Session Overview
The sessions below are samples of the topics typically covered at SES. The complete agenda will be posted here as soon as it is available.
Beginner Sessions
Introduction to Search Engine Marketing
This session will provide a clear and concise overview of the key concepts involved in Search Engine Marketing. Who are the major search engines and how can you best optimize them to gain "natural" or "organic" traffic without cost? Learn how to achieve top ranking or placement by utilizing search engine advertising opportunities. This is a must-attend basic session for anyone new to the Search Engine Strategies event.
Turning Simple Change into Big Profit
If you're a small business, you are likely leaving business on the table due to easily corrected mistakes in your online marketing plan. Whether it's making your organic and paid search ads more tempting to searchers or correcting the simple mistakes that keep visitors from converting once they reach your site, this panel will provide you with a slew of simple changes that can dramatically increase both your traffic and your conversions. This panel will also share free tips and tools on cheap and easy campaign testing.
Discover the Power of Linking: Link Building Basics
Discover how search engines rely on link analysis as an important component for rank web pages. Learn also how to increase traffic to your site by building quality links in an appropriate manner.
Ads in a Quality Score World
How are ads ranked in the paid search auctions run by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft? Each keyword in your campaign is assigned a "quality score" based on past performance. Sounds simple, right? Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. In any case, you must achieve high quality scores to keep your paid search costs in line. Expert panelists explain the workings of the latest algorithms, discuss case studies and testing techniques, and explain how to troubleshoot problems.
Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy
What if you could conduct market research, organize focus groups and build your customer base all without spending a dime? Thanks to social media, you can. Small businesses around the world are acquiring loyal customers, gaining valuable insight and boosting business by pounding the social media pavement. Find out how small companies with even smaller budgets can freely tap the world of social media to improve business and increase sales.
Intermediate Sessions
SEO: Where to Next
If you entered a time capsule in 1999 and stumbled into a search engine optimization assignment in 2009, you'd be startled by an array of unfamiliar challenges. News flash: it's not all about title tags and meta keywords anymore. Reciprocal linking? Yawn. Search engines too stupid to index dynamic URL's? Not anymore. Panelists cover proven SEO fundamentals, and then update you on the latest trends you cannot afford to miss. P.S. Yes, title tags are still important.
SEO Super Tools: What's in YOUR Toolbox?
If you are responsible for your company's search engine marketing, then you know that you need all of the various tools of your trade close at hand. This session will describe the tools that will help you to accomplish your tasks including indexing, competitive analysis, site ranking, diagnosing and remedying problems, page level information, site level information, on-page optimization and much more.
Pay Per Conversation
For marketers to become successful in their SEM efforts, PPC can no longer stand for "Pay Per Click" - it must stand for "Pay Per Conversation." Many marketers agree that the current state of the economy is having an impact on their marketing plans. That's why every dollar and click matters. Every click is a potential customer trying to engage you; will you continue the dialogue or have them bounce off your landing page just moments after they arrive? What you want to do is engage and persuade your visitors to keep taking the next click, all the way through the purchase funnel. To achieve that, you must demonstrate the value of your products and services in all your marketing, especially when sales are decreasing. You do that by planning content to improve relevance and test continuously until you have the best conversation. This session will show you how to identify missed conversations and what you can do to improve them and your PPC ROI.
Universal & Blended Search
Search result multiplicity is not a new phenomenon, but recent advancements will guarantee the world of search and marketing will be changing forever. Before you attend this weeks optimization and best practices sessions, hear from industry gurus about how search, marketing and information seeking is changing the industry that follows the search. Our ongoing series on universal search will include research data available only at SES.
Extreme Makeover: Site Clinics
This interactive session takes volunteers from the audience and examines their web sites live to provide general feedback about improving them to gain more traffic from search engines.
Advanced Sessions
Advanced B2B Marketing
Forget consumers. You want leads! Leads that become opportunities that convert into booked business! Join our seasoned panel of B2B marketing professionals as they share the latest tips and trends in using search to find those niche decision-makers that drive your business.
Advanced SEO: What is it Really?
Beyond the simple SEO tactics that many people already know, there is another level to optimizing your website for rankings, conversions, visibility and more. This level requires a deeper understanding of searchers, their behavior and how search engines use those human factors in developing their algorithms. Many would have you believe that advanced SEO is more technical tricks and "black hat" techniques. But in reality, advanced SEO is more about a deeper understanding of the searcher and using elements, both on and off the page, that will persuade them to view your website favorably and increase the chances of conversion.
By utilizing established methods of persuasion, defined thousands of years ago, and refined over decades in print journalism, newspapers can give us insight into readers' tendencies. Combining the disciplines of persuasive writing design, usability, and behavioral analytics will catapult your website from common to extraordinary.
Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues
More and more site owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content. If you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue? What happens if you syndicate content through RSS and feeds? Will other sites be considered the "real" site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This session looks at the issues and explores solutions.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Black Hat PPC Tactics
The marketplace is very familiar with Black Hat SEO tactics and discussions, and full of great ideas. But what about PPC? PPC discussions at conferences center around ways to manage, monitor, optimize, and measure your paid search campaigns. But the reality is that when implementing paid campaigns expert practitioners rely on more than straightforward bid management. This session will bring together three experts in PPC campaign management who will disclose ways which they assist paid campaigns beyond the normally documented limits generally discussed.
SES San Jose 2008 »
SES San Jose 2007 »
SES San Jose 2006 »
SES San Jose 2005 »
SEM Training, Apr 09 »
SEM Training, May 09 »
SES Toronto, Jun 09 »
SEO Training, Jun 09 »
SES San Jose, Aug 09 »
SES Chicago, Dec 09 »
Chief Marketing Officers (CMO)
Corporate decision-makers
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) specialists
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign managers
Internet and digital marketing specialists
Webmasters, web developers and web designers
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) beginners
Web technology specialists
Media planners and buyers
Agency professionals
Brand managers
