Online Marketing Blog

With over 70 sessions SES Chicago running November 14-18, 2011 is a virtual smorgasbord of information for Marketing and SEO professionals alike.  Many topics will be covered including: PPC, keyword research, SEO, social media, local marketing, mobile marketing, link building, content, optimization, usability, and so much more.  With so many sessions to choose from where should you begin?  Below are a list of ‘must see’ sessions that I will be sure to check out while I’m there.

#1 – Winning! Measuring Social Media Success

While I doubt that Eli Goodman and Tami Dalley will be channelling Charlie Sheen I am still very interested to hear their take on measuring the success of social campaigns.  I would recommend having your social media metrics handy if possible ( I know I will), so that you can apply the speakers instruction on estimating the value of your fans and followers in real time.  Who knows, we may find that we score better than anticipated.

Snappy title eh? Here are a few others I was considering:  ”Fall Into Search & Social Media Smarts at SES Chicago”, “Leaf the Competition Behind at SES Chicago”, “No Cold Ideas at SES Chicago”, “Remember December SES Chicago?”.  You get the idea.  As a long time attendee, speaker and media sponsor, here’s the good news and more good news about the upcoming Midwest Search and Social Media Marketing conference held in the windy city.

First, the lineup of keynotes is pretty impressive and includes 3 TopRank Online Marketing Blog interview alumni:

Avinash Kaushik – Co-Founder of Market Motive Inc and the Analytics Evangelist for Google talked to us about Storytelling & Web Analytics. At SES Chicago Avinash will be giving an opening keynote presentation that promises to help attendees rethink their online marketing, better present analyses, and enthuse their peers.

Here we are near the end of 2009 and at the last Search Engine Strategies conference of the year.  While many conferences are down in attendance, SES Chicago actually beat last year’s numbers by about 100, according to Matt McGowan, VP, Publisher & Head of US at Incisive Media, the company that owns SES.

There are many ways to get value from attending a conference but one that is especially important, and often overlooked, is the ability to connect with industry thought leaders and ask important questions.

While roaming the sessions, exhibit hall and networking events at SES Chicago, I did just that and decided to use my trusty iPhone 3GS to capture some insights on what marketers should be focusing on or considering in 2010.

Moderated by Simon Heseltine, Senior Marketing Manager for AOL with panelists including: Eli Goodman from comScore, Justin Merickel of Efficient Frontier and Doug McMillen from Microsoft Advertising.

First up is Justin Merickel from Efficient Frontier, which runs about $180m in PPC through their platform. Justin talked about two main trends:

The changing SERP. Data comes front and center to the results page
Justin shows a SERP page for “bottled water” where the top PPC ads display images of bottled water. Not sure of it’s impact. However, if you’re not leveraging Google features (like images in PPC or local listings) you’re missing out on significant visibility.

Advertisers need to think about how to get their products and services into the new multimedia search results page.

Next week is the final search marketing conference of the year for me and most others in the SEM industry: Search Engine Strategies Chicago is a MidWest focused event that will offer keynotes from the likes of Jeff Jarvis, Author of What WouldGoogle Do? and a multitude of Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced breakout sessions covering SEO, PPC, Social Media and many other related web marketing topics.

I know there are plenty of agencies and companies that are experiencing slimmed marketing and travel budgets, wondering if marketing conferences are worth the investment. Sponsoring and exhibiting are a big part of many companies marketing strategy and for those companies that do it right, with pre, during and post show promotion, it’s very productive. Even at small shows.

Yesterday I presented at SES Chicago in a session on SEO Through Blogs and Feeds with Stephan Spencer and Sally Falkow. I went first and presented the slideshow embedded below, a presentation in two parts:

1. Why blogs created solely for SEO purposes will inevitably fail.
2. Tips on how to create a successfully optimized company blog that will last.

My presentation was followed up by Sally who talked about Feeds and distributon opportunities. The final presenter was Stephan, who had 100 or so slides (joking) on WordPress SEO but got through about 20 before the Q/A which was handled by Rebecca Lieb.

TopRank Online Marketing will have two speakers presenting on two panels at SES Chicago this week.  

On Tuesday, Senior Account Manager Jolina Pettice (who recently spoke on a panel with Yahoo’s Ron Belanger and Anne Kennedy at DPAC) will be speaking on a session about how to use Public Relations tactics to improve SEO results.  On Wednesday I will be speaking on a panel about Blog SEO.

Here are the session details. We look forward to seeing you there!

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - 2:45pm-3:45pm 
“Turning PR Efforts into SEO Results”

Today kicks off another Search Engine Strategies conference, this time in the windy and bleeping cold city of Chicago. 

Change has been in the air for SES with the naming of Stewart Quealy as VP of content development, responsible for creating conference program content for all SES events and training. Also, Marilyn Crafts (whom I like to call “Super Star”) was promoted to senior program director and will work with program development, speaker selection and event strategy.  

Then there’s the really big news of Matt McGowan being promoted to VP/Publisher for Incisive Media’s Digital Marketing Businesses which includes the ClickZ network, Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies conference.

Jolina and Mike had a great time at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago. Not only is it the windy city, but a festive, cold and snowy one too by the sounds of it.

Here is a recap of the SES Chicago posts in case you missed any:

• Meet the Web Analytics Players
• Igniting Viral Campaigns
• Keynote Speech – Rodney Dangerfield School of Search Marketing
• Keynote – Seth Godin & 14 Trends to Avoid a Meatball Sundae
• Big Site, Big Search
• Actionable Social Media
• Usability and SEO
• Are You Ignoring the Power of Images?
• Snowy & Festive at SES Chicago
• SEO and Development – Get It Together
• Personalization, User Data & Search

Different regions of the country have very different ways of saying the same thing. Maybe it’s because our country is spread across such a large land mass, because we’re a melting pot or maybe it’s because we all love creating new words and coining new phrases.

Whatever the reason, there are various ways to say the same thing and most often the word chosen is dictated by the region, creating an opportunity for every website to capture more visitors, if they are indeed optimized for the variations.

For example, here are all the different ways one might search for a ‘cabin’ in which to spend some vacation time:
Cottage
Chalet
Retreat
Country house
Camp
Cabana
Shed
Villa
Lodge
Log house

A slew of SES Chicago attendees sat in on the session – Igniting Viral Campaigns – to learn how they just might create the next Burger King Chicken Campaign, in which Burger King was able to increase chicken sandwich sales with a website and a subservient chicken.

Maybe we’re not all looking to sell more chicken sandwiches, but we are looking to take a message and make it viral.

Each panelist provided insight on what they believe to be the keys to making content buzzworthy.

Bill Hanekamp, CEO, The Well hammered home the importance of relevancy to session attendees.

According to Bill, we all need to ask ourselves the following question:
1. With all the content on our websites, does anyone care?

In a morning session, here at SES Chicago, attendees had the chance to learn from and interact with folks from the world of Web Analytics.

In particular, if you’ve been wondering what’s new with Google Analytics, I’ve got the scoop for you.

Kristen Nomura, Sr. Account Manager at Google Analytics briefed us on 3 new features and why they are important.

1. Internal Site Search Now Available
Internal Site Search and reporting is now available. This allows you to gain more insight into:
-what keyword phrase was searched
-who searched
-when did they search and
-from what pages are visitors searching most often

This data can definitely take analytics to the next level, if you’re not already tracking this data, by understanding what the visitor is looking for after reaching the site.