Search Marketing Expo East

Keynote with Google’s Tim Armstrong
Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America, & Vice President – Google, Inc.

SEO Track

SMX Boot Camp: Search Engine Friendly Web Design – “I’m not designing my site for search engines,” is a common designer objection to SEO suggestions. But when search engines collectively have more users than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, how can you afford to ignore how they interact with your site. Search engines are like the third major browser, and if your site breaks for them, it breaks for all those potential visitors from search engines. Search engine friendly sites aren’t hard to create and can be attractive to both search engines and human visitors at the same time. Learn more in this session.

Links & Listings Track

Internal Linking Tactics – This session looks at how to leverage linking from within your own site to maximize your rankings in search.

• Why even care about your internal linking? Because you can help yourself with your own site, so why waste one of the easiest link building opportunities out there.
• Using nofollow and other techniques for "PageRank sculpting" has risen in awareness over the past year. It’s even been recommended by Google. How does it work, when do you want to do it, and is it worth the time? Techniques and case studies will be shown.
• Don’t forget the anchor text. What you say in your links can matter! And saying it in a variety of different ways might be better than using the same exact words over and over. Tips and advice about writing for internal links.
• Don’t forget the humans, when it comes to internal linking. You still need to have links showing in a way that benefits your human visitors. Meanwhile, you might have to convince the humans in your IT department, upper management or other stakeholders about why recommended internal link tactics deserve support.

Paid Search Track

Search & The US Presidential Campaign – 2008 is, by accounts, the year that the Republicans & Democrats finally "got" search and used it effectively in the US presidential campaign. This session looks at the ads, tactics and overall strategies employed by the Obama & McCain camps.

Issues Track

What Is Spam? – In this session, search representatives share their views on what search spam is, with ample time for audience discussion. Topics will include:

• A recap of search engine guidelines defining what is spam
• Examples of on-page spam, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking and hidden text
• Examples of link spam
• Specific advice on how to tell if you’ve been penalized, ways to request reinclusion plus spam reporting tools

Sponsors & Partners Track

TBA

SEO Track

Unraveling URLs & Demystifying Domains – Can you find the same page on your site using different URLs? That might cause you duplicate content issues. Does your content management system put out parameters that block crawling? Own multiple domains pointing at the same site? Are you 301 redirecting them or leaving canonicalization to chance? Confused on even how to pronounce canonicalization, in addition to now being worried about it? Relax. This session looks at a variety of URL and domain name issues you should consider to increase your success with SEO.

Links & Listings Track

Personalized & Customized Search – Google’s customizing results based on a person’s geographic location, their previous query issue and if they’ve opted-in, their search and web surfing history. This session looks at how results get customized from a search marketing perspective.

Paid Search Track

Reviving A Failed PPC Campaign – Has your paid search campaign flat-lined? This session examines ways to roll out the crash-cart and get its heart going again.

Issues Track

What Is Ethical Social Media Marketing? – Should social media marketers disclose if they’re working on behalf of a client? Should relationships with power submitters be divulged? Social media marketing is still evolving, and this session looks at some of the ethical questions the area is struggling with.

Sponsors & Partners Track

Leveraging SEO As A Core Business Initiative

sponsored by:

As we experience the realities of a turbulent economy and changes in industry dynamics amidst discussion of search engine mergers and deals, SEO is the most valuable, long-term strategy that can be leveraged to accommodate potential cost increases, drive relevant brand visibility and engagement, and maximize return on your search marketing investment. This discussion-based panel will share insights on Enterprise-level SEO and keys to running successful SEO programs within large organizations, including:

• Championing SEO to help it become a central part of your organization’s marketing initiatives
• Establishing SEO as a staple of your online presence and search marketing program
• Understanding the benefits of running Organic and Paid in tandem as a holistic search strategy
• Identifying SEO strategies that leverage your online assets to meet your marketing objectives

SEO Track

CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & SEO – This session looks CSS, AJAX and Web 2.0 dynamic design techniques that can cause search engine indexing and ranking issues, with solutions to consider.

Links & Listings Track

Enhanced Listings – Yahoo has SearchMonkey. Google has sitelinks management. Even Microsoft is looking at ways to dress-up listings. This session looks at the move toward enhanced listings and how search marketers can tap into them.

Paid Search Track

Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing – In this session, a look at what happens when you combine landing pages with multivariate testing tools — tools that let you change various elements of the page dynamically to see which tests better with people.

Issues Track

Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search – What’s up with legal issues and search engines? That’s what this session is about — filling you in on the always changing developments. From click fraud to copyright to privacy, this session will hit all the major areas that are seeing legal action. Sit back — court is in session!

Sponsors & Partners Track

TBA

SEO Track

Flash & SEO – Google is handling Flash in a new way thanks to a partnership with Adobe, and Yahoo may soon do the same. Meanwhile, there are plenty of ‘old’ techniques to make Flash sites search engine friendly. But any of these techniques still don’t mean that Flash issues are solved. More in this session.

Links & Listings Track

External Linking Tactics – This session looks at how to improve site ranking by gaining links from sites across the web. Topics will include:

• Do you need to curb your enthusiasm about .edu links? Perhaps your time is better spent elsewhere. Plus strategies for seeking out important new link opportunities you might be missing.
• Leveraging the Google Directory as a high-quality link detector. LinkedIn as a corporate link machine. Donating for links. Networking for links in the real-world "meatspace."
• How directories, association web sites, and outreach to the media can produce important links.
• Link Reclamation: Have you unknowingly killed content that had links to it? If so, how do you get those back and reclaim valuable linkage. 301s aren’t necessarily the answer.
• Thoughts and findings from a research project and tool that examines the web’s linking structure, to provide advice and guidance to site owners.

Paid Search Track

Paid Search Analytics – This session looks at the types of analytics you want to perform in terms of paid search, in order to increase ROI and conversions.

Issues Track

Googleopoly – With its search share approaching 80% in the US by some measures — and a deal to put paid results on the second largest search engine Yahoo — and expanding into new areas all the time, are we in Googleopoly? If so, can anything slow Google down? And if we are in an era where Google will be dominant for some time, are there strategies search marketers need to keep in mind?

Sponsors & Partners Track

TBA