Keynote Address – Changing Course and Avoiding the 7th Iceberg
Everyone’s heard the story of the Titanic. But did you know the iceberg it hit was actually the seventh iceberg it had been warned about? Digital marketing expert Gord Hotchkiss has worked with many large organizations and in today’s turbulent digital seas of change, sees more than a few parallels with the story of the Titanic. Learn why change is so difficult for established organizations and why change management is the new opportunity for digital agencies.

SEO Track

The Big Google Kitchen Sink Panel
Google has gone through more changes in the past year than in any other time in its existence. How can a search marketer keep up with daily algorithm changes, let alone tectonic shifts in rankings caused by massive updates like Panda? And what about the effects of the social graph, making results ever more personalized and unique for different users? Attend this session and you’ll learn to adapt and thrive in the constantly changing search engine optimization (SEO) universe.

Paid Search Track

Best Practices With adCenter For Bing & Yahoo
Now that Yahoo and Bing have a combined estimated 30% market share, you know you can’t ignore this appealingly large source of traffic – but you’ve also heard that you can’t just clone your AdWords campaign and expect to get good results. What are the key differences between AdWords and adCenter? What adCenter features are unique and powerful? What kinds of features should you be taking advantage of to maximize your ad campaigns on Bing and Yahoo? Come to this session to find out.

SEO Track

Keyword Research In A [Not Provided] World
All serious SEOs know that with everyone using the same keyword research tools, gaining an edge can be tough. And with Google no longer passing the most frequent search terms visitors used to get to your site, how can you know what’s working in your SEO efforts? There are a range of other options out there you can – and should – consider. This session looks at some and how to use them to perform better research.

Paid Search Track

Essential Paid Search Power Tools
Building great PPC campaigns takes a lot of time, creativity and tools. In this session, we’ll look at free, nearly free and homegrown tools used by expert PPC managers, and examine 15-20 simple tools that solve a particular task and can save hours/days. We’ll also review some fairly unknown tools which help you every step through creating/managing PPC campaigns – from discovering and selecting keywords, building word lists, analyzing competitors, creating and managing both text and display ads, charting, bidding, ad testing and reporting.

SEO Track

Link Building: Why You’re Doing It Wrong
Face it: even though link building is one of the most important things you can do to achieve search engine visibility, it’s also one of the most mind-numbingly boring SEO tasks. And the truth is, most link building “best practices” are either wrong or don’t work anymore. In this session, our panelists skewer some link building sacred truths and share techniques that actually work, rewarding you with more than a pounding headache.

Paid Search Track

Search Ads: Taking Your Ads From Good To Great!
The difference between a good ad and a great ad is like the difference between a pair of jacks and a royal flush. The great ad wins every time! In this highly-interactive session, you will learn the best practices for creating great search ads and sharpen your copywriting skills. Our presenters will show you their favorite tips and tricks, and cover all the new text ad formats and extensions. You are guaranteed to take home dozens of powerful ideas guaranteed to improve your ad performance and conversion rates!

SEO Track

Beyond Rankings: Actionable SEO Reports Your Boss Will Love
Still doing search ranking reports for your boss or clients, even though you personally think they’re useless? Or maybe you’re not doing them, but you’re still looking for new ways to show that your SEO campaigns are working. In this session, learn new ways to mine and combine data to create reports that focus on what really matters most to your boss or clients, and provide a path for future SEO work.

Paid Search Track

Quality Score: The Unwritten Manual For Google AdWords & Bing adCenter
Google and Microsoft place enormous emphasis on Quality Score, a formula that determines both the display position and ultimate cost of ads. Much has been written about Quality Score, but this session goes beyond common lore, and does more than simply list similarities and differences between Google and Microsoft’s formulas for calculating quality, providing important insights that all advanced advertisers need to succeed.

Reception

Social & Vertical Search Track

Beyond Search: Leveraging Ads On Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn
Not advertising on Facebook? You’re missing out on potential traffic from the second largest internet website, with more than 800 million active users. And if you’re familiar with Google AdWords or Microsoft’s adCenter you’ll love Facebook’s self-serve image and text-based ads that let you advertise your own web page or even your own Facebook page or event. Twitter and LinkedIn offer similar programs. You really should make time to friend these programs at SMX.

SMX Advanced Track

Overlooked, Underloved & Unknown Analytics
All analytics packages come with dozens, if not hundreds of reports that slice, dice and segment countless variables, all purporting to offer comprehensive metrics about the performance of your search marketing campaign. While many of these reports are great, you can often get much deeper insights – and “ah-ha” takeaways – from lesser known or even undocumented reporting options. Speakers in this session show you how to tap into these undiscovered gems.

Social & Vertical Search Track

Building Buzz On Twitter: Getting Followed & Retweeted
Twitter isn’t just for fun. It’s big business, being used to drive traffic and generate buzz and conversions for companies. Aside from driving direct traffic, tweets can also be links that search engines measure for ranking purposes. Tweets also are social signals that may be taken into account for rankings. In this session, tips on how to become an authority and how to get others to retweet what you put out.

SMX Advanced Track

Paid Search: Advanced Testing & Reporting
This session centers around the actual process of designing, implementing and measuring the results of paid search tests. Key topics will include what can and cannot be tested, how to design robust tests and identify all the biases and underlying problems of testing PPC campaigns. Our panelists will talk about process and illustrate with case studies how to design a test for most effective bid levels, messaging, landing pages and other higher-level business questions that you must have answers for to successfully implement paid search.

Social & Vertical Search Track

Justifying The Investment: Analytics For Social Media
It won’t be long before management and clients are questioning the value of your social media investment…if they’re not already. So how do you demonstrate the ROI of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media marketing opportunities? This session takes a deep dive on emerging social media analytics methods, how to establish and document social media key performance indicators (KPIs), and measure conversions even when engagements don’t result in transactions. We’ll also suggest the tools you can use to measure ROI on your social media marketing activities.

SMX Advanced Track

Remarketing & Retargeting: The New Behavioral Ads
Some call it retargeting; others call it remarketing, but if you aren’t doing it you’re squandering both money and opportunity to build stronger relationships with your customers. Retargeting involves understanding user intent via search, and then subsequently advertising to each individual with a combination of search, display or other online ads beyond search, reinforcing your messaging and increasing the likelihood of conversion. Sounds complicated, but recent developments have made it relatively easy to launch and run remarketing campaigns. Our panelists show you how.

Social & Vertical Search Track

How To Play In The Exploding Mobile Ads Universe
eMarketer predicts that mobile ad spend will surpass $17 billion in 2012. Haven’t done mobile search ads yet? Stop missing out! This session looks at mobile paid search opportunities and how search marketers can get ahead of this tsunami of opportunity.

SMX Advanced Track

Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging Best Practices
The search engines have been kind to SEOs recently, adding a number of new tools that when used properly promise to improve visibility and rankings for certain types of content. Schema.org, a joint alliance between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo provides a common foundation of support for a set of microdata types. Google’s rel=author tag enables content sites to help identify their authors on the site and across the web. And other meta tags have either gained prominence or become less important. Come find out how to take full advantage of all of these new goodies.

Social & Vertical Search Track

YouTube Success Stories For Marketers
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web after Google, so you definitely need to have search-optimized videos. But there are many other opportunities available to marketers who want to reach customers via online video. This session offers case studies, tips and tactics for easy ways leverage your online video assets.

SMX Advanced Track

Mega Session: SEM Vets Take All Comers
This PowerPoint-free panel is made up of veteran search marketing experts taking questions on any and all online marketing issues. Put your biggest challenges to them and come away with solutions.