SES Chicago Early Bird Discount Deadline Tomorrow & What's Going On At The Show?

Our last big Search Engine Strategies event of the year comes to Chicago from Dec. 5 to 8. I wanted to summarize some of the many sessions that will be going on, as well as remind everyone that tomorrow is the early bird deadline to save on registration. If you're considering going, now's the time to act and save.

You'll find a full agenda and rundown on what's happening at the SES Chicago 2005 web site. The show covers a range of search marketing issues, involving both search marketers sharing experiences from the trenches and speakers from the major search engines themselves, including AOL, Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo.

I'd recommend reviewing our Conference at a Glance page for a fast look at all that's offered. But among the new sessions for Chicago are:

• Video Search
   
• Podcast Search
   
• Book Search
   
• Reputation Monitoring & Management
   
• Global Search Landscape
   
• Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior
   
• News Search SEO
   
• SEM Via Communities, Wikipedia & Tagging
   
• Measuring Success Through Phone Calls
   
• Search Head Or Search Tail? Getting The Mix Right
   
• SEO Overkill
   
• Measuring Success Case Studies & Tactics

There are four or five different tracks running each of the four days of the event, sessions that are especially focused to help you if you fit particular interest areas. The Fundamentals Track runs on the first and second days, and it's designed to bring someone new to search marketing up to speed. These are sessions it includes:

• Introduction To Search Marketing
   
• Search Term Research & Targeting
   
• Search Engine Friendly Design
   
• Search Advertising 101
   
• Fun With Dynamic Web Sites
   
• Writing For Search Engines
   
• Link Building Basics
   
• Successful Site Architecture

For those who perform SEM services for others, we have a new SEM Agency Track on the third day of the show covering these topics:

• Working With Clients
   
• SEM Campaign & Project Management
   
• Developing Your SEM Niche

There's an increasing number of search marketers who do in house work for their own companies. To cater to their special needs, the third day of the show has an In House Track with these sessions:

• Big Site/ Big Brand SEM
   
• Working As A Team
   
• In House Forum

For the online or offline retailer, a new Shopping & Retailer Track on the third day offers these sessions:

• Shopping Search Tactics
   
• Shopping Search & Merchant Reputations
   
• Retailer Forum

Links are a crucial component of any search marketing campaign, and to help search marketers understand this constantly changing and challenging area, we have a variety of panels devoted just to the topic of linking, including:

• Link Building Basics
   
• Linking Strategies
   
• Buying & Selling Links
   
• Search Engine Q&A On Links
   
• Link Building Clinic

Those into the advertising side of search marketing will find plenty of sessions to suit, including:

• Dealing With Contextual & Other Non-Search Ads
   
• Earning From Search & Contextual Ads
   
• Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior
   
• Creating Compelling Ads
   
• Landing Page Testing & Tuning
   
• Search Ad Buyers Forum
   
• Meet The Search Ad Vendors
   
• Ad Copy & Landing Page Clinic
   
• Local Search Ads
   
• Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues

On the organic/free listing side, beyond the aforementioned panels on linking, you can also look forward to specialized panel involving search marketers or our classic "Meet The" style panels that offer lots of Q&A time to talk with representatives of various search engines about how they operate. Session of interest include:

• Business To Business Tactics
   
• Meet The News Search Engines
   
• Meet The B2B Search Engines
   
• Meet The Blog & Feed Search Engines
   
• My SEM Toolbox
   
• Site ECG
   
• Organic Listings Forum
   
• Meet The Local Search Engines
   
• Meet The Crawlers
   
• Local Search Marketing Tactics
   
• Business To Business Tactics

Search Engine Strategies always has a number of featured sessions where we explore big issues or tackle topics in an unusual way. For Chicago, you'll want to check out:

• Keynote: The Search Marketing Community: My kickoff talk for the show, I'll look at how search marketing has done some growing and gained some reputation over the past year.
   
• Pimp My Site!: This popular session returns, revisiting sites that have been "pimped" to make them more search marketing friendly. It looks at further improvements with them. Check out the review from the session when held at our San Jose show. There's been more pimping and changes since then!
   
• Google Print & The Copyright Debate: Google squares off against critics in the debate over its library scanning program. Come hear the arguments on both sides and make up your own mind.
   
• Future Of SEM: An eclectic panel of search marketers will discuss roundtable-style where the industry is heading from their perspectives.
   
• Evening Forum With Danny Sullivan: No PowerPoints, no set agenda -- we just talk about whatever the audience wants and generally have a lot of fun doing it

There are even more sessions beyond the ones I've summarized, such as Converting Visitors Into Buyers and Measuring Success Overview. Plus, our special "Birds Of A Feather" seating for lunch returns on the first three days of the show, allowing people to easily find and network with those having similar interests. And beyond the show are two days to visit our giant expo hall.

There's a lot going on, so don't miss out! Registration information can be found here. Detailed daily agendas begin here. See you in Chicago!

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