Online Marketing Blog

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.

WebmasterWorld Pubcon opened up today with opening remarks from Brett Tabke and a keynote presentation by Craig Newmark of craigslist.

“There’s nothing alturistic about craigslist”

As often happens with companies that grow successfully, founder Craig Newmark is not running craigslist any longer. Turns out his skills are better served working customer service.

Craig started things out by sharing the history of craigslist to a huge crowd in a cavernous room at the Las Vegas Convention center. This also included the disclosure that he did wear a plastic pocket protector and the black glasses taped together along with the social skills that go with the stereotype. But then moved to San Francisco.

View from the Wynn

I finally arrived in Las Vegas and bumped into Detlev Johnson while checking in to the Wynn. He showed me his cool new Blackberry Curve.  It’s a cool phone but I don’t have Tmobile and am not sure about switching networks again.  He has a pet name for it that really fits, but I can’t mention it here. If you see me at the conference, ask. Better yet, ask Detlev.

Next week offers one of the most significant opportunities for those in the search marketing world to up their knowledge, industry networks and have a great time doing it. WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon conference in Las Vegas has acquired a certain gravitational pull that’s impossible to ignore. There are many reasons why this is true, so I’ve pinged a few Pubcon veterans to share why they love Pubcon and why it’s something search marketers should seriously consider getting involved with.

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.

A lot has changed in the search marketing conference industry in the past year. The biggest news being the addition of Kevin Ryan to oversee Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies along with the departure of Danny Sullivan from SES to start his own venture, Third Door Media and the Search Marketing Expo or SMX series of conferences.

Additional news includes the success of new conferences like MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit, programmed by David Berkowitz as well as the reduction in conference dates for Brett Tabke’s WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon down to one (albeit, temporarily) in Las Vegas. With the number of new and niche conferences popping up it begs the question as to whether the market demand can support so many events?

During SES New York I heard that this year’s Pubcon Conference will be held the same week as the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference. This wasn’t by choice, as neither conference will benefit from happening at the same time. I believe it had to do with how the Las Vegas Convention Center situation worked with Pubcon and things happened that required the Pubcon event to be moved to a different date than originally intended.

SES Chicago is 12/3-6 and PubCon Las Vegas runs 12/4-7.  This is a really tough call because Pubcon only happens once a year and SES Chicago is in our back yard. However, I do plan on having TopRank staff at both events

I’ve had a standing request for an interview with Bruce Clay for about a year now and we finally decided to just do a short one on video, which works for me and I think it will work for you as well.

Bruce Clay is one of the best known brands in the world of search marketing and if you attend Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld Pubcon or ad:tech conferences, you’re sure to see him and his team on the exhibit hall and/or presenting to attendees. Thousands of people have used his SEO tools and participated in his company’s SEO training programs.

Matt Cutts of Google was nice enough to take a minute to do a quick interview on his way out from the Pubcon conference in Las Vegas. This was something we had coordinated via email before the conference, but I was lucky to catch him at the last minute.

Matt gives his take on Pubcon parties as well as the “Site Review” panel and sticking up for the mom and pop sites that make silly mistakes because they don’t have good information. Thanks for taking the time Matt!

I have to say, the Pubcon conference last week was one of the better search marketing conferences I’ve been to. The overriding impression from just about everyone I talked to was that the content was great and the networking even better.

Below is a roundup of Online Marketing Blog’s blog posts, photos and videos from the WebmasterWorld Pubcon Las Vegas 2006. I have to say thanks to everyone that let me put my Sony CyberShot to the test and do these 1 minute “interviews”. :

Videos
Brett Tabke - WebmasterWorld
(Happy about the conference, speakers and the next one in Vegas)

I now have 5 of the 6 SEO interview videos I’ve shot here at the Las Vegas Pubcon.

Greg Hartnett - Best of the Web
Kevin Lee - Did-It.com
John Marshall - ClickTracks
Greg Jarboe - SEO-PR

I also have one with Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads but the file is too big for YouTube so I’ll have to get it up to Google Video this weekend.

Now we’re heading over to the actual “Pub” part of Pubcon at the Nine Fine Irisishmen bar at the New York, New York casino. Hopefully we’ll get more SEO videos there.

One of the key components of the presentation I gave this morning at the Las Vegas Pubcon conference presented the idea of press release optimization and social media news releases in the context of push and pull. But before that, it’s important to understand the market opportunity with news search.

According to a report released by comScore, half of all internet users visited news sites in June 2006. Of the most popular news web sites, Yahoo News is #1 surpassing CNN, MSNBC and AOL News.