubcon in Las Vegas to ask about her role at HP and to elaborate on a topic from the session, “progressive enhancement”, and what it means for SEO.

Be sure to check out the TopRank channel on YouTube for more SEO interviews.

Known by many as either “Mr. Social Media” or by friends as “Princess”, Neil Patel’s reputation for experimenting and developing new and cutting edge internet marketing tactics is known throughout the industry. At WebmasterWorl’s Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, we caught up with Neil to ask about what his company ACS does for clients as well as his latest social media manipulation - oops, I mean marketing tactics and experimenting.

Be sure to check out the TopRank channel on YouTube for more SEO Interview Videos.

With 10 years under its belt, LED Digest is famous with long time SEOs for providing an exceptionally productive platform for sharing ideas, tactics and insights about search marketing. The digest would not have it’s luster without the formidable moderating skills of Adam Audette and we had the chance to finally meet Adam in person at Pubcon in Las Vegas.

In this short video interview, Adam describes how LED Digest was started as well as a tidbit about Universal search.

Be sure to check out the TopRank channel on YouTube for more SEO interviews.

Spotlight on Search: Interview

What we have for you today is a double scoop, double feature and two times our regular interview spunk involving Kevin Ryan, Global Content Director for Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch and Kevin Heisler, Executive Editor of Search Engine Watch. I’ll have to say, there are a few gems in this one, so read on:

(Heisler photo credit, Christine Churchill)

Let’s cut to the chase on SES Chicago and Pubcon happening at the same time this year. I am not sure most people realize it was not intended to happen that way. Do you anticipate there being much of an effect on attendance? How different are the audiences these two events are attempting to attract?

Spotlight on Search Interview with Danny Sullivan of Third Door Media and Neil Patel of Advantage Consulting Services

Next week the next of the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) conference series kicks off in New York: SMX Social Media. Developed by search engine industry legend Danny Sullivan and social media guru Neil Patel, the agenda for this event mixes strategic direction with plenty of practical advice sessions ranging from social news to social bookmarking to social networking with a double dose of Wikipedia on day two.

Spotlight on Search Interview with Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Photo Credit Liana Evans

Online Marketing Blog is very fortunate this week to have a special interview with Chris Sherman, Executive Editor at Search Engine Land and long time observer/analyst/practitioner/advocate in the search engine marketing industry. Chris has been a instrumental influence in the growth of the search marketing industry with his 10+ year old search consulting practice, past involvement with Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies as well as his new role as Executive Editor at Search Engine Land, running the Search Marketing Now webcasts and helping to program SMX conferences.

In our continuing coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, we’re shooting periodic video interviews both in the speaker ready room and a few on the exhibit floor.

In this interview Steven Marder of Eurekster talks about how their Swicki product works both for online publishers to attract and monetize traffic as well as serve as a useful web site marketing tool for SEO efforts.

Search engine optimization in English provides substantial challenges for most companies, but what about SEO in 20 different languages? When you drill down into it, there’s a lot “lost in translation” when most companies perform content optimization in different languages.

In this video interview from the Exhibit Hall at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, my long time friend Andy Atkins Kruger of UK-based WebCertain takes a few moments to answer questions about multilingual SEO as well as some of the common challenges that come about when optimizing content not only in other languages but also dealing with corporate speak in those languages.

Going through proper channels, I was able to coordinate a short video interview with Tim Mayer of Yahoo. I’m a bit of a Yahoo fan and it was great being able to chat with Tim for a few minutes before we recorded on the various questions other speakers suggested.

In this video, Tim answers a few questions including:

• What’s in store for Yahoo’s version of Universal search?
• From Mike Grehan: “Why does my spam work so much better in Yahoo than it does in Google?”

While in the speaker ready room this morning, I had the chance to sit down with Michael Gray and Bryan Eisenberg for a quick discussion about social media marketing and the changes with the influence “friends” have on social news sites like Digg.

Does reducing the weight of votes from “friends” take away from the reason people engage with social media sites? Find out in the video: