Training Chicago

Unfortunately, many site managers do not make changes to the website without prior measurement, nor do they measure after the changes. As a result, there are many changes to sites that are not based on facts, merely assumptions. Similarly, if changes are not analyzed, then there can be no clear understanding of whether or not improvements made a difference on the site or to the bottom line.

This workshop is for anyone who is responsible for a website or for reporting on website activity, success or failure. Site owners, marketers, managers and SEO firms wishing to add analytics to their services will all benefit from this instruction.

Matt Bailey is president and founder of SiteLogic Marketing and an internationally recognized authority on search engine marketing, website analytics, usability, and accessibility. As a consulting and training company, SiteLogic focuses on helping organizations take control of their websites and their web marketing plans.

Sought after worldwide as a seminar presenter and teacher; Matt speaks regularly for The Direct Marketing Association; Search Engine Strategies Conferences and Training; the American Advertising Federation, and many private training seminars. Matt is known for his conversational, entertaining speaking style and his ability to make technical topics both understandable and practical.

Matt oversees The Direct Marketing Association's SEO Training Program and is the trainer for the DMA's Web Marketing Seminar. He has consulted with hundreds of companies including Goodyear, Hilton International, JCrew, Gradall, Moen Faucets, American Greetings, and Samsonite.

This workshop is for anyone responsible for website promotion... SEO's, SEM's, bloggers, web designers, and/or business owners. This workshop will provide information on the most successful and current link building "tips and tricks" out there.

Debra Mastaler is President of Alliance-Link, an interactive marketing agency based in Williamsburg, Virginia and focused on providing custom link building campaigns and link training. In business since 2000, Debra offers a common sense approach to link building by combining traditional sales and promotional strategies with effective online search engine marketing tactics.

Debra is a featured guest speaker at the Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES), is a guest columnist for Search Engine Land and Search Engine Guide, has written widely on link marketing for publications including her link building blog The Link Spiel and is the link building moderator on the Small Business Ideas Forum.

In addition to client projects and link training for Fortune 500 companies as well as a number of top international SEO firms, Debra has provided link training sessions for the Direct Marketing Association, High Ranking Seminars and Search Engine Strategies.

From 2005-2006, Debra served on the Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Association of North America as Secretary/Treasurer.

Ultimately, the site must be profitable for the Web site owner. Can a single site satisfy all of these groups? This workshop will demonstrate that these skills are essential for building a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.

Shari Thurow is the Founder and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Director at Omni Marketing Interactive (www.search-usability.com), a full-service search engine optimization, Web design, and Web site usability firm.

Shari has designed and promoted Web sites since 1995, and is outsourced to many firms worldwide. Clients include Yahoo, Microsoft, America Online, ABC News, HSBC, Expedia, Deloitte and Touche, National Cancer Institute, and WebMD.

As a pioneer in the area of search-engine friendly Web site design, she has a 100% success rate for getting client sites ranked at the top of search engines. She is the author of Search Engine Visibility (www.searchenginesbook.com), which has been translated into French, Japanese, Korean and Polish. Her forthcoming book When Search Meets Web Usability, is due to be released in the spring of 2009.

Omni Marketing Interactive has been featured in many publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, Fortune, Internet Retailer, and Crain's Chicago Business.

The workshop will give real life examples of both good and bad viral marketing campaigns and will share insight on how your business can capitalize on your competitor's viral disasters. This workshop will also focus on how you can make use of consumer generated media environments like social media outlets, blog marketing, discussion forums and more to both monitor and expand your company's online persona.

Consumer generated media (the very core of viral marketing) is the fastest growing form of media online today. It's only a matter of time until someone online talks about your business. This course will not only help prepare you in the ways to respond to the conversation, it will help you learn how to shape that conversation to your advantage.

This workshop is for marketers and business owners that want to learn more about harnessing the power of viral marketing to build buzz about their business online. It also covers the topic of link baiting and explains how unique and creative content development can help launch both viral and link baiting campaigns.

Jennifer Evans Laycock is the Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide, an online publication aimed at educating Small Business owners about search engine marketing, viral marketing, social media marketing and blogging. Jennifer also operates as an independent online marketing consultant specializing in organic search marketing and viral marketing. Her clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings, Highlights for Children and Option-Line, a national crisis-pregnancy hotline. She is also the author of the popular e-books "The Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing" and "Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and Thirty Days."

Jennifer is a requested speaker and has served as both a panelist and a moderator at Incisive Media's popular Search Engine Strategies conferences, the eComXpo virtual trade show, Microsoft's Small Business Summit and several local search marketing training seminars. In 2005, Jennifer delivered the keynote presentation at the MIVA Small Business Conference. She has also been interviewed and quoted by a variety of publications including The Financial Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Entrepreneur magazine.

Intermediate and advanced PPC marketers who use Google AdWords.

How to reach consumers and effectively bid are two difficult challenges for advertisers. Understanding how PPC strategies change throughout the buying cycle will help you more effectively reach your target audience. In addition, you will learn how to take data from PPC reporting, conversion tracking, and Google analytics to effectively combine them into bidding strategies to maximize your advertising dollars.

Brad Geddes is the founder of bgTheory.com; a company dedicated to consulting, educating, and training businesses on internet marketing theory and best practices.

Before forming bgTheory, Brad was the Director of Search for RH Donnelley, a leading publisher of Yellow Pages. He has also provided usability, PPC, and SEO consulting services to a wide range of companies over the years. He has been involved in online advertising since 1999, and has written extensive articles on internet marketing.

One of his trademarks has been demystifying many of the more complicated aspects of SEO, PPC, and internet advertising. Not one to hold secrets, Brad prefers to educate his people on the various aspects of crafting successful marketing campaigns to ensure the success for all parties involved.

Everyone who promotes Web sites as part of their work should attend this workshop. Web marketers should understand how to optimize and leverage their content and its distribution across news, image, and video search engines.

After attending this half-day workshop, you will be able to optimize, distribute and measure: Press releases ImagesMaps, Video files, RSS feeds, and free submissions for books and products. Attendees will also learn strategies and tactics for expanding the audience for their content through Google News, Yahoo! News, Google Maps, Google Product Search, Technorati, Google Image Search, Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo Video and a growing variety of other sites.

Greg Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm and public relations agency with offices in San Francisco and Boston. He is also a partner in Newsforce, developer of an integrated suite of press release SEO tools.

SEO-PR is one of 10 companies that Larry Chase's Web Digest for Marketers named to its Who's Who in SEO Experts. SEOmoz.org has put SEO-PR on its Recommended List of SEO Consultants, Experts, Firms and Service Providers.

Greg is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld's PubCon, and public relations conferences. He is also the news search, blog search and PR correspondent for the Search Engine Watch Blog.

Gord Hotchkiss, who writes the Out of My Gord blog, has called Greg "the guru of cranking up web visibility through effective optimization of press releases and leveraging news search." Lee Odden, who writes the Online Marketing Blog, has called Greg "a pioneer in the field of using search engine optimization in combination with press releases." And Matt McGowan, Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media, has called Greg, "the industry's top expert in press release SEO and social media relations."

Greg has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, marketing, and search engine optimization at Lotus Development Corp., Ziff-Davis, and other companies. He graduated from the University of Michigan, attended the University of Edinburgh, and worked on his Masters at Lesley College.

Amanda Watlington Ph.D., A.P.R. Before setting up Searching for Profit, Amanda was director of research for a leading Search Engine Optimization firm. Her consultancy focuses on how businesses can leverage search engines and new media such as blogging, RSS and podcasting to achieve marketing objectives. She has over twenty years of experience as a communications, sales and business strategy consultant, and ten years as a Web marketer.

Amanda has developed award-winning print, web, training and presentation media. She has developed patent-pending language-based analytic tools and methodologies to support search engine marketing campaigns. She is a renowned expert on blogs, podcasting, and the language and psychology of search. The clients she has worked with include Fortune 500 companies, search engines, publishers and e-commerce merchants.

Amanda is the author of two books. Her most recent book is Business Blogs: A Practical Guide. Amanda is a sought-after presenter and a recognized industry thought leader. She appears regularly as a speaker at Search Engine Strategies and DMA's Annual and Multi-Channel Marketing conferences. She serves on DMA's Search Engine Marketing Council, of which she is the past co-chair. She is the chair of the Web Analytics Association's research committee and has served on the search and research committees of IAB.

Her education includes a Bachelors Degree in Classical Civilization from Douglass College in New Jersey, a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Eastern Michigan University. She is a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the Web Analytics Association (WAA), the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and has an APR accreditation.