Online Marketing Blog

As one of the original and largest conferences with a focus on search engine marketing, SES content runs the gamut of strategies and tactics to help marketers improve their performance. This isn’t an easy task in a world where platforms like Google and Facebook can change the rules from one minute to the next.

SES may have had it’s roots in search marketing, but like the “best of the best” search engine marketers, SES has adapted to the changing marketplace and evolved content offerings including: mobile, social, content marketing and big trends like Big Data.

The notion of optimization is increasingly viewed as a holistic approach that can impact discovery of content to anyone that is looking.  That bigger picture view of marketing performance optimization is something you’ll find in the tracks, presentations and tactics at SES San Francisco. It’s a real 360 degree view of what it means to optimize digital marketing to achieve any kind of marketing goal with any audience on any platform.

The only session I’m liveblogging day one of SES San Francisco conference is this one, “Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers” so the pressure is on the awesome panel including: Todd Friesen, Ray “Catfish” Comstock, Rob Garner and moderation duties handled by Richard Zwicky.

First up is Rob Garner, VP Strategy at iCrossing and a VP at SEMPO. Rob started things off with a description of the challenges that most often occur with measuring the search channel.

90% of search channel bugets go to paid media, but paid media supplies 20% of returns. Only 10% of budgets go to SEO but a huge percentage of search marketing performance can be attributed to SEO.

Certainly one of the best cities in the U.S. for a conference is San Francisco and in a little over 2 weeks the famous ClickZ Connected Marketing Week returns with 5 days of deep dive online marketing education, networking and knowing SEOs, plenty of fun.  A big part of the week is the SES San Francisco conference.

I’ve been attending SES conferences since 2005 and while both the online marketing industry and the SES conference have changed quite a bit, that change has spurred continuous innovation to the benefit of attendees, sponsors and speakers. You’ll find many sessions at 90 minutes instead of 45 or 60, so speakers can really get in-depth with their topics. There are also a number of sessions completely programmed by specific advisory board members, an approach that is new to this SES. To Win a Free Pass to SES San Francisco, Read on!

QR code on the side of a building? Geek cool.

Last week the West Coast SES Conference and Expo moved from San Jose back to its roots in San Francisco. It was a well attended show (5,000+ in 2009 vs. 6,000 in 2010 registrations), despite the illusion created by the voluminous Moscone.

As part of Connected Marketing Week, SES included a great mix of sessions. In fact, there were quite a few new sessions and solo presentations such as the one by Andy Beal on Online Reputation Management and the one on Content Marketing Optimization by moi.