Online Marketing Blog

You’ve probably picked up that this week is about SES San Jose from Dana and Ashley’s “15 Things Not to Miss at SES San Jose” followed by Jessica’s “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” post.  I am also headed out to sunny California next month. There’s plenty to take in on a trip to the Golden State including the beautiful weather, celebrities, good wine, and, of course the Search Engine Strategies Conference.

Here are a few of the sessions I’m planning on covering:

More Customers, Fewer Costs - Why Marketing to the ‘Long Tail’ Makes Sense
Who doesn’t want more customers and fewer costs? Isn’t that a business’ dream? This session will be interesting as there have been recent stories on how the long tail is not as effective as we once thought. I still believe in the long tail though.

Originally written by Burt Bacharach, the song Do You Know the way to San Jose, la la la la la… didn’t actually come to fruition until the lovely Dionne Warwick won her first Grammy for Best Contemporary Pop Female Vocal in 1968.

Although I wasn’t around in 1968, I understand the anticipation Burt must have had waiting for this song to hit the main stream. I have been chosen as a TopRank blogger at the upcoming SES conference in San Jose, CA, (and yes, I have been singing the song for days now ) and the anticipation has got me on the edge of my seat!

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″:

1. Your flight there. Ha!

I would have to say SES San Jose 2007 turned out to be a pretty good conference. With a HUGE thanks to the TopRank Blogging Team (LtoR: Dana Larson, Melinda Cayetano, Thomas McMahon and Mike Yanke), we were able to cover 26 sessions, publish nearly 500 photos and 7 video interviews.

Besides coverage of the conference sessions, there were also the after conference “networking” events, ie parties including: SES Dinner at Hanoke Gardens, Google Dance, Women in Search Luncheon, Yahoo Book Party and of course, the infamous Search Bash.
Conferences are a great way to make new friends, continue existing friendships and further your knowledge in a fast paced, ever-changing industry. It’s those personal connections that can speed up knowledge transfer and the acquisition of truly productive insight.

Even though she’s moved on from Google to Zillow, Vanessa Fox still carries quite a bit of passion for her creation, Google Webmaster Tools which was renamed from Google sitemaps about a year ago. She was even spotted at the Google Dance giving advice to SES attendees at the Google Webmaster Tools product demo table.

Many webmasters and beginning search marketers could benefit a great deal from the features offered by Google Webmaster Tools so I asked Vanessa if she’d do a short video with me to provide a few tips.

For more info on Google Webmaster Central visit the blog.

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WebmasterRadio.FM and their sponsors did not disappoint with the right of passage for new SES San Jose attendees known as “Search Bash“. Hula hoops, Jersey Girls, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, Sumo wrestling, go go girls and an open bar all night. Tell me that’s not a formula for an evening you’ll likely not remember but really wish you could!

And now for a few photos:

Brandy and Daron Babin

Vivid Nightclub

Chris and Danielle Winfield

Ken Jurina and Mike McDonald

Sumo Search Bash Style

Dave Naylor and David Brown

Tim Mayer from Yahoo laughing about the ass he’s about to kick

Daron Babin instigating more sumo fun

Mel Carson (Microsoft) Lee and Natala Menezes (Microsoft)

After a long day of sessions on day three of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, some attendees mosied on over to the Yahoo Panama Book party for Mona Elesseily of Page Zero. It was great to see the support for her new report, “Mastering Panama - A special report on Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform”.

While I haven’t had a chance to do a full review of the book since last night, I have paged through it and it appears to be pretty comprehensive and very easy to read with plenty of ordered lists, “Action Items” and “Helpful Hints”. You can get your copy here.

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Day 3 at SES San Jose found me assigned to cover the session “Link Baiting & Viral Search Success.”

Those who’ve read my previous posts should find it as no surprise that my level of excitement for this session superseded any residual aches and pains left over from last night’s “decadence based in relevance” superbash Google Dance.

(Personal Note: None of the stories you’ve heard regarding the TopRank team at this event are accurate. Except the one about how we met up with AC/DC’s tour bus afterwords and partied with them all night - that one’s true**)

This session, moderated by SES co-chair Chris Sherman included on its panel:

• Chris Boggs, Search Strategist, Avenue A
• Jennifer Laycock, Editor-In-Chief, Search Engine Guide

In this session on Day 3 of SES San Jose 2007, there were no presentations. The floor was open to all questions anyone had on links and link building and how they affect PageRank and their importance in organic SEO. There were many questions asked, and even more great answers from the panel consisting of Mike Grehan (”My name is Mike Grehan, and I do links.”), Debra O’Neil-Mastaler (Link Building Chick), Jim Boykin and Greg Boser (”The White Hat Link Builder”), with Danny Sullivan moderating. Below, I thought I’d highlight the some of the questions and answers I thought were most interesting.

1. Are there any implications or problems with run-of-site links?

In our continuing coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, we’re shooting periodic video interviews both in the speaker ready room and a few on the exhibit floor.

In this interview Steven Marder of Eurekster talks about how their Swicki product works both for online publishers to attract and monetize traffic as well as serve as a useful web site marketing tool for SEO efforts.

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Raise your hands if you want to be a Search Marketer! This session I attended on Day 3 of SES San Jose 2007 taught us how to better educate those who want to start in the SEM business, and how the rest of us already in it should continue learning.

First, Pradeep Chodra, co-founder of OMLogic, spoke on the highlights of working in SEM. Some of those highlights include an exciting and adventurous industry, flexibility of where and when you work because the internet is portable and global, the fact that you don’t need a professional degree to be good at SEM and that the salaries can turn out to be very attractive if you work hard and know what you’re doing as a search marketer.

Day three of Search Engine Strategies San Jose started off with Danny Sullivans’ last keynote presentation where he talked to Marissa Mayer of Google, who was giving her first keynote. Overall they talked about universal search, touch on video, personalized search, iGoogle and the iPhone.

Marissa sated that they felt users were happy with the new universal search. A lot of work had to go into chainging the algorithm to incorporate the additional sources but they were happy. She did say that they had a long way to go yet and other sources, such as scholar, may be added in the future. Google’s goal with universal search is to be more like an encyclopedia with as much relevant information right at your finger tips.