A search–engine friendly Web site is a user–friendly, search–friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.

In order for a site to be search–engine friendly, it must meet the terms and conditions set forth by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask, etc.) Additionally, the site must satisfy the needs of site visitors. Ultimately, the site must be profitable for the Web site owner. Can a single site satisfy all of these groups?

This presentation will how these skills are essential for building a user–friendly, search–friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.

Everyone who promotes Web sites as part of their work should attend these workshops! Web marketers should understand all parts of a search marketing campaign – optimization, shopping search, paid inclusion, and pay–per–click solutions.

For new and experienced marketers
Whether you are a new marketer or a seasoned veteran, our search engine marketing workshops will help you take your campaigns to the next level of effectiveness.

For new and experienced web designers
Minimize advertising expenses by creating search–friendly and cost–effective site designs. Learn how to avoid common pitfalls early in the design process.

Attendees come from many different industries, including:

• Web site designers and developers
• eCommerce
• Business development
• Web site usability
• Direct marketing
• Media buying
• Affiliates
• Public relations
• Web analysts
• Sales and marketing consultants
• Non–profit agencies
• Or any job that requires site development and promotion.

Many search engine marketing speakers are new to the industry or merely repeat information disseminated by more experienced professionals. Why learn search–friendly design from speakers who do not design for a living? Learn from the leading industry expert on search–friendly and user–friendly interfaces in the field of search engine marketing industry.

• Build a Web site that satisfies your both site´s visitors AND the search engines
• Design dos and don´ts
• Successful Web site information architecture – learn what search engine marketers don´t know
• Avoid costly copywriting and design mistakes
• Link development research: tips and tools
• Learn proven techniques and strategies for long–term results

Shari Thurow is a sought–after speaker and trainer on the topics of search engine–friendly Web site design and Web site usability. A popular speaker at Search Engine Strategies, web site design, and online marketing conferences worldwide, Shari´s sessions are very popular and four–star rated.

Shari is the Webmaster and Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs. She has been designing and promoting Web sites since 1995, and is outsourced to many firms throughout the U.S. She has a 100% success rate for getting client sites ranked at the top of search engine and Web directory queries.

She is the author of Search Engine Visibility and a regular columnist for Clickz and SearchDay. Shari is currently a graduate student at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, specializing in human/computer interfaces for the Library and Information Sciences Department.

Grantastic Designs, Inc. has designed and successfully marketed Web sites for a wide variety of industries. Clients include Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, HSBC, National Cancer Institute, WebMD, Reader's Digest, and many other well–known brands.

Understanding search engines
8:00 – 8:50 a.m.

• The major search engines and how they work
• Anatomy of search engine results pages (SERPs)
• Types of search engine marketing
• Questions and answers

Break
8:50 – 9:00 a.m.

Search engine optimization (SEO) process
9:00 – 9:50 p.m.

• Defining the full SEO process:
  • Keyword analysis
  • Site optimization
  • Submission
  • Monitoring – managing expectations
• Web positioning vs. Web analytics software
• Questions and answers

Break
9:50 – 10:00 a.m.

SEO Process – Site architecture and page design
10:00 am to 10:50 am

• Site architecture vs. page design (interface)
• Why architecture and design are important for search engine visibility
• Components of an optimized site:
  • Site navigation schemes
  • Other types of page links
  • Types of Web pages and how to optimize them
  • Web address
• Questions and answers

Break
10:50 – 11:00 a.m.

SEO Process – Link development
11:00 am to 11:50 am

• What is popularity?
• Why link development is important for search engine visibility
• Characteristics of effective link development
• Competitive link development strategies
• Submission guidelines
• Questions and answers

Many marketers say that nothing matches the control, measurability, and ROI they get from paid search marketing campaigns using programs such as Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Buying targeted clicks isn´t just the "next best thing" to attracting free "organic" search referrals to your website – many say it´s actually better!

If you count the parallel "content targeting" options available by enabling some settings in the same advertising interfaces, paid search now accounts for 50% of all online advertising spending. Developing expertise in this area is rapidly becoming a must for any serious online marketer.

In this full day seminar, Andrew Goodman, author of Winning Results with Google AdWords and Principal of Page Zero Media, will cover key principles that drive campaign results. In addition, attendees will be introduced to “hard problems” that can lead marketers to take “wrong turns.” Group exercises and live examples will allow us to customize the session to be a “working day” tailored to your company’s needs. (It’s also a lot of fun!)

Any company or organization needing to generate cost–effective leads or sales through their website, or anyone who advises companies on their web strategy or sales. Some familiarity with the user search experience, and an interest in measuring the results of marketing campaigns, is helpful. Those with existing paid search campaigns, especially those with campaigns recently launched or undergoing review, will be the most likely to benefit from this seminar. The topics denoted with asterisks (*) are considered "practicum" and will typically break from presentation format to show live examples; audience participation and questions are particularly welcome in these sections. To get into the spirit of the session, the instructor recommends consulting any of the following books ahead of time:

Winning Results with Google AdWords, Andrew Goodman
Survival is Not Enough; Purple Cow; Permission Marketing, Seth Godin
Good to Great, Jim Collins

When signing up, don´t hesitate to contact the instructor at agoodman [at] [his gmail address] with your quick take on which of the subtopics below is most important to you, as time will be short and the seminar is intended to focus on the needs of the group.

1. Intro: Where Paid Search Fits in the Advertising Landscape
   • Understanding how much priority to place on paid search
   • We're Hedgehogs, Not Rock Stars, or why every tweak counts
   • Paid search ads to grow a business (not "to get rich")
   • Why CPC? How you pay for search & contextual ads is evolving
   • Meet the Group (What Are Your Challenges?)
   
   
2. The User Search Experience and How it Looks/Feels
   • Eye tracking studies: do you need to be in "premium" ad positions to attract clicks?
   • Where your ads show up, and why
   • The "scenarios" concept (Eisenbergs)
   
   
3. Planning, Forecasting, and Campaign Setup
   • What should I budget?
   • What CTR? Conversion Rate? ROI? Is reasonable?
   • Looking at key campaign settings: looking at budget settings, ad rotation, dayparting, geotargeting, and more
   
   
4. Writing Better Ads: Basic to Advanced
   • What elements of ads can be tested
   • How to test, how to interpret a test
   • Is it only about performance? (no, not 100%)
   • New ad formats: banners, video…
   
   
5. Bid Strategy
   • Bidding to ROI ∓ related metrics
   • Bidding to establish position
   • Competitive jockeying and bid management
   • Pitfalls of bid management and bid management tools
   • Dayparting: what it is, whether it´s for you
   
   
6. Keyword Resarch and the Long Tail of Search
   • Not all accounts warrant 20,000 keyphrases – which do?
   • Rationales for large keyword lists: a re–examination
   • Key concepts in keyword expansion
   • Guerrilla concepts in keyword expansion
   • Tools you can use
   
   
7. Special Topic: Trademark and Keyword Advertising
   
   BREAK
   
   
8. Different Business Models, Different Tactics: Case Studies (eg. Fast Moving Retail vs. High–Consideration B2B)


9. Measurement Issues – Tracking ROI, Choosing Analytics Software. Remember, there can be no absolute measure of ROI. So what can the primary uses of ROI–related metrics be for campaign management and improvement? In this part, we´ll discuss how to get your campaign set up properly from the start, including settling on key performance indicators, a tracking "regimen," and setting up analytics software. Some examples will be shown of live web analytics reports and what they can do to improve ROI.



10. Landing Page Testing, Site Architecture, and Conversion Rates. What´s a landing page? What is the best one to send visitors to? What are some common myths and best practices in improving conversion rates from a click to a sale? Don´t fill a leaky bucket. If you choose the wrong pages or send searchers to an unpersuasive site, quite simply, they will not buy or take desired actions. To avoid burning the budget, you may need to get back to the drawing board with your site (or at least key landing pages) before you begin buying traffic.



11. Advanced Trend: AdWords Quality Scores. Google´s new auction format is complex and may negatively impact some businesses more than others. Case examples and a broader explanation of trends in Google´s approach to relevancy.



12. Advanced Strategy: Search Engine Relations and the Search Engine Marketing Ecosystem. How do the leading search engine traffic vendors deal with small clients? Large clients? Competitors? Agencies?



13. Yahoo SM & MSN adCenter: Key Differences & Trends. Although time may be limited, a look at interesting features from the #2 and #3 paid search vendors is a must. Discussion of different tactics that may be required to succeed with these vendors.



14. Contextual Advertising: What Is It, How to Buy It, What to Avoid. A brief overview of contextual ad programs, and some settings that may help you control, measure, or opt out of this kind of traffic.



15. 2nd–Tier PPC Vendors: Miva, Kanoodle, Enhance, LookSmart; Niche PPC Vendors: Business.com, IndustryBrains, Quigo



16. Combatting Click Fraud: A Balanced Perspective. Examining the main sources of click fraud and the leading tactics for discovering and documenting it, and seeking refunds.



17. Conclusion: Commonalities between Paid Search & SEO

If time: Campaign Clinic, further Q&A;

Each month, millions of people in the U.S. use Google News, Yahoo News and other news search engines to find the latest information about a wide range of topics that interest them. According to Hitwise, the market share of Yahoo News and Google News rivals other news and media websites such as CNN.com, MSNBC, USAToday, The New York Times, and BBC News.

When they conduct a news search, they often find recent and relevant press releases along with articles from thousands of other news sources. According to a new report from Outsell, a leading market research company, press releases have leapfrogged over trade publications to become the top news source. The report is based on surveys of 5,740 knowledge workers taken from November 2005 to February 2006.

According to Outsell, there has been an "eye–popping shift in most–used information types." Only 10% of knowledge workers in the corporate sector used press releases as news sources from September 2004 to January 2005, compared to 35% who used trade publications during the same period. That changed dramatically from November 2005 to February 2006, which found 37% of knowledge workers using press releases as news sources, compared to 26% who used trade publications.

If your company´s marketing and public relations strategy includes the Internet, your press releases should be optimized for and distributed to the major news search engines.

• Get high keyword ranking in Google News and Yahoo News;
• Expand publicity in news media and blogs;
• Increase traffic to your web site;
• Generate more leads;
• Boost online sales; and
• Measure marketing ROI.

In this workshop, you will learn how to optimize press releases, distribute them to news search engines, and measure your results. Some of the best practices that will be covered in this workshop were mentioned in an article by Steve Lohr in The New York Times on Sunday, April 9, 2006, entitled, "This Boring Headline Is Written for Google."

Search engine experts told Lohr that news search engine algorithms "scan the title, headline and at least the first hundred words or so of news articles," so it "would be wise to do a little keyword research to determine the two or three most–searched words that relate to their subject – and then include them in the first few sentences."

So, during this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Conduct keyword research to find at least three relevant terms that your target audiences are likely to use for a news search.
• Edit your press release – particularly the headline and first two paragraphs – to improve news search engine rankings.
• Add hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable.
• Distribute your press release through the major news search engines and a variety of other channels to reach your target audiences.
• Measure results of your campaign whether your objective is to build brand awareness, increase web site traffic, generate sales leads, or sell products online.

Greg Jarboe and Jamie O´Donnell are the co–founders of SEO–PR, a search engine optimization and public relations firm specializing in news search, blog search and vertical search. SEO–PR has been praised by Danny Sullivan, Editor of Search Engine Watch, for "focusing on search as a public relations tool." SEO–PR and one of its clients, Southwest Airlines, won the 2005 Golden Ruler Award from the Institute for Public Relations for "using new media and new techniques to tie public relations to sales."

Greg and Jamie have been called "SEO experts" by Larry Chase´s Web Digest for Marketers, "PR pros" by Jack O´Dwyer´s Newsletter, and "measurement mavens" by Katie Paine´s One–Minute Benchmarking Bulletin. They have held similar Press Release SEO workshops for a variety of clients, including Southwest Airlines, Symmetricom, Verizon SuperPages.com, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Greg is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies, a guest writer for Search Engine Watch, and the editor of SEO–PR´s News Blog. He has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, marketing, and search engine optimization at Lotus Development Corp., Ziff–Davis, and other companies. Greg graduated from the University of Michigan, attended the University of Edinburgh, and worked on his Masters at Lesley College. He lives in Acton, Massachusetts, is a former Chairman of the Acton Board of Selectmen, and won two New England Press Association awards as editor of The Acton Minute–Man.

Jamie has more than 20 years of public relations experience pitching mainstream media, trade press and online publications. He has spoken at Search Engine Strategies, PRSA National Conference, several chapters of The Business Marketing Association, and the American Marketing Association. Jamie has ghostwritten articles for SEO–PR clients that have appeared in DM News, B2B Online, and other online advertising publications.

Before co–founding SEO–PR, Jamie was President and co–founder of IDM Partners, an online direct marketing agency. Prior to that, he was President and co–founder of the JONA Group, a San Francisco PR firm that worked with leading VC firms to launch over 50 Internet start–up companies. Before that, Jamie was the Vice President of the Enterprise Software practice at Hi–Tech Communications, a Shandwick agency. Prior to that, he was Corporate Communications Manager at Lotus Development Corp.

Jamie graduated from Boston College, earned his first Masters degree from Boston College and his second Masters degree in communications at Boston University. He has won two Bell Ringer Awards from the Publicity of Club of Boston. Jamie has lived in San Francisco for more than 15 years.

Keyword strategy is the cornerstone of all search engine marketing efforts. As long as people use words to search, finding and targeting searchers will depend on effective keyword research. In this 4–hour class, "keyword guru" Dan Thies will walk you through the process of researching and developing effective keyword lists for SEO and pay-per-click campaigns, identifying and countering competitors´ tactics, and leveraging the flow of incoming data to improve the effectiveness of your pay–per–click campaigns.

After attending this workshop, you will be able to:

• Perform a detailed analysis to identify and target the most popular keywords for your site and understand the difficulty of achieving top rankings for each search term.
• Obtain the most accurate information available on the popularity of your keywords and realize which keywords are most likely to convert to sales.
• Know which keywords you absolutely must include on your client´s site.
• Choose the optimal keywords so that your PPC ads and organic optimization yield the best opportunities for quality traffic.
• Know where to place your keywords for maximum effect, and how to mix in additional search term modifiers that will let you leverage your targeted search terms for greater traffic.

1. Keyword Strategy Concepts
   1. Breadth
   2. Depth
   3. Targeting
   4. PPC vs. SEO


2. Keyword Research Tools
   1. Keyword Databases: Keyword Discovery & Wordtracker
   2. PPC Provider´ Suggestion Tools (Google, MSN, Yahoo)
   3. Competitive Research Tools
   4. Other Tools


3. Conceptual Keyword Research
   1. Customer research
   2. Seed lists & lateral research
   3. Brand, Product, Problem, Application


4. Competitive Research
   1. No More Secrets: Extracting competitor´s keyword lists
   2. Identifying broad, phrase, & exact match bids
   3. Tracking competitors´ ads


5. Organizing & Managing Keyword Lists
   1. Improving Breadth
   2. Meaning Elements
   3. Synonyms
   4. Permutations
   5. How far should you go?


6. Analytics & Feedback Loops
   1. Selling Terms
   2. Negative Matches
   3. Creating synergy with SEO & PPC
   4. Tying conversion to keywords
   5. Closing the loop on conversion

Dan Thies has been helping his clients (and friends) promote their businesses online since Netscape was a start–up. He is the author and publisher of the top–selling e–book "Search Engine Optimization Fast Start," now in its 4th edition. Dan launched SEO Research Labs in early 2003, following numerous requests from readers for keyword research services.

SEO Research Labs´ services were initially available only to readers of "SEO Fast Start," with Dan personally preparing each report. Outsourcing services for search engine marketing consultants and site designers were offered beginning in the summer of 2003, which required an expansion in staffing. With a team of 3 consultants in place, Dan is responsible for managing business relationships and driving the development of new processes and tools.

In December 2003, Dan was invited to speak on the "Search Term Research" panel at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, and is now a regular speaker on keyword research. Dan is moderator of the keyword research forum at the High Rankings forum. Dan recently joined the executive committee of SEOPros, the organization of search engine optimization professionals.