SMX Advanced 2008 Preview

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

• Blow your Mind Link Building Techniques – Want to learn how to build a database of high-value link acquisition targets? Want to know how to get on the radar of nonprofits, government and university departments and compel them to give you some of that sweet, authoritative link love? Want to learn the most coveted secrets to “buying” the links the engines would never consider a “paid link?” This, along with non-traditional link sources, linking strategies and nofollow PageRank “scuplting” or “siloing” are covered in the session.
• Creating Value in your SEM Businesses – Hanging out your shingle is not building a business. Creating value that others will recognize and ultimately pay to own (read “buy”) takes vision, planning and execution. In this session, you’ll hear case studies from SEM business executives who have conceptualized and implemented strategies and tactics that make their companies intrinsically valuable.
• Buying Sites for SEO – Forget the debate over buying links. How about buying entire web sites to gain success in search. This session looks at how to find the gems out there, criteria to consider, ways to negotiate and how to best leverage your new purchase. Tips, tricks, success stories, and painful lessons learned will be shared.

SMX Advanced Day 2

• Search Marketing and Surviving a Recession – Many expect a recession to hit and no one knows how search will weather it. This session looks at strategies and tactics for those who want to prepare in advance for a worse case scenario.
• What You Should be Measuring – But Aren’t! – CPA, ROI, CTR, ROAS — these are metrics commonly used to assess the success of a paid search campaign, but are they the right ones? This session looks at other metrics to also consider, along with some things to track that you might be overlooking.
• Analytics Every SEO Needs to Know – It’s more than just rankings and traffic reports to measure the health of SEO efforts. This session focuses on analytics that SEOs should be considering.
• Give It Up! – No more secrets time. In this session, our panel of noted SEOs all share some of their favorite and largely overlooked SEO tips. Then we turn to the audience for more sharing. **We won’t be blogging this session, as all attendees agree to a 30-day waiting period before acting on these secrets, but it will definitely be exciting to see.

For a full agenda of the event, please visit the SMX Advanced 2008 page. Here you can see information regarding the SMX After Dark networking event I will be attending, as well as see pictures of the beautiful conference hall we will be in.

To those not attending SMX Advanced next week, I hope you follow our blog to read up on the conference and see a lot of pictures from the event.

And to those who will be in Seattle next week – see you there!