Online Marketing Blog

TopRank is sending five team members to the SES San Jose Conference August 18th-22nd, an event we’re sincerely looking forward to, especially with 80% of the sessions new to SES.  Since this will be my first time attending the SES conference in San Jose, I am excited about all of the new sessions we will be attending.

My team mate Dana Larson has been to multiple search marketing conferences over the past year and is eager to discover what is new and different at next month’s event. Together, the two of us would like to share our “Top 15 Things Not to Miss at SES San Jose 2008″:

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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?

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Demand for talented search marketers is high and the number of educational opportunities has increased proportionately. We have a reader poll this week to get an idea of our reader’s conference involvement. See below.

Some prefer a structured training program like SEMPO Institute, DMA SEM Certification or Bruce Clay’s training program. Others prefer to compliment those programs or augment on the job training with industry seminars such as Search Engine Strategies and ClickZ Events, WebmasterWorld Pubcon, SMX, Search Insider Summit and the variety of vertical, regional and industry specific conferences that are now including search marketing in their programming.

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In the past I’ve written about the benefits of attending Search Engine Strategies conferences with tips on gaining knowledge, finding new clients and employees, networking with others and even as a resource for generating content.

However, there are even more benefits you can gain from going to conferences like Search Engine Strategies, Pucon and SMX that you may want to consider, albeit with your humor hat on:

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Wow, I just checked my calendar and June is one heck of a month for conferences. Regrettably, I’ve had to turn down two regional/private speaking gigs due to time conflicts and those really are the best for generating new business. However, the two events I will be speaking at are:

Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Summit, “Media Relations Unbound: How SEO and Social Media Have Revolutionized Our Reach” Washington, D.C. June 10-12, 2007. I will be speaking with fellow PR, Social Media and Search Marketing enthusiasts, Jamie ODonnell from SEO-PR and Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus. This looks like a fantastic event for the PR industry and I’ll be bringing one of our new account managers, Mike Yanke to fill up on all the PR and marketing wisdom being shared.

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The winds of change are blowing in the search marketing conference scene this year with more offerings than ever. The big conferences persist, while new challengers as well as smaller and more practical seminars emerging.

SEO and Paid Search education is not limited to conferences with the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification and the SEMPO Institute launching recently. However, conferences and seminars offer the added benefit of networking, prospecting and the kind of after hours education on topics that simply are not publicly available.

Which leads me to this week’s Reader Poll on conferences or seminars that offer search engine optimization and/or paid search marketing content.

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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.

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