Online Marketing Blog

The DMA06 conference is getting rev’d up with pre conference sessions Satuday and Sunday. The new search engine marketing certification program started on Saturday with Jeannette Kocsis, VP of Digital Marketing at Harte-Hanks, presenting on “Introduction to Search Engine Marketing” and I followed up with “Search Engine Basics”.

Unfortunatley, I was not able to sit in on Jeannette’s session, but Amanda Watlington said there was great feedback. Here’s the description of the module:

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing: Explore search engine marketing and what it takes for a marketer to achieve search engine marketing results. Learn how to identify ethical search engine marketing practices and how search engines define spam. Learn how to shape the business case for search marketing for your business, and how to staff this valuable marketing function.

The Direct Marketing Association has officially announced their Certification Program in Search Engine Marketing today. The first modules are being offered at DMA06 in San Francisco in October. There will be two levels of certification focused on agency and in-house marketers:

• Level 1: Designed for individuals able to work under the direction of an advanced search engine marketer. These individuals would know and be able to employ current best practices in organic or paid search marketing.
• Level 2: Designed for individuals who are capable of devising, creating, and managing effective search engine marketing programs within agencies or as lead members of in-house marketing teams. At this level, individuals can seek advanced certification in organic or paid search.

I’ll catch hell from our PR people if I don’t mention somewhere that I am speaking at 2 and possibly 3 different sessions at the DMA06 conference Oct 14-19. The DMA annual conference is the largest marketing conference in the world.

One session is a 2 1/2 hour SEO 101 class on the search engine landscape and the other is on blogs, RSS and podcasting with Amanda Watlington and Stephan Spencer.

After that I’ll be doing a presentation on social media optimization for the eComXpo vitrual tradeshow Oct 24 followed up by a session on SEO for a local event, VISI Data Center 2.0 on Nov 2.

If you’re looking for sources of information on search marketing, conferences can be a great resource. Or. if you’re a conference junkie like me, then you’ll find the SEOBook “Must See SEO Events” calendar exceptionally useful.¬† Some disclosure here, I am editing the calendar along with Aaron.

Some of the conferences listed include:

• Search Engine Strategies
• WebmasterWorld Pubcon
• ad:tech
• DMA conferences
• MIMA
• eMetrics Summit
• eTail
• Shop.org Summit
• Search Insider Summit
• OMMA
• Affiliate Summit
• SEO Roadshow
• SEO Bash
• And more

If you know of a conference that deals in some way with search marketing (SEO or SEM) then drop a comment. Regional events are welcome as well.