Online Marketing Blog

Image: Detail of Skyword Infographic

The acceleration of social technologies along with continuously evolving consumer behaviors has many agencies in a state of flux and asking: Where to invest resources? Which positions to staff and how to structure the agency to be adaptable and to grow?

For the past few years we’ve been modeling our agency at TopRank Marketing to better adapt and integrate. The holistic approach I talk about here and in Optimize are a reflection of the changes we’ve made to better integrate content, social media and search optimization. With this context, I was happe to see this week Skyword released their Digital Agency of the Future Report. When I shared the accompanying infographic with my business partner, Susan Misukanis, her reply was, “That looks like us!”. Exactly.  

With all the sessions, speakers, networking and photo-snapping going on in the last 2 days at SMX Advanced in Seattle, it’s surprising any attendee got anything else completed at all.

While I didn’t attend every session (can’t be in three places at once – just not possible for this girl ) I managed to get to quite a few where I learned a lot of valuable information and got a feel for what everyone was talking about.

The main theme I noticed in Seattle this week was the idea of value, and how to increase value. With the idea of the recession looming over our heads like a dark cloud, there are many people who want to see their dollar going as far as it can.

While there is still a debate over the effect of the recession we are in, or even if we are in a recession at all, it seems most companies and individuals are preparing for it the best they can. Talks of budget cuts and conserving resources are on everyone’s minds these days.

So where does search marketing fit in to all of this?

Our expert panel this morning at SMX Advanced – consisting of Jon Miller from Marketo (a TopRank client), Russ Mann of Covario , Dave Davies of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning and Andrew Beckman of Location3 Media – gave great advice and opinions in how to come out of this recession thriving.

Day 1 at SMX Advanced has wrapped up quite nicely. Below are some of the session highlights and the gorgeous Bell Harbor Conference Center.

Danny Sullivan opening the show this morning in Seattle.

Everyone milling around, getting ready for the first of this mornings sessions

Blow Your Mind Linkbuilding Tactics panel this morning

Building Value for your SEO Business session, where we learned that we must invest in our clients and employees to increase the value of the company

Buying Sites for SEO panel, featuring Shoemoney in a fantastic video. You can view his SMX Advanced video here.

Danny and Matt, dressed as twins, during You & A with Matt Cutts to close the conference today.

Watch out link-and site-buyers alike! Matt Cutts is in town!

For those of you know don’t know (is there anyone out there who doesn’t?), Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s web spam team; which means any secret we are hearing at SMX Advanced, Matt is making sure the shady tactics aren’t working anymore next week.

Beginning with a pop culture comparison, Matt states that risky link building behavior is a lot like Milli Vanilli. If you do something that will benefit your site right away, like lip synching your way to a Grammy, you will get caught and it wont benefit your company in the future. You will be stripped of your Grammy and acquire a drug problem. And your site will be banned.

Technical issues flavored the beginning of this session at SMX Advanced in Seattle. However, "oopsies" notwithstanding, Blow Your Mind Linkbuilding Tactics was informative with plenty of advice for gaining the authoritative inbound links web sites need to rank well in the search engines.

The session was packed with link builders looking for new and cutting edge linking information. While we listened, Greg Boser, Roger Montti, Jay Young, Stephan Spencer and Todd Friesen did their best to share with the audience how to get the best links. Their tips included:

SMX Advanced is less than a week away, and let me tell you, I am excited. Not only is Seattle one of my favorite cities in the country, but the agenda for the 2 day long search marketing event looks outstanding.

Along with the keynote speakers – Kevin Johnson and Matt Cutts – here are a few other sessions I am really looking forward to.

SMX Advanced Day 1

Conferences are a big part of TopRank’s marketing and content promotion strategy and it looks like a busy summer is ahead of us. Numerous events are coming up quickly – enough to make your head spin. Here is a summary of our involvement with PRSA, DMA, PUSH, SIS, SES and SMX events over the next 30 days:

05/14/08 – MIMA: Duality Reality – Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise?
The local interactive marketing association along with inspiration and motivation from Doug Pollei, there will be a very interesting panel of in-house Interactives discussing how large companies (General Mills, Best Buy, Target, Fingerhut and OptumHealth) are adopting and measuring social media programs. If you’re in the Twin Cities this week and involved with social marketing now or in the future, this is a MUST ATTEND event.

In case you’ve been under a rock the past 6 months or perhaps taking a well earned internet hiatus, Danny Sullivan’s new conference series kicks off this week with Search Marketing Expo Advanced in Seattle.

You can be sure to see session by session coverage from Barry and his crew at Search Engine Roundtable. Matt McGee from Small Business SEM who will also be doing some conference coverage has already posted photos including a few shots from the MSN party as did Karl Ribas. Matt Cutts shares a few thoughts of the event here.

Other SMX Advanced coverage will be coming from Marketing Pilgrim and of course both text and video from WebProNews. Alas, Online Marketing Blog will not be attending SMX Seattle, but hopefully we can cover future events. With two east coast speaking gigs this month, attending/blogging a third conference simply isn’t doable for me.