Online Marketing Blog

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?

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.

There’s also Elite Retreat with a $5,000 price tag that includes: Guy Kawasaki, Aaron Wall, Lee Dodd, Darren Rowse, Jeremy Shoemaker, Kris Jones and Neil Patel. The marketing is getting slick on this one along with the all-star speaker lineup.

Danny Sullivan’s timing for announcing his new conference SMX during the Search Engine Strategies conference here in Chicago is as ballsy as it gets. The first SMX conference is in Seattle. Here’s the list of links for the new search marketing media empire Danny is building:

“Search Marketing Expo — SMX — is the new search engine marketing conference from Third Door Media, the company behind the Search Engine Land news site and the Search Marketing Now webcast series.”

I have no doubt what Danny is creating will become wildly successful. It certainly is interesting hearing speculation from various people in the search marketing industry ranging from an extreme, “Anyone who is involved with Search Engine Watch after Danny leaves will be hated by the search marketing industry” to a more practical, “There’s room for many media and conferences in this industry and those that do the best job will be the most successful.”