Continental Breakfast

Track 1

Track 2

Track 3

Search & Analytics Workshop: Using Analytics to Increase Search Effectiveness

Matt Bailey, SiteLogic

Optimizing for Universal Search

Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR
Amanda Watlington, Searching for Profit

Successful SEO: The Essential Elements - Part 1

Rob Garner, iCrossing
Terry Plank, SEMPO Institute
Jorie Waterman, Microsoft

Lunch Break

Search Engine Marketing Metrics and Myths

Adam Goldberg, ClearSaleing

Making Pay Per Click Pay - Best Practices in Pay Per Click Advertising

Christine Churchill, KeyRelevance

Successful SEO: The Essential Elements - Part 2

Rob Garner, iCrossing
Terry Plank, SEMPO Institute
Jorie Waterman, Microsoft

Search & Analytics Workshop: Using Analytics to Increase Search Effectiveness

Search & Analytics Workshop

Friday, August 22, 2008

Spaces limited

8:00am-12:00pm

Unless there is a goal for the site, there is no sense measuring anything.

• 70% of website owners and managers do not track anything beside 'hits' to their website.
• Most website managers want to track, but aren't sure what or how.

Analytics are a gold mine of information, just waiting to be uncovered. The results of your campaigns, effectiveness of the website, and the efficiency of your rankings can all be measured with a good analytics program.

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.

Rather than simply getting a checklist of "How-To's", you will learn the "Why?" Understanding the "Why" will enable you to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers in your analytics program.

Practical lessons include:

• Understanding the differences and common points among web analytics programs
• Establishing common terminology
• Establish Key Performance Indicators for your website
• Establish a regular reporting program
• Learn segmentation techniques for users, campaigns and keywords
• Establishing primary and secondary conversion rates and for your website
• How to measure and report the important factors
• How to report website success 'up the ladder.'

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.

Optimizing for Universal Search

SEO Training

Friday, August 22, 2008

Spaces limited

8:00am-12:00pm

Universal search changes everything! The advent of Google's Universal Search has been called "the most radical change to its search results ever." So, how do you take advantage of Google's new approach that blends listings from news, maps, video, and image search among those it gathers from web search? In other words, how do you get found in all the right places?

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.

During this workshop, you will learn how to: Pick your target keywords for news, image, video and web search engines; Position your keywords in crucial locations; Create original and unique content of genuine value, including text, images and video; Avoid search engine stumbling blocks; Build inbound links intended to help people find interesting, related content; Just say no to search engine spamming; Submit your Sitemap, RSS feeds, and videos to search engines and directories; Verify and maintain your listings; and Go beyond web search engines to include key vertical search engines.

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.

SEO Training

Friday, August 22, 2008

Spaces limited

8:00am-5:00pm - Full Day Workshop

This training is for those who want to understand the total scope of Search Engine Optimization for developing a web site marketing strategy and to understand the skills needed for succeeding in Search Marketing for Organic Search Engines. This hands-on training experience will include learning exercises for each participant to apply what's being taught. The teaching will include concrete examples from real world web sites, and provide lots of opportunity for questions and interaction with the instructors.

It is recommended that students bring a wireless-enabled laptop to use for individual exercises and online research. Wi-Fi access is provided.

This workshop is for Web site owners, webmasters, web site managers, copywriters, account managers, media buyers, sales managers, and anyone wanting to understand the overall scope of SEO in order to become a more effective manager or web team member. Also, those wanting to add to their skill set or considering a career change.

Participants considering whether to initiate or improve the productivity of their web site through SEO will learn how to develop an effective strategy for a successful web site by employing the essential elements to maximize SEO. In addition, participants considering a career change can discover and experiment with the skills necessary to becoming a SEO professional.

Through instruction, real world examples, individual exercises, and interaction with instructors you will learn the following.

How to Provide What SE Partners and Visitors Need: Keywords and Their Role
Knowing how search engines find, rank, and present data is the basis for employing SEO techniques search engines approve of for appropriate web page indexing.

The first step is identifying the right keyword phrases to present to search engines so they favorably rank relevant pages. Learn how to research, find, and identify the right keywords for effective search marketing.

Help Your Search Engine Partners: Web Design & Roadblocks to SEO
If pages are not readily found by search engines and indexed properly, SEO objectives will not be reached. Site design, site architecture, technical and editorial issues can either help or hinder your web site productivity. By communicating clearly and properly to the search engines, they will find what pages allow relevant and top organic rankings.

You will learn the correct way to structure your site to facilitate optimization, the roadblocks that can stop search engines from indexing your sites contents properly, other potential content related issues, and the major SEO roadblocks to effective search engine optimization.

Communicate Effectively to Search Engines and Visitors: Copywriting
Optimized copy that communicates clearly with the search engines will help achieve desired findability. Copy that is interesting, targeted to the "audience" you want to reach, and focused on achieving the reader's goals will help get your point across and increase conversions.

Effective copy must be compelling to both the visitor and the search engines. Even though you are writing for the web with the goal of ranking organically in the search engines, you must also write with your audience in mind. Use keywords and keyword phrases to reinforce and guide your audience to the information they are looking for. At the same time, help the search engines determine what your page is about from its content.

You will earn how to write, edit, and optimize web pages by implementing keywords in specific areas of your text and in the HTML Title based in industry research on how people and search engines read pages.

Alert the Search Engines and the World: Linking, Submissions & Directories
The more the search engine knows about you, the greater the likelihood your site will rank well. Internal links from page to page within your site tell the search engine spider the parts of your site that are important and those that are less so. They also help the search engine determine the "theme", the overall idea of what your page and website is about.

Since search engine results are based on ranking sites with the greatest perceived quality, generally speaking, the sites with the best quality links have an increased chance of being ranked well. Search engines view External Links to a site as a vote for the reputation of that site.

Learn how to organize Internal Linking and how to identify good quality sources for External Linking. We'll also cover Directory submissions and how to present a clear understanding of when and how to submit to search engines.

Measure Your Success: Tracking & Reporting
It's obvious that you can't improve what you can't measure. Unless you can tell whether your changes are improving your campaign or making things worse, then you're flying blind.

Learn the essential measurement vocabulary and the main measurement concepts necessary to understand and improve search engine marketing. Learn the types of tools that are available and gain a high-level understanding of the most difficult challenges analysts face when trying to measure and optimize search engine marketing.

Stay Ahead Of the Game: Current Innovations in Search Marketing & Intellectual Property
Search engines continue to be evolving mediums. Knowing which innovations in the landscape should be integrated quickly and which to hold off on until the time is right is vital to profitability. The objective of this section is to familiarize you with current innovations, the new Web 2.0 sites and other applications that are changing the SEO landscape. Learn about Universal Search, social networking sites, video search, mobile search, pay-by-call advertising, search engine reputation management, and more.

Intellectual property law protects most of the information used by or transmitted on the Internet and provides some protection against unauthorized use through intellectual property laws. These laws include trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets. In addition, parties can enter into private contracts and agreements to protect information. Learn the fundamentals of Intellectual property law to ensure that no inadvertent violations of law slow down or hold back the optimization of traffic generation and conversions.

Rob Garner is Strategy Director for iCrossing, creating search marketing strategies for iCrossing clients throughout the US and Europe. Rob has been a speaker at a number of industry conferences since 2004, including ad:tech Chicago and NYC; SES in San Jose, NYC, and Chicago; Search Engine Watch LIVE in Dallas 2007; Rackspace Customer Event; and the VeriSign Executive Conference in Dulles. Additionally, he writes a bi-monthly column for MediaPost Publications' Search Insider that provides insight into search campaign management experience and best practices. Rob is also a founding member and President of the Dallas / Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association, and also serves on the board of the DFW Interactive Marketing Association.

Terry Plank is the SEMPO Institute Curriculum Dean. A founding member and part of the Management Team, he managed the authoring and peer reviewing of the 3 SEMPO Institute Distance Learning Courses, overseeing 35 authors and 15 peer reviewers. He also managed the course development process of the Learning Management System. He currently oversees course updating and student support.

Terry has worked with 200+ small to medium size businesses as a consultant and trainer since 1996 as the owner of Search Engine Marketing Consultation, with expertise in training, strategic development, search engine optimization, and web site development.

From 1999 to 2003 Terry was co-owner with Robin Nobles of the Academy of Web Specialist, an SEO training company. Terry is also CEO of Weddings By The Sea, one of the first wedding web sites launched on Web and is one of the founders of Coastside Net Internet Services.

Jorie Waterman joined Microsoft's adCenter as a Senior Program Manager in December of 2007 coming to the team with over 5 years of search marketing experience. Immediately prior to joining Microsoft she was the Senior Director of Search Analytics for iCrossing. Her focus has been on keyword research and search analytics in light of understanding what users want and need across both paid and natural search. This theme is continued at Microsoft with her work on the Keyword Services Platform team. In all she has been in the interactive marketing world for over a decade working client-side, agency-side, and now on the side of the engine. This holistic background combined with her degree in Comparative Religion from Harvard '96 provides a unique take on understanding search data and making it actionable.

SEMPO Institute is a non-profit, career development organization, whose purpose is to educate and train professionals in the growing field of search engine marketing. Supported by SEMPO, SEMPO Institute's distance education courses are developed by experts in search marketing and peer-reviewed for accuracy and best practices. Since its first online course in January, 2007, SEMPO Institute has educated more than 700 individuals in search marketing. SEMPO Institute's courses are available the general public and to SEMPO members through www.SEMPOInstitute.com.

Search Engine Marketing Metrics and Myths

Search Engine Marketing

Friday, August 22, 2008

Spaces limited

1:00pm-5:00pm

The metrics that marketers are using today to make decisions regarding how their budgets are allocated to online advertising vehicles are flawed. If you do not understand how metrics can produce false positives, you can be led into believing you are making smart decisions, while the reality is that your decisions are completely wrong.

This workshop is for anyone that has the responsibility of deciding how and where to allocate their marketing budget towards online advertising vehicles, most notably paid search, banners, comparison shopping engines, and affiliates.

At the end of this training, each participant will have a clear understanding of how to properly assess online advertising performance.

• You will understand how using metrics like cost-per-acquisition (CPA), conversion rate, revenue, orders, leads, cost per lead (CPL), return on ad spend (ROAS), and click through rates (CTR) are flawed metrics that can mislead organizations into believing they are making profitable decisions
• You will learn how the current model of assigning sales credit to the last ad that was clicked is a completely flawed method
• You will learn how to tie offline orders that happen over the phone to online ad campaigns
• You will learn to connect back office systems to your online advertising, so those that do not sell their products online can still measure their ads effectiveness in terms of ROI vs. judging ad performance on the cost of leads
• You will learn techniques for measuring the lifetime value (LTV) of customers and how to allocate the LTV to online advertising
• You will learn the proper technique for measuring the performance of your ad text

The bullet points above will provide each participant with new insight into how to assess their ad campaigns more accurately. This information will make each participant a better marketer and will give them a competitive advantage over their peers and companies that compete in their space.

1. The Metric - What is the best metric to use to measure online advertising performance?
2. The Measure - What are the proper ways to measure online ad performance?
3. The Method - What is a proven method for the continuous improvement of online ad campaigns?
4. The Tools - How to select the proper tools, agencies, and personnel to ensure optimal performance with online advertising

Adam Goldberg is an ex-Google Insider who started Google's Inside Sales team in NYC in 2003. His team was responsible for selling AdWords and other Google products to small to medium sized businesses, and managing and optimizing their campaigns. While at Google, Adam learned about the overwhelming challenges that advertisers face in terms of managing, analyzing, and optimizing their online ad campaigns. Adam realized that technology could solve a lot of the challenges online marketers had to deal with. Adam put together several technical solutions that Google could offer to help their clients. Unfortunately, several of his ideas were unable to be executed upon by Google. Therefore, he looked outside Google's walls to see if his ideas had enough merit to start a business of his own. In 2006, he left Google to start ClearSaleing. Adam, along with his partners, raised several million dollars and developed a technology that is used by several Fortune 500 companies, as well as over a dozen members of the Internet Retailer 500. This technology is based on a unique methodology he developed to best assess online advertising performance, so that marketers can properly allocate their limited ad dollars. ClearSaleing, in addition to being an advertising analytics provider, is also a full-service interactive agency that manages campaigns for several Fortune 500 and Internet Retailer 500 companies, such as American Greetings, BMW, and Nationwide. Prior to working for Google, Adam lived in San Francisco where he was the Eastern Region Sales Manager for Actuate Corp, the leader in Enterprise Reporting and Performance Management applications and, prior to that, Adam was a Major Account Executive with Oracle Corp. in Redwood Shores, California.

Making Pay Per Click Pay- Best Practices in Pay Per Click Advertising

Paid Search Training

Friday, August 22, 2008

Spaces limited

1:00pm-5:00pm

Paid Search is one of the fastest and most effective ways to gain a presence on the search engines. Done incorrectly it can also be one of the costliest. There are many diverse components to a pay per click campaign, but all have to work together to achieve the best return. This comprehensive training program will familiarize attendees with a multitude of paid advertising subjects. The course covers material for both the beginner and experienced advertiser. Attendees will learn about the paid search landscape - the players and the many paid search advertising options available. The course also covers the steps involved in setting up and optimizing a paid campaign to ensure every click counts.

This interactive training provides best practices on how to select and evaluate keywords, tips on writing effective ads and optimizing landing pages, and in addition will show you how to establish an overall PPC strategy for bidding and budgeting for campaigns. This training includes guidance on structuring your PPC campaigns for easy maintenance and best returns.

Is your company budget conscious? We'll show you ways to stretch your click dollars and alert you to budget disasters. We include a segment on analytics that show you easy ways to monitor performance and capture the information detail you need to make good marketing decisions.

This half day training session provides practical real-world solutions and techniques to help you get the most from your paid advertising.

Anyone involved with marketing and sending traffic and leads to a website will likely benefit from this training workshop. Marketing Directors, search professionals, Internet consultants, CEOs, Advertising Executives, Media Directors, Product Managers, Creative Directors, Webmasters, as well as business owners who want to learn more about paid advertising. Search managers will gain new insight and ideas on how to improve campaigns they manage.

This is a comprehensive training session that includes real-world information for users and managers. The practical advice and best practices taught in the session will help attendees run more efficient campaigns with higher returns.

Attendees will:

• Enhance their knowledge base about paid search and its many options
• Understand the components of a good paid advertising strategy
• Learn proven techniques to select and evaluate keywords that produce results
• Acquire tips on developing effective ads and landing pages that convert visitors to buyers
• Discover ways to measure paid search performance and learn techniques to optimize campaigns
• Gain new insights into bidding strategies and campaign management
• Increase their skills and comfort level working in the paid search field

PPC Agenda:

• Introduction to Paid Search Advertising
• The Search Landscape
• Major Players and programs
• Comparison of Paid and Organic
• Benefits and Uses of Paid Search
• Marketing Mix
• Comparison of three big players - Google, Yahoo, MSN
• Keyword Research for PPC
• Brainstorming Keywords
• How to Expand Keyword Lists
• Evaluating Keywords
• How to "bucket" keywords
• Matching Options
• Negative Keywords
• Keyword Tools
• Keyword Strategies
• Tips on Developing Effective Ads
• Editorial Guidelines
• Best Practices
• Insider Copywriting Tips
• Testing Ads
• Landing Page Optimization
• Components of a good landing page
• Conversion Tips
• Quality Score Factor
• Testing methods
• A/B Split and Multivariate
• Testing software
• Bidding and Campaign Management Strategy
• Management Tools
• Tips to simplify management and increase effectiveness
• Bidding Strategies
• For Position
• For ROI
• Dayparting
• Geo Targeting Options
• IP Targeting
• Geo Keywords
• Pitfalls and Tips
• Budgeting and Forecasting
• Traffic Estimating
• Click Through Rate
• Expected spends
• Campaign Management Strategies
• Optimization Techniques
• Tools Available
• Conversion Analysis
• Identifying Metrics
• Tracking Methods
• Methods to improve conversion
• Ways to find the weak link in the conversion chain
• Tools Available
• Reporting
• What to track
• Tools for tracking
• Reports
• Ad Types and Networks
• Search Ads
• Text Ads
• Contextual Ads
• Local and Geo targeted Ads
• Graphic, Video, Mobile Ads
• Niche and vertical networks
• Quality Score
• What it is and how it works
• Tips to optimize campaign to improve Quality Score
• Minimum Bid Price
• Ad Position
• Troubleshooting Accounts
• Common Problems
• Diagnostic Tools
• Second and Third Tier Engines
• The players
• Different Programs
• Pros and Cons
• Click Fraud
• Symptoms of fraudulent activity
• What to do when you suspect fraud
• Legal Issues Related to Paid Search
• Trademarks
• Legal concerns
• Future Trends in Paid Advertising
• Resources

Christine Churchill the President of KeyRelevance, is a recognized expert in the field of Search Engine Marketing. She is a strong advocate for ethical search engine marketing, and was a member of the founding Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

Christine currently serves as the Chairman of the Dallas-Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM). Ms. Churchill holds a Masters Degree in Business and has over 10 years online marketing experience.

Christine is a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies, Webmaster World Publishers Conference, High Rankings Seminars, Internet World, and other Internet conferences. In addition, she has written widely on search engine marketing for publications including SearchDay, MarketPosition, Workz, SitePoint, SearchEngineGuide, and NetMechanic, and has taught search marketing classes through the International Association of Webmasters.

In addition to running KeyRelevance, Christine is the Search Engine Friendly Design and Usability Moderator and the Pay Per Click Moderator on the High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum.