Online Marketing Blog

My first post from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is the second half of “Free Traffic: SEO/SMO 101 (Search Engine & Social Media Optimization) with Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts and Muhammad Saleem of Advantage Consulting Services. Unfortunately, I missed the SEO portion and gauging by the crowd around Stephan, it went quite well.

Muhammad Saleem’s portion of the presentation focuses on Social Media Optimization and Marketing 101. I’ve not met Mahammaed in person before and he’s sporting a very cool goatee with a waxed moustache.

Saleem’s presentation focuses on 4 aspects of social media:

• Blogs

[Note from Lee: Please join me in welcoming Jessica Cameron-Ruud as a contributor to Online Marketing Blog. Jessica works as an Account Coordinator with TopRank's Online Marketing clients]

Over the past few months, MCAD and MIMA have hosted a series of events here in Minneapolis entitled ‘Conversations About The Future of Advertising’ (CATFOA). The most recent of which featured Joseph Jaffe, author of the new book “Join the Conversation”, who discussed conversational marketing as the next step for companies to connect with their customers.

One of the most effective online marketing services M&O/TopRank implements for clients in addition to SEO and public relations is email marketing. Within our direct and email marketing practice there are several, very talented people responsible for this success, one of which is M&O co-founder, Julie Brue.

Whether it be list development, landing page QA or email analytics, Julie is an excellent campaign manager and client advocate. Below is an article Julie has been so kind to contribute covering some of the “whys” and high level “how to’s” of implementing a successful email marketing program.

This week will be some light blogging for me as I’ll be on vacation for the rest of the week. We decided it would be a Cirque du Soleil - fest so where better to go for that than Las Vegas? We’ll see 3 of the Cirque shows there so hopefully it will satisfy any urges for peculiar French inspired circus acts for a while.

Susan and I made it to Sydney, Australia early this morning and go to watch the sun rise over Eastern Australia during the descent. After a few hours getting through customs, then getting our bags x-rayed on the way out and then getting checked again to get into a line to get to the exit of the airport, we made it outside for the line to the taxis. It might have been a lot of hurry up and wait, but we were just thankful to be outside in the fresh air.

March has been a bit crazy so far as we’ve been rolling out an enormous SEO campaign for one Fortune 20 client and are in the final stages of signing another. On top of that, March will be a speakorama on blogs and public relations.

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting for the IABC chapter in Minneapolis at St. Thomas University with Sarah Bjelland, a VP from Wells Fargo. The event was called, “Delivering Insight into Business Blogs” and I presented on social media in general, trends with business blogging, applications for blog software in a corporate communications strategy and best practices for corporate blogs.

Today I’ll be doing a presentation called, “The Truth About Search Engine Optimization” as part of the Visi Data Center 2.0 event.

Basically, the presentation will cover:

• The current search engine landscape
• 5 Myths about SEO
• 5 SEO Tactics To Use Now

I believe there are 400-600 people registered, so it should be a great event. I suspect there may be a few competing (or coopetive) local firms and SEO consultants there, which is good for them because I’m giving out a lot of information in my 30 minutes. However, the presentation is meant for business owners that want to learn more reliable information about what SEO is and what it is not.

Last week was quite a whirlwind with 3 presentations at DMA06 in San Francisco and then immediatley to Boston for 2 presentations to speak at a private conference being held by a client. We are doing a LOT more of that kind of speaking/consulting. Next up:

Nov 2nd: Visi Data Center 2.0, St. Paul
“The Truth about Search Engine Optimization” - Visi, the largest ISP in Minnesota, is holding an event to launch their new data center with St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman attending. During this event there will be presentations of interest to business and web site owners including my presentation on SEO.

This Friday starts an exciting journey for the next 10 days or so. I will be leaving for San Francisco on Friday to the DMA06 conference in San Francisco until the 18th. I was just in San Francisco a few weeks ago for a SEO video shoot with AllBusiness.com.

On Saturday I’ll be doing one of the four modules for the DMA’s new Search Engine Marketing certification program. Then on Monday I’m doing a “Blogs, RSS and Podcasting” panel with Amanda Watlington and Stephan Spencer. My presentation will be about using blogs for public relations. On Tuesday I’ll be doing a search marketing lab where a panel reviews web sites from the auduience and that evening I’ll be participating on a panel on using RSS for marketing.

The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association annual Summit starts in about an hour. This year’s event is sold out and there’s an excellent mix if speakers. With lots of sponsors this year, there are a ton of giveaways as well.

One of our pr firm clients, The Web Marketing Association and Web Award will have their CEO, William Rice start things off with the morning keynote presentation. Bill has run the Web Award competition for 10 years and the program has reviewed over 9,000 web sites in that time. His presentation will offer insight into what makes an award winning web site and he’ll also present industry vertical data compiled over the past 10 years.

The one session that I was able to blog at the ACCM show this week in Chicago was, “Top Three Search Marketing Opportunities for Merchants” which combined blogs and social media with paid inclusion and shopping search engines.

The session was moderated by Heather Lloyd-Martin, who opened up with: “There’s no secret sauce in search. But there are things that catalog marketers might no know about. There are things they can leverage.”

Heather asked the audience, “How many of you have B2B catalogs?” About a third of the audience raised their hands.

First up was Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit.

Barry has already posted it, but I thought I’d mention that we decided to coordinate our blogging efforts for quadruple coverage of the upcoming New York Search Engine Strategies conference and I will be posting to the Search Engine Roundtable site along with Barry, Ben and Chris. With all 4 of us attending most sessions, it should be the most comprehensive blog coverage of a Search Engine Strategies conference to-date.

I will also be posting conference observations, session notes and interviews here, to Online Marketing Blog.

Tags: SES, SES NYC, Search Engine Strategies, Search Engine Roundtable, SEO, SEM, Conference