Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced hits the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle June 5-6. Be part of this exclusive event when you pre-register for a Network Pass.

Here’s everything you get…

Attend “Plus” sessions that cover emerging search engine marketing topics. Plus sessions feature case studies, best practices and search marketing solutions presentations. Check out this great line-up:

• A Summer Blockbuster: Famous Brands Showcase Four Star Consumer Search and Social Strategies
  Tuesday, June 5 at 1:45pm – Sponsored by Covario
  Presentations from Sony Pictures Entertainment, T-Mobile and Celebrity Cruises. See the full description here.
• Up Close With Bing Webmaster Tools!
  Wednesday, June 6 at 10:45am – Sponsored by Bing
  Bing Webmaster team will address updates, introduce new tools and answer your questions. See the full description here.

Visit the market-defining vendors. Exhibitors include the search engines, PPC management platforms, web analytics solutions, site development tools and a host of others. See the complete list of exhibitors and sponsors.

Watch the keynote on Tuesday June 5 from high-def monitors in the Expo Hall. The keynote features Google’s Matt Cutts and Search Engine Land editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan in a no-holds-barred Q&A.

Network with speakers, conference attendees and vendors. A Network Pass earns you admission to:

• SMX Meet & Greet on Monday, June 4th. Sponsored by Adobe, Brafton, BrightEdge and Bruce Clay Inc.
• SMX Expo Hall Reception on Tuesday June 5th
• SMX After Dark on Tuesday June 5th. The legendary event will be held this year at the Seattle Aquarium, sponsored by Covario.

Still need convincing? Learn more about the Network Pass. Ready to block out time on your calendar? Register now!

Come spend a couple of hours, a day or stay for both days! You’ll be a more knowledgeable, inspired and motivated internet marketer.

Register today for your SMX Advanced Network Pass, just $99 when you pre-register by June 4th!

This post was authored by Jessica Bowman, who is the creator and leader of In-house SEO Exchange, taking place June 7th after SMX Advanced in Seattle.

What if you could attend a set of conference sessions that fit your needs perfectly? A full day of conversations that specifically help in-house SEOs – providing actionable, needle-moving nuggets that you can implement the very next week. And what if I told you this event actually exists – and is coming up in less than a month!

Join us June 7th for a full day workshop specifically designed for in-house SEOs, by in-house SEOs. Here are seven specific reasons to should attend In-house SEO Exchange:

Face-time with Speakers
You’ll have unrivaled access to expert speakers who not only present but also participate in table discussions and often join us for lunch. These are in-the-trenches in-house SEOs from major brands, so you’ll truly get real stories, case studies and tactics you can apply to your own business. The Exchange at SMX Advanced includes speakers Jonathon Coleman (REI), Conrad Sam (Urbanspoon) and John Cole (NFL). We also have Duane Forrester from Bing to give us the search engines’ perspective.

The Guy Sitting Next to You
The best part of a conference tends to be the people you meet – the connections you make and the things you learn from your peers. The guy (or gal) sitting next to you at the Exchange is an in-house SEO, and many people in the room overcame the challenge you are facing right now, and are happy to give you specific details on how they dealt with those same challenges and issues.

A Question Is Worth a Thousand Words
Talk about meaningful takeaways! At the Exchange, the agenda is adjusted based on the questions and challenges people in the room have, so make sure to bring your questions and you’ll get your answers. No one leaves until every single question has been addressed, we promise!

Conversations Rather than Pre-defined Presentations
Presentations at conferences are great, but sometimes what you really want is a great conversation on a specific topic. You get this at the In-house SEO exchange, all day. At the In-house SEO Exchange in June there is only one presentation, but we are certain all attendees will enjoy it: How to Build the Business Case for Higher Salaries for an In-house SEO. Justifying market rate for an in-house SEO salary is a challenge for many SEO managers who want to secure competitive salaries for their team. The presentation isn’t by a recruiter or manager, It’s by an in-house SEO who figured it out on his own, and will walk you through everything he did to get a jaw-dropping pay increase in just a few years. So it pays to attend this workshop!

Open-the-Kimono Environment, with Confidentiality
One thing attendees say consistently is that they love the environment we create, which makes people feel comfortable sharing in ways they cannot at other events. Imagine being able to share openly with other attendees that want to share. The mindset of our workshop participants is, “the event will only be as good as I make it,” so everyone comes in ready to share and give, which means juicier SEO details for everyone.

We also have the policy that what is said in the room stays in the room, there is no blogging or tweeting on takeaways from this event.

Topics and Takeaways
The best-received presentations tend to use case studies, research, or include panelists from the major search engines. These presentations offer specifics (of course, search engine representatives can be decidedly vague, although we seem to still love to hear vagueness if it’s straight from the horse’s mouth!), but they can sometimes miss the mark in relevance. At the Exchange, we focus on what’s worked, and what hasn’t. Specific content strategies, outsourcing recommendations, link building failures, and actual obstacles faced within your organization, to name a few. But we’ll let you decide what’s on the agenda with our pre-event questionnaire.

A Better Lunch
For many attendees, this is not a learn-and-leave training. They make friends and colleagues. And by the time lunch rolls around, you have already spent half the day with a small group of people who become friends, and lunch just seems to taste better.

A room full of amazing in-house SEOs hope you will be joining the Exchange community. See you June 7th for In-house SEO Exchange!

Already have your All Access ticket? Email registration@searchmarketingexpo.com or call (877) 242-5242 to add In-house SEO Exchange to your program. Or you can register for just a Workshop pass online at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/register

SEO is exactly the same from month to month, just like page 1 of your money keyword. Right?

You couldn’t be more wrong.

Google is launching lists of search updates at us faster than spam-seeking missiles. That leaves us in a dizzying cycle, evaluating new opportunities for optimization and enhancement.

Your SEO strategy includes sitelinks and sub-sitelinks. You’re using Schema.org markup language to enhance your SERP listing. And it goes without saying that you’ve mined your backlink profile to identify link pruning targets to protect against Penguin penalties.

Or, maybe you’ve been in the game long enough to know that you can never know enough or implement new SEO initiatives fast enough to get comfortable at the top.

No matter what your strategy or place in the search marketing world, you will always stand to benefit from tools that offer competitive intelligence, unearth actionable data, and automate resource-intensive analysis. You will always require the freshest information about search feature updates, adjustments to Google’s ranking algorithms and indexing and expanding spam detection capabilities. And if you can get it, you’ll jump at the opportunity for consulting time with an SEO veteran who has tried and witnessed the effect of nearly every conceivable optimization practice.

That’s what an expert looks like.

Here’s what one Internet marketer recently said about her time with Bruce:

• Spend 8 intimate hours with Bruce and other engaged SEOs exploring the latest news and tactics for Google and other search engines.
• Examine your site’s susceptibility to Google’s Panda algorithm update rewarding quality content and Google’s Penguin update penalizing excessive manipulation tactics.
• Design a solid site foundation using theme-based architecture and on-site optimization practices that protect a site from fluctuations due to algorithm chasing.
• Understand Google’s vision for the future of search to gain a competitive advantage. For instance, by incorporating microformats and Google+ social campaigns into your search marketing strategy, your site will stand out in the SERPs.

Search changes from day to day, but if there’s one no-fail SEO action to take it’s never turn down the opportunity to learn, grow and iterate. See you in Seattle.

Already have your All Access ticket? Email registration@searchmarketingexpo.com or call (877) 242-5242 to add SEO Training to your program. Or you can register for just a Workshop pass online at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/register

Slide from Bruce Clay's SEO Workshop: The inbound link footprint on an online expert; experts associate with other experts.

Paid Search is one of the most profitable and consistent ways to gain and maintain traffic and sales for your site. However, not all PPC accounts are created equally. A few tweaks to various settings can make a large difference in your overall account profitability.

On Thursday June 7th, there will be a full day workshop on Google AdWords that will focus on not just the basics, but how to make AdWords more profitable for your business. Advanced AdWords Training follows SMX Advanced in Seattle.

Here are some highlights on the agenda:

The Psychology of Search: We’ll start the day talking about the search process and a searcher’s goals at each stage of the search process. This information goes by quick, but the theme of seeing how each part of your account sets and creates an expectation for the next stage of the buying process is a theme that will be reviewed throughout the day.

The Buying Funnel: Next, we’ll go through the stages of the considered and buying process. Examining the funnel and how your users travel throughout the funnel will help in keyword organization, ad copy writing, and landing page selection. This is the other theme that will be revisited a few times throughout the day.

Understanding Keywords: Keywords are the lifeblood of PPC. In fact, the industry is sometimes called keyword advertising. This is where we will examine both the high level information surrounding keywords as well as get into the execution stage of choosing match types, managing the long tail, and discussing Google’s new ‘near match’ option.

Ad Creation & Testing: The only part of your account a searcher actually sees is your ad.  Your ad is the connection point between a searcher’s thought process and your website. Crafting ads that both receive clicks and set the proper expectations for your site in order to have higher conversion rates is both an art and a science. We’ll chat about the art behind the creation of ads and how to write ads based upon buying funnel behavior. Once we discuss ads, then we’ll get into the science: testing. We’ll talk about testing, testing metrics (conversion per impression, profit per impression, CTR, etc). As most people are not good at both the creative and the math side of AdWords; I’ll show some tests that you can run yourself so you’ll have takeaways on the creative side.

Quality Score: Quality Score is one the banes of most advertisers. Optimizing it means putting more money in Google’s pocket. Ignoring it means your ads never show. There is a balance to be had. We’ll first cover the basics of what is quality score, how it’s calculated, etc. But then comes the fun part – execution strategies. I’ll do a live Excel walkthrough and show you exactly how to see your overall quality score health, how to find areas of improvement based upon finances, and then how to find areas of improvement based upon pockets of low quality scores. These strategies are useful for accounts with just a few ad groups to those with thousands. 

Display Network: I often hear people either disliking display or finding that its not working for them. Personally, I only find 25% of accounts have real problems with display once it is properly understood, organized, and executed. That means 75% of accounts can do well with display. We’ll walk though how Google renders display ads, their options, and more before finalizing the workflow  strategy for managing and growing your display campaigns.

Location Targeting:  Did you know that in many countries there is no Diet Coke? In some countries the word diet does not do well so its called Coke Lite. In Japan you can buy a Diet Beer. Good luck selling a diet beer in Nebraska. It does not matter if you are multi-national, country specific, or serve a single city – understanding how location settings work and diving into proper location targeting can make a huge difference for any business. Ecommerce to local business to lead gen companies can all use location targeting to their advantage – if they know what to look for and how to execute on these campaigns. That’s what we’ll talk about – how the settings work, and then how to execute a proper local campaign.

Increasing Site Conversion Rates: The worst keyword will occasionally get a conversion – search just works. The worst website will never get a conversion. When conversion rates suffer, it could be the AdWords account or the site. In this section, we’ll focus on the site so that you are giving your AdWords traffic the best possible opportunity to convert. We’ll spend some time talking about best practices, testing, site speed, form creation, and more.

Networking: Most of us spend our days with family and friends who have no idea what we do. Conferences and workshops give us an opportunity to meet people who understand our struggles and triumphs. Meet your fellow attendees, exchange tips and stories, and have lunch on us – it’s provided for all workshop attendees.

Q&A:  No workshop is complete without Q&A throughout the day and a nice wrap-up Q&A at the end of the day. As we go throughout the day, you will have amble opportunity to ask questions – this ensures that you get a chance to understand all the concepts so that when you go home and work on your accounts – there are no lingering doubts about how something works – you can just put the advice to work and start increasing the profitability of your AdWords account.

You can see the agenda here: Advanced AdWords Training at SMX

Already have your All Access ticket? Email registration@searchmarketingexpo.com or call (877) 242-5242 to add Advanced AdWords Training to your program. Or you can register for just a Workshop pass online at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/register

I hope the meet you at SMX.

You might be thinking “why attend a workshop on international search? I know SEO, I know PPC – so I’ll just take what I’ve done with those in the US and replicate that around the world.”

And that is one strategy. But it won’t get you very far.

While many of the same principles still apply, there are a whole new set of factors that are non-existent in domestic campaigns but are game changers in international. The International Search Summit is the place where these are discussed, developed and explained – and where specific international search challenges can be shared and solutions found. ISS takes place on June 7th, following SMX Advanced in Seattle.

Program Highlights

The Search Engines – Yandex and Google
Google is clearly a key player in international, but the search giant has specific rules and mark-ups for correctly geo-targeting your content to make sure it gets seen. And you also need to pay attention to country-based search engines like Russia’s Yandex, or risk missing out on a large percentage of your audience (in the case of Yandex, 60% of Russian users!) Join us for this must-attend session for tips directly from the search engines themselves.

The International In-House Experts – Logitech/Port 51
What better way to get insight into successful international strategies and tactics than from people on the ground using them? At ISS, we’ll have case studies from Logitech and Port51, who will share successful strategies and techniques for rolling out multilingual SEO and PPC campaigns across the globe.

International Search Checklist
Before you can get started, you need to understand the fundamentals of international search marketing. We look at the key issues and challenges to consider when going global and present a must-have checklist that all multinational marketers need when developing new campaigns.

Breakout Groups
We won’t just talk at you all day. As well as opportunities for Q&A with all the speakers, we’ll lead breakout discussion groups to give you the chance to ask the questions affecting your global efforts, share experiences – both good and bad – and hear new perspectives on international challenges.

The International Search Summit is designed for international marketers. This is your only opportunity to attend sessions specifically focused on multinational campaigns and hear from expert speakers in the field.

Expanding beyond the US offers huge potential for growth – but only if it’s done right! Failing to prepare and understand the markets and audiences you’re targeting and you’ll miss those exciting opportunities going global can offer! Join us at the International Search Summit and take your international search campaigns to new heights.

Already have your All Access ticket? Email registration@searchmarketingexpo.com or call (877) 242-5242 to add ISS to your program. Or you can register for just a Workshop pass online at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/register

SMX Advanced has always been one of my favorite events in our industry. The first one even had the distinction, if you could actually call it that, of being the subject of one of my very first blog posts all the way back in 2007. Looking back on that post, it is amazing how many great friends I met at that single event, and how many of the takeways from the panelists whose sessions I attended still hold true five years later!

For those of us on the Local University faculty who are “all Local, all the time”, if there is one thing I’d change about SMX Advanced, it would be an increased focus on local SEO. So it’s truly an honor to be partnering with SMX on a deep-dive workshop in Seattle this year, on the area of search that is nearest and dearest to our hearts. I hope you’ll be able to join us on June 7th for Local University Advanced!

I won’t rehash the entire agenda here, but I will highlight a couple things that I think will make this event a great one:

Networking with the Experts
We all love talking with colleagues on blogs and on Twitter, but as things go more and more digital, face-to-face relationships just seem to become that much more important. I hope that our workshop gives attendees the same intimate networking that I have always appreciated at SMX Advanced, but even more specific to the Local community.

Direct Q&A with Google’s Joel Headley and Bing’s Ginny Sandhu
Both of the major search engines are starting to make a concerted effort to reach out to Local marketers, and we’re really excited to have both of them here. There’s no substitute for firsthand insight about where the two major players are headed in this space.

SMB-relevant Content
The nature of typical SEO conferences (and agencies) is to focus on the larger clients – the ones that can afford an agency retainer of $10,000 a month or more. But many of us in the space work with businesses for whom $10,000 would represent a full year’s, or even two years’ budget, for their online marketing. At Local U Advanced, you can learn from some of the top small-business focused agency owners in the country how to scale Local Search practices that are both effective and affordable for small business clients.

Big-brand-relevant Content
For years, I think “Local” and “Small Business” were seen as almost interchangeable terms, but recently big brands (and the agencies that serve them), have started to recognize the importance of Local. But, we know that best-practice tactics for SMBs aren’t always realistically achievable for big brands. Thanks to our split-track afternoon session, those of you from big brands will be able to focus on where your strengths are. We’re going to have some fantastic in-house presenters (Jon Colman from REI and Conrad Saam from UrbanSpoon) to bring home some real-world case studies you can implement at your own companies.

Comprehensive Tactics
We welcome all-comers to Local U and our goal is to leave every attendee with a comprehensive roadmap for success in Local Search, no matter what the size of your company is. Even if you’re brand new – or relatively new – to Local, Mike Blumenthal and I are going to tag-team on an intro presentation that will get you up to speed with how this space differs from (and overlaps with) traditional SEO, and give you a foundation you can build on to understand and interpret all of the sessions later in the day.

Already have your All Access ticket? Email registration@searchmarketingexpo.com or call (877) 242-5242 to add Local University Advanced to your program. Or you can register for just a Workshop pass online at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/register

Hope to see you in Seattle on June 7!

Heading to SMX Advanced 2012? Extend your stay for one more day, and learn pretty much everything you wanted to know about Facebook! Join us for aimClear Facebook Marketing Intensive workshop Thursday, June 7 for a full-day super-social seminar dedicated exclusively to actionable takeaways and top-shelf tactics surrounding the world’s largest social network.

We’re talking Facebook! We’re talking the largest social sampling of human interests this world has ever known, in an environment where users can’t wait to share everything but the kitchen sink—resulting in some seriously deadeye, constantly evolving targeting capabilities for paid advertisements.

Sit back and soak up the juicy tips, techniques and tools shared by our panel of esteemed international marketers, who have been rocking the Facebook stratosphere, paid and organic, since 2007. Joined by special guest Will Scott, CEO of Search Influence, aimClear CEO Marty Weintraub, and aimClear Account Managers Merry Morud and Lauren Litwinka are going to tackle everything from Guerilla Demographic Research to Establishing Attainable Marketing KPIs, best practices for creating killer Facebook ads to essential organic community management tactics. There will be special guests from the audience as well. You’ll have to be there to know who!

Hungry marketers looking to succeed in an increasingly socialized web experience must be armed with the right tools, skills, and smarts if they want to succeed. Workshop attendees will walk away with deep understanding of how to leverage the traffic-driving power of Facebook with “free” optimization techniques and paid advertising.

Whet your appetite with a peek at our agenda:

Facebook Demographic Research & Guerilla Targeting – Get a crash course in demographic research, encompassing both traditional and emerging channels, and learn how to leverage search to identify social users.

Establishing Facebook Marketing KPIs – Learn how to achieve realistic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by leveraging an appropriately integrated mix of social assets, public relations, internal and search engine optimization.

Curate & Aggregate! Industrial Strength Content Sharing For Powerful Community Managers – Master superior tactics for aggregating complimentary, non-competitive, third-party resources, and curating the massive pot of content for streamlined and consistent sharing with target audiences.

Holistic Befriending in Facebook: 36 Ways to Make More Social Media Friends Who Matter – Get insider tactics and ample case studies on how to stalk with style and make more social media friends who matter.

Facebook Crises Management! Dealing with Intra-Community Bloodshed – Prepare your brand for the inevitable social community crises with crowd-control tactics and stress-relieving tips.

How To Buying Fans For Fun & Profit – Explore the real meaning and value of a CPF (Cost Per Friend) with a bevy of case studies.

Killer Facebook Ads – From account structure and optimization to tips for amazing creative and images, saddle up for a top-down look at the Facebook ads platform, and how to dominate it.

Sponsored Stories & Other Fantastical Social Facebook Ad Units – Learn the secrets behind Facebook’s variety of paid ad units, including Sponsored Stories and Page Post Ads.

Decoding Facebook’s EdgeRank & Organic Visibility – Take a deep tour through EdgeRank, Facebook’s ranking algorithm, and walk away with top dog tips and techniques for increasing community engagement.

Digging Deep In Facebook’s Insights & Mining Organic Analytics – Journey through Facebook’s organic analytics platform, Insights, and learn the combinations of metrics that can help transform insight into action.

The Great Big Glistening Tremendously Tricked-Out Book of Tools – Behold, the bible of tools, from free to enterprise-level, basic to freaked-out advanced.

As always, we’ll round out the day with a rousing Extended Q&A. It’s usually in a nearby bar, so you know what that means. Let the insider marketing secret exchanging begin.

Already have your All Access ticket? Email registration@searchmarketingexpo.com or call (877) 242-5242 to add Facebook Marketing Intensive to your program. Or you can register for just a Workshop pass online at http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/register

Hope to see you there!

Workshops@SMX Advanced: Choose from any of the six day-long workshops on Thursday, June 7. Each is an internet marketing deep dive led by renowned experts in their field. Workshops are:

• In-house SEO Exchange: Trade tactics, share solutions and build relationships with in-house SEO peers at this unique, interactive event.
• International Search Summit: Arm yourself with the knowledge to boost your global online performance with the latest best practices, actionable tips and solutions.
• Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO Training: Acquire the ranking and placement techniques you need to out maneuver your competition for top search engine rankings.
• aimClear Facebook Marketing Intensive: Learn free and paid community building and customer converting tactics using the world’s largest social network.
• Advanced AdWords Training: Master Google AdWords with advanced level strategies and tactics that will positively impact your paid campaign ROI.
• GetListed.org Local University Advanced: Take a deep dive into local and mobile SEO tactics in this intimate, action-packed workshop of advanced level content.

SMX Advanced Network Pass: Networking with SMX attendees at a variety of social gatherings for less than $100 is a bargain. Register for a Network Pass and you will have access to:

• a video simulcast of Matt Cutt’s keynote conversation
• Plus sessions produced by leading solution providers
• the Expo Hall, where over 30 leading solution providers will explain how they’ll make you more profitable and efficient
• three networking events: the June 4th Meet & Greet, and the Expo Hall reception and legendary SMX After Dark Party on June 5th, sponsored by the good folks at Covario.

Learn all about the Network Pass here.

SMX Advanced Track @ SMX East: We’ll be bringing the best of SMX Advanced Seattle to a special “SMX Advanced Track” at SMX East, October 2-4 in NYC. In addition, there will be plenty of other advanced-level session that take place outside of the track, as part of the overall 3-day event. Pre-register now or leave your email to be notified when the agenda is up at smxeast.com.

We look forward to hosting you at an SMX conference soon!

• SMX Advanced features one-of-a-kind sessions. See the agenda.
• Over 75 of the world’s most knowledgeable search marketers will present. They’re selected based on ability and their willingness to share the tactics and strategies that make them successful.
• Reconnect with old friends and make new contacts at our networking events. We keep SMX Advanced intimate, so you are sure to connect with the people you want to meet.

Join us in Seattle June 5-6 for two days of expert level sessions and discussion you’ll find nowhere else. Don’t miss out on your chance to attend SMX Advanced this year. Register today!

Here are the PPC agenda highlights from this year’s agenda.

We open with Mad Scientists of Paid Search, focusing on the most innovative, thought-provoking and actionable research findings from top advertisers in paid search.

Believe it or not, it has been 10 years since Google launched AdWords and there are plenty of accounts and PPC managers who have been around that long, too.

If you’ve been managing the same accounts for a long time or have inherited mature campaigns that are stagnating, check out Auditing PPC Campaigns. This session shows you how to take a fresh look at older campaigns, identify “cold spots” and obsolete areas within them, and prioritize actions to accelerate performance.

Getting more out of campaigns means applying the best new practices and available features.

First, make sure you are maximizing all the new targeting and retargeting options available in Fire But Don’t Forget: Getting The Most Out Of Retargeting From The Pros.

Next, make sure your PPC landing pages convert visitors to customers and contribute positively to Quality Score. With so many changes in this area over the past year, you need to attend Perfecting Your PPC Landing Pages.

Super-sized campaigns present unique technical and departmental challenges. We address them in Maximizing Enterprise SEM.

Another session sure to appeal to managers of large campaigns is Avoiding PPC Data Paralysis, where we explore challenges of both large and small data sets, managing through the fog of long-tail data, and making decisions from seemingly inconclusive data.

Search doesn’t happen just on the desktop. Today, people are searching on mobile devices, at all hours of the day. That’s why we’ll devote an entire track to mobile search at SMX Advanced. iSEM: Doing Mobile Search Ads Right will provide case studies and concrete examples to help you to better design and optimize your mobile paid-search campaigns.

Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance your PPC performance. SMX Advanced is 80% sold out, and when tickets are gone, they are gone. Register now!

Have additional questions?