B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

SES Chicago Day 2 Wrap Up

This is the first SES conference I’ve been to where there were no large scale events sponsored by any of the major search engines. There are smaller, invite-only gatherings, but they only involve a small number of attendees. 

I opted to check out some of the Chicago steak houses recommended to me by Jolina, one our Public Relations rockstars, who is from the area.

On Sunday, Andy from WebCertain and I first checked out Harry Caray’s.  This place is definitely a Chicago tradition in sports bars. Unfortunatley, their interpretation of what "medium" means was very different than what Andy and I had in mind. Service was excellent though.


SES Chicago Day 2 Wrap Up

SES Chicago Keynote with Danny Sullivan

Keynote Day 2 of Search Engine Strategies with Danny Sullivan

Danny says keynotes should be inspiring.

How are we (search marketers) viewed?  Shows photo of guy wearing spam shirt and drinking a beer.

Shows quotes from various sources characterizing SEOs as:  Worthless, shady, criminals, cockroaches

Who to blame?  

Blach Hats:
Blog spamming, keyword stuffing, content thieves, cloaking

But consider some contradictions:

  • Some news sources are allowed to cloak
  • Large respected pubs selling links
  • Web site of respected blog software maker hosting spam pages

White Hats:
Algorithm ingnorant, simple tips overselling, industry best practices

Consider:  

  • Simple tips aren’t simple to people who don’t know
  • Working with designers and others to do content SEO is a skill

SES Chicago Keynote with Danny Sullivan

Day 1 Chicago SES

I arrived in Chicago last night and had dinner at Harry Carey’s with Andy from WebCertain. We perused the conference Hilton pub afterwards and chatted it up with the attending SEO/SEM conference revelers. After short chats with Bruce Clay and David Warmuz of Trellian, it was off to bed.

Today should be a busy one and I plan on attending the following sessions:

Advanced Track – Searcher Behavior Research Update

Advertising Track – Earning From Search & Contextual Ads

Vertical Track – Global Search Landscape

Advanced Track – Advanced Search Term Research Tools

SEMPO is having a party after and will be announcing preliminary results of their annual survey. I am very much looking forward to that report. 


Day 1 Chicago SES

TopRank Sends 2 Speakers to SES Chicago

Next week Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conference comes to Chicago Dec 5-8. A few notes about this conference from today’s Search Engine Update newsletter:

  • Record advance registrations – all your colleagues, clients and competitors will be
    there
  • More sponsors/exhibitors than any prior Chicago event
  • Best conference program ever for Chicago

TopRank Online Marketing will have two speakers at this event: SEO Manager David Temple and myself.

David will present on the Global Search Landscape day 1 along with Nacho Hernandez, Lucas Morea and my good friend Andy Atkins-Kruger who is the Managing Director at UK based SEO/SEM firm, Web Certain and President of the SMA-UK.

I will be on a panel covering News Search SEO on day 2 with Greg Jarboe, Nan Dawkins and Sally Falkow presenting. I will also be blogging several of the sessions day 1, 2 and 3.


TopRank Sends 2 Speakers to SES Chicago

Pubcon X Wrap Up

The conference portion of Pubcon ended yesterday. Exhibitors pulled down their booths promptly at about 5pm. It would be great if there was more time in between sessions to visit the exhibit hall though. Overall, it was a great show and opportunity to connect with many of the leaders in search marketing.

Yahoo drew a lot of attention to the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) program and seems very committed to building a great program for publishers and advertisers.

Yahoo also announced the availability for blog publishers that are participating in the beta YPN program to place ads in their RSS feeds. That’s something that I will be testing with this blog very soon. Feedback is welcome.


Pubcon X Wrap Up

Google Base

The launch of Google Base today is being covered to death today.

Details from Google Blog:

“Today we’re excited to announce Google Base, an extension of our existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We’ll host the items and make them searchable for free. ”

This afternoon here at Pubcon in Las Vegas, Google has a meeting about an unannounced topic. Perhaps it’s about Google Base?


Google Base

Pubcon X Keynote: Robert X. Cringley

The first session at Pubcon 10 started out with a keynote presentation from Robert Cringley.

Robert Cringley has been on the internet since 1977. He was a war correspondent in ’77 in Beiruit and had enough and went back to CA and started working for Steve Jobs. Apple offered him stock but he regretably, took cash. Cringley taught at Stanford University. Came back to Apple for work on Apple Lisa user interface.

Claim to fame: He invented the trashcan icon, which he created as an experience he had when writing a book. He accidentally deleted 8000 lines of text – 96,000 words. So he was resolved to create the trashcan functionality and make delete a two step process. Shared other anecdotes regarding trashcan.


Pubcon X Keynote: Robert X. Cringley

WebmasterWorld Pubcon Day 1

Today starts Pubcon X. My hotel is right next to the Las Vegas Convention Center and there’s a huge WebmasterWorld.com banner hanging outside. A pretty good match to most things here in Vegas, BIG.

Sessions I’ll be attending today include:

Keynote : Robert X. Cringely

Big Site – Big Brand -Big SEO
Marshall D. Simmonds, Jeremy Sanchez, Chris Zaharias, Bill Wise

Competitive Intelligence
Jake Baillie, Anne Kennedy, Joseph Morin, Andy Beal

Yahoo YPN Sponsored Lunch : What is the Yahoo! Publisher Network
Will Johnson, David Zito, Donald Loeb, Arnie Gullov-Singh

Organic Search Forum
Bruce Clay, Aaron Wall, Todd Friesen, Todd Malicoat

Super Session : Blogging for Fun and Profit
Barry Schwartz, Jeremy Zawodny, Andy Beal, Mark Fletcher, Chris Pirillo


WebmasterWorld Pubcon Day 1

Urchin is Now Google Analytics and it’s Free

I’ve been raving about Urchin to clients for quite a while at only $199/mo and now Google has decided to change Urchin over to Google Analytics and offer it for free. Wow.

The Urchin site is now redirecting to http://www.google.com/analytics/

According to Digital Inspiration blog, “the free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month but the limit is is removed if you’re also an active AdWords publisher.”

Also, Google Analytics is said to intergrate very well with Google AdWords to better measure paid search ROI and you can track up to 50 profiles.

Online sign up is easy and only requires a Google account. Once signed up, just paste a snippet of JavaScript code into your web pages and that’s about it.


Urchin is Now Google Analytics and it’s Free

Pubcon 10 Las Vegas

Monday I leave for Las Vegas to attend Pubcon 10, WebmasterWorld’s Search Engine Marketing Conference. I interviewed Brett Tabke on Pubcon last week. Here’s a classic, must-read from Brett: 26 steps to 15k a Day.

Am very much looking forward to this conference for both the content and the networking. Conferences are a great way to connect with old friends and make new friends from all over the world.

A few interesting notes about this conference:

Keynote: Robert X. Cringely

Webmaster World Luncheon – Hosted by Google
“Don’t miss Google’s presentation of an exciting new service that you can register for at the show! Lunch will be provided, so come early to get good seats and free schwag.”
Lots of speculation on what this might be.


Pubcon 10 Las Vegas

Brett Tabke Interview on Pubcon & WebmasterWorld

One of the hottest topics in marketing is search marketing and many webmasters, company marketers and agencies are scrambling to acquire the knowledge necessary to serve their clients.

Next week the search marketing conference, Pubcon 10, kicks off in Las Vegas. Founded by Brett Tabke, who also founded WebmasterWorld, the Pubcon conference has grown significantly in recent years and has served as an excellent resource for search marketers world-wide.

With an audience that started initially with independent webmasters and mom-pop company online marketers, the Pubcon conference now includes a broad range of search marketers and companies including corporate online marketing staff, search marketing and interactive agencies from all over the world.


Brett Tabke Interview on Pubcon & WebmasterWorld

Google to Pay $1 for every Firefox Download

But who cares about that, when Google will pay $100 once you sign up a publisher on AdSense that makes their own $100.

Google is certainly bumping up it’s referral program. If you have an AdSense account, login and click on the referrals tab, you get code for Google AdWords and FireFox with Google Toolbar referrals.

Google AdWords Referral Ads
AdSense Referral Ads

FireFox with Google Toolbar
Firefox Referral Ad


Google to Pay $1 for every Firefox Download