Online Marketing Blog

The High Rankings Seminar is going to be in Denver June 28 & 29. If you’re anywhere in that part of the country and want to get a good, hands on and practical guide to search engine optimization and paid search, the High Rankings seminar is a good fit.

When this event came to Minneapolis Jill asked me to do a session related to social media and other indirect ways to drive traffic to web sites. I had the opportunity to see Jill, Christine Churchill, Karon Thackston, Scottie Claiborne and Matt Bailey do a super job of engaging the audience with their hard won wisdom and answering very specific questions. I had another invite for Denver, but two events in one month are enough for me.

Day one of the Minneapolis High Rankings seminar went well and I think the presentations were well received. One thing I think I did not emphasize is that the speakers are not only subject matter experts, but they’re skilled at instruction as well

Matt Bailey reinforced himself as one of my favorite speakers and I recommend that you travel to wherever it is that he’s speaking next to learn about analytics and usability. If nothing else, you can enjoy his Star Trek “red shirt” hypothesis.

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.

Have you noticed the number of regionalized or small scale search marketing conferences that are popping up?Jill Whalen has been running her High Rankings Search Engine Marketing seminar for a few years now (disclosure: I am a speaker for the Mpls event and my PR agency works with Jill) that is very hands on focused. The speakers all share a very similar philosophy about search marketing so there are not the mixed messages you get at larger events.

Danny Sullivan has started his SMX event (is that name a subliminal play on Search Marketing Sex?) starting in Seattle this summer as well.

If you’re one of the bazillion people that get Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Advisor newsletter, then you already know, but in case you don’t, here’s the scoop in the upcoming High Rankings Seminar coming to Minneapolis next month:

Since there hasn’t been a “how to” SEO/SEM seminar in Minneapolis anytime recently, we wanted to make sure everyone in the Twin Cities web development and marketing community had the chance to hear about and sign up for the High Rankings Seminar.  So Jill has agreed to extend the early bird discount ($200 off) for registrations placed by February 22nd.

Todd And (Andrlik) published a list of 150 marketing blogs and I’m happy to note that Online Marketing Blog is ranked at #5 between Brian Clark’s most excellent Copyblogger and Church of the Customer’s Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. With Seth Godin at #2 and Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion at #17 I’m pretty amazed. This is a dynamic list and you can read about the ranking criteria here.

A few people did interviews with me that were published this week. One with Michael Gray as part of his awesome collection of local search marketing interviews, “Local Search Tips, Tricks and Secrets“.

Renowned search engine optimization expert, Jill Whalen of High Rankings is bringing her traveling SEO experts roadshow to Minneapolis this coming March 15th and 16th. I am honored to say that Jill has asked me to participate in the training as well.

The Minneapolis High Rankings Seminar will feature some of the most experienced and talented search marketing trainers, most of which have spoken at major conferences such as Search Engine Strategies:

• Jill Whalen - High Rankings
• Scottie Claiborne - Successful-Sites
• Matt Bailey - Site Logic Marketing
• Christine Churchill - KeyRelevence
• Karon Thackston - Marketing Words