SMX East Agenda – Day 1 – October, 2008
Expo Hall Hours: 10:00am – 7:00pm

SMX East Agenda – Day 2 – October 7, 2008
Expo Hall Hours: 9:45am – 6:00pm

SMX East Agenda – Day 3 – October 8, 2008

Full Conference Agenda Day 1 – Monday, October 6, 2008
Expo Hall Hours: 10:00am – 7:00pm

SMX Boot Camp Track

SMX Boot Camp: Keyword Research Tools & Techniques – The first step to success with any marketing campaign is to know your message. With search marketing, that means knowing the search terms that are being used by your target audience. Understand what they’re searching for, and you can tune-in to their traffic via search engines. This session covers tools and techniques of performing keyword research.

Vertical Search Marketing Track

Search & The iPhone – Stats keep coming out not only about how well the iPhone sells but how much searching activity is generated off that platform. This session looks at how search marketers can tap into the product.

Brands Track

Search Integration: Are We There Yet? – People have been talking about search being integrated with other types of marketing for ages. How’s it going? Is search now second nature when creating an advertising campaign? If not, why not? Thoughts and examples of integration challenges will be shared in this panel.

Publishers & Agencies Track

Search Marketing For Newspapers & Magazines – As a newspaper or magazine publisher, there are some unique opportunities for generating search traffic available to you. This session looks at tactics and techniques.

Sponsors & Partners Track

TBA

SMX Boot Camp Track

SMX Boot Camp: Copywriting For Search Success – It’s pretty simple. Want to be found for certain words? It helps to actually use those words in your web pages! This session covers the importance of textual content to search engines and how with some forethought, you can create HTML title tags and body copy that works to generate search traffic yet which also pleases your human visitors.

Vertical Search Marketing Track

What’s New With Local Search Marketing – What’s new and exciting in terms of tactics for showing up in local search results? This session provides a review.

Brands Track

Search & Branding – In this session, a look at how branding interacts with search. How do those searching by brand differ from those searching for generic products? How can branding support search? How can search improve branding? These issues and more.

Publishers & Agencies Track

Social Media Marketing For Newspapers & Magazines – Continuing on from how newspapers and magazines can tap into search, this session looks at how social media marketing offers some unique opportunities for these publishers.

Sponsors & Partners Track

SEM for Small Businesses

sponsored by:
SEMPO

Smaller budgets, fewer available employees with the required skill sets, make it tough for small businesses to compete in the search marketing arena. Are there ways to overcome this?

Yes, and with the panelists available for this session you will learn how to grow your online marketing efforts and overcome that initial learning curve. Attend this session and come away with ways to use competitive analysis, starting paid search with a small budget, link building, viral marketing and much more.

If you are a small business owner this is the must attend session of the conference.

SMX Boot Camp Track

SMX Boot Camp: Paid Search Fundamentals – Paid search allows you to generate traffic from search engines by purchasing ads, usually on a cost-per-click (CPC) / pay-per-click (PPC) basis. This session covers the basics of how to purchase placement from the major search engines, including best practices for success with your ads.

Vertical Search Marketing Track

What’s New With Video Search Marketing – What’s new and exciting in terms of tactics for showing up in video search results? This session provides a review.

Brands Track

Search & Display Ads – Various studies show that display ads can reinforce search ads and vice-versa, plus display ads are getting smarter to alter based on search activity. This session looks at developments.

Publishers & Agencies Track

Ad Agencies & Search Marketing – Do traditional ad agencies ‘get’ search? This panel looks at ways they do plus areas where improvement is needed.

Sponsors & Partners Track

The Ten Truths Every CMO Must Know About Search Marketing

sponsored by:
iProspect

Whether you’re a CMO — or someone who needs to educate, advise or influence one — this session will educate you on the 10 critically important concepts surrounding search marketing and it’s role within the entire marketing mix that CMOs must understand in order to be successful. A panel made up of senior level search marrketers across a variety of industries, business models and sizes will share their experiences, advice and perspective on these 10 critical truths and how understanding them has influenced their CMOs.

SMX Boot Camp Track

SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals – Links are the way search engines made the great leap forward from Search 1.0 to 2.0. They remain one of the most important factors influencing rankings. This session covers how search engines perform link analysis to rank pages and how to increase your traffic by building quality links in an appropriate fashion.

Vertical Search Marketing Track

What’s New With Retailers & Search Marketing – What’s new and exciting in terms of tactics for retailers to show up in shopping search results? This session provides a review.

Brands Track

Search & Reputation Management – What do people find when they search for you by name? Is it negative? If so, what do you do? What can you do? Depending on the situation, there are a range of tactics that may help. This session explores the issue.

Publishers & Agencies Track

Breaking Up (With Your Agency) Is Hard To Do – When a client and an agency part after a search marketing campaign, who owns what? On the SEO side, code and ownership is often clear. For PPC, who owns the quality score associated with an account? Knowledge from landing page tests? This session looks at legal uncertainties and offers suggestions for resolution.

Sponsors & Partners Track

TBA

Internet Marketer’s Charity Party

Join us for the internet marketing charity party at The Social Bar and help support a great cause.

An open bar will be provided as well as a raffle and the opportunity to meet internet marketers from around the world! All money donated will be given to charity. 100% of your $50 entrance fee goes to the Ronald McDonald House. For additional details see the Internet Marketers Charity Party Site.

Full Conference Agenda Day 2 – Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Expo Hall Hours: 10:00am – 6:00pm

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:
Outrider

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

WebmasterRadio.FM’s Search Bash @ SMX East

Webmaster Radio Search Bash events are legendary! And all SMX East All Access and Networking pass attendees – along with speakers, exhibitors and press – are invited to join in the fun.

Search Bash will be held at Tonic East which features classy and elegant marble top bars, rich wood furnishings and accents. Private booths are available complimented by exquisite lights, sound system and over 40 TV’s and plasma TVs available on three levels.

Full Conference Agenda Day 3 – Wednesday, October 8, 2008

SEO Track

Tools, Glorious Tools – This session takes you on a whirlwind tour of search marketing tools you’ll want to consider adding to your toolbox.

Tactics Track

Advanced Keyword Research Tactics – You know all the standard keyword research tools and techniques. This session takes things to the next level_id.

Agency & Paid Search Track

Advanced Paid Search Tactics – In this session, some tips and techniques to help you get even more out of your paid search campaigns.

In House Day

A Day In The Life Of A Successful In-House SEO – When you’re in-house, it doesn’t mean you get to do SEO all day – there are meetings and opposition, yet you’re still held accountable. In this session you’ll hear from successful in-house SEOs to learn what they’re doing that the other in-house SEOs aren’t. You’ll also get insights into operations and workflow of successful in-house SEO teams.

SEO Track

Give It Up: White Hat Edition – This session has SEOs sharing favorite, little-known and powerful techniques that won’t get you banned in search engines from trying.

Tactics Track

Web Analytics You Should Know – This session covers top items you should be tracking in web analytics as they relate to search marketing, along with tips and tools.

Agency & Paid Search Track

Practical Dayparting – Search marketers understand the value to dayparting — showing ads associated with certain times of the day — but it can be a pain to setup and analyze. This session looks at how to make the job easier and more effective.

In House Day

Reporting & Scorecarding For Management – Management loves numbers. They build your business case and help get SEO high in the priority list. You’ll learn how to give a number on potential lift when management insists, which reports to deliver on a consistent basis to management, and how to use reports to help your cause when traffic growth isn’t going as expected.

SEO Track

Ask The SEOs – PowerPoint Free! Put your questions about SEO to our panel of experts and get answers about ranking and crawling issues.

Tactics Track

SEO & Usability – Search engine friendly design does NOT mean human unfriendly design. In fact, done right, improving the usability of your site for visitors can also improve your SEO. This session looks and how both help each other.

Agency & Paid Search Track

Ask The Paid Search Buyers – In this session, search marketers take questions from the audience about paid search.

In House Day

Get SEO Into All The Right Places Of The Development Life Cycle – SEO doesn’t work well unless it’s addressed in every aspect of the development life cycle. This session will show you what typically happens and what needs to happen as you build a new website and manage ongoing maintenance. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of what you need to do to get SEO weaved into the right places of the development life cycle at your company.

SEO Track

Ask The Search Engines – Put your questions to this panel of search engine engineers and representatives who know how things work behind the scenes in terms of indexing and ranking pages.

Tactics Track

What’s New With Social Media Marketing – This session looks at the latest changes to promoting your site through social media marketing venues.

Agency & Paid Search Track

Ask The Paid Search Reps – In this session, representatives from the major search ad networks take questions from the audience about paid search.

In House Day

Case Studies From The Trenches – Innovative Ways To Pull Off SEO – In this session you’ll hear how in-house SEOs used innovative approaches to overcome SEO obstacles and come out wildly successful.