SMX West Agenda – Day 1 – February 10, 2009
Expo Hall Hours: 10:00am – 7:00pm

Full Conference Agenda Day 1 – Tuesday, February 10, 2009
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

Up Close With Google Maps & Local – This session gets up close and personal with Google Maps, covering factors that influence what appears and how it is ranked. Plus, a look at concerns over listings being "hijacked."

Offline-Online Track

Integrating Search & Offline Marketing Campaigns – How can search support the purchase of offline goods and services? How can offline advertising and activities drive people to search, which in turn may send them back offline to interact with brands and companies. This session explores how both sides can support and enhance each other.

Developers

Technical SEO Issues For Developers – Highlights the most important elements to consider for search engine optimization (SEO) when building a web application infrastructure and provides tactical details about how to implement those elements. Topics include:

• Developing a crawlable infrastructure
• Considerations when developing rich internet applications (using technologies such as Flash, Silverlight, and AJAX)
• URL rewriting, redirection, canonicalization, and visitor tracking

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

Local Search Marketing Tactics – Local search doesn’t only happen in relation what’s on a map. This session looks at a variety of local search tactics that are not necessarily tied to your physical location’s listing.

Offline-Online Track

Measuring Search & Offline Marketing Success – OK, you’ve gotten the integration of search and offline campaigns working. How’s it going? What ways are you using to measure success? This session looks at techniques.

Developers

Marketer to Developer Translation – Are you are marketer who isn’t sure how to tell developers what you want in techie speak? Are you a developer who can’t figure out the technical requirements from marketers? Come to this session for the marketer-to-developer translation guide, as well as details on how to build SEO into the development process to make things easier for both marketers and developers.

Sponsors & Partners Track

The Dozen Most Common Search Marketing Mistakes That CMOs Make

sponsored by:

Whether you’re a CMO — or someone who needs to educate, advise or influence one – the information shared in this session could be vital to your search marketing success. You’ll learn about the 12 most common strategic mistakes that companies make in their SEO and paid search initiatives and gain insight into these critically important concepts surrounding search marketing and its role within the entire marketing mix. A panel made up of senior level search marketers across a variety of industries, business models and company sizes will share their experiences, advice and perspective on these dozen critical mistakes, how to avoid them, and how understanding them can dramatically increase your search marketing results.

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

Ecommerce Search Marketing Tactics – This session looks at a variety of tips and tactics to help retailers and ecommerce merchants do well in search results.

Offline-Online 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.

Developers

Diagnosing Web Site Architecture Issues – Site isn’t being indexed fully? Experience a huge drop in rankings or traffic? This session provides a step by step checklist for diagnosing site issues using freely available tools.

Sponsors & Partners Track

The State of the Search Marketing Industry

sponsored by:

SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) recently launched its fifth annual industry wide survey to assess the economy’s effect on year-to-year online marketing spending and on continuing changes in budget allocation between various media segments. Join SEMPO at this session to get a sneak peak at the early results and to hear about the latest trends that members across the US and worldwide are reporting about the state of search.

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

Up Close With YouTube – YouTube is the leading online video destination for the web, which makes it in turn the leading video search engine. Plus, YouTube content is widely distributed in search results elsewhere, including those of its owner, Google. This session looks specifically at tips and tactics for doing well with YouTube.

Offline-Online 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

Developers

Expert Technical Review of Your Website – This session will bring together experts who will use all of the information and tactics learned throughout the day and apply them to detailed site reviews of the code and infrastructure of sites submitted in advance by the audience.

Full Conference Agenda Day 2 – Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Expo Hall Hours: 10:00am – 3:00pm

Keynote Conversation: Vint Cerf, Google, Inc.
Widely honored and known as a founding father of the internet Vint Cerf today works as Google’s "Chief Internet Evangelist." In this keynote conversation, Cerf will provide his unique perspective on a range of topics and issues. Who still doesn’t get the internet? Where is search going to take us next? How will the internet evolve around us? A must-attend session.

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.

Searchscape 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!

Testing & 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.

Social Media Track

Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results – SearchWiki, Google Personalized Results and search customization based on previous queries or geographic location are all ways that Google’s "regular" results seem to be disappearing. This session looks at how "one-size-fits-all" results at Google are continuing to disappear, along with strategies on how to be successful in a more personalized results environment.

SEO Track

SEO Status Report Metrics – How are your SEO efforts going from a technical standpoint? This session looks at "status report" metrics you can tap into such as link counts, page counts and more.

Searchscape Track

Searchscape: Latest Stats About The Search Engines – What’s going on with the major search engines, especially in terms of who is winning in the search engine wars for visitors? In this panel, major online ratings and analytics services share their views on the current search landscape. Special topic: the Google Gap. Why do so many web sites report a much higher percentage of their traffic coming from Google versus the share of searches that it supposedly has?

Testing & Paid Search Track

Advanced Landing Page Strategies – You know landing pages are important. This session goes beyond the basic concept and gets into advanced techniques such as keyword-specific pages, audience segmentation and targeting, dynamically-generated landing pages and more

Social Media Track

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

SEO Track

Analyzing & Converting SEO Traffic – This session looks at how to closely monitor your organic / "free" / SEO search visitors, analyze what they do when visiting your site and how best to convert them toward your goals.

Searchscape Track

Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior – All this talk about making use of searcher behavior — but how do searchers actually interact with search engines? Glad you asked! This session takes its name from Search Engine Land’s "Just Behave" column and like that column looks at the latest research and studies to offer techniques and tips for search marketers to consider.

Testing & Paid Search Track

Writing Killer PPC Ad Copy – Before you can convert your visitors, you’ve got to get them to clickthrough from your ad. Enter the art of writing ad copy. Learn how much you can say, and how powerfully you can say it, in with only a few words.

Social Media Track

Tapping Into Image Search – Images aren’t just worth a thousands words. They could be worth thousands of visitors! This session looks at ways to turn your images into traffic, with a special look at Flickr.

SEO Track

301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways – The 411 on 301s 24/7. Or in other words, the 301 redirect is probably one of the most powerful tools available to an SEO. Discover how to move your link equity from an old to new domain, deal with non-canonical domains that get indexed, how to best handle dead URLs and more.

Searchscape Track

Search & The US Presidential Campaign – 2008 was a breakthrough year for search as a means for presidential candidates to get their messages out and fundraising cash in. This session looks at the ads, tactics and overall strategies employed by the campaigns.

Testing & Paid Search Track

Analyzing & Converting Paid Search Traffic – This session looks at how to closely monitor your paid search visitors, analyze what they do when visiting your site and how best to convert them toward your goals.

Social Media Track

Up Close With Google Blog Search – Google Blog Search continues to grow in usage plus is being seen more frequently in regular Google results, thanks to universal search integration. Discover how to tap into Google Blog Search and gain new visitors!

Full Conference Agenda Day 3 – Thursday, February 12, 2009

Keynote: John Battelle
John Battelle is author of the outstanding book on how search engines developed, The Search, in which he also coined oft-repeated description of search engines as a “database of intentions.” A veteran journalist and entrepreneur, this keynote conversation will cover how John sees search developing, the challenges ahead and searches greater impact on the internet and society.

SEO Track

Ask The Link Builders – PowerPoint Free! Put your questions about link building and external linking issues to our panel of link building experts.

Tactics 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.

Agency & Paid Search Track

Up Close With Google AdWords Quality Score – Google’s quality score remains a mystery to many marketers, plus Google keeps changing when and how it is used. This session takes a fresh look at the current state of quality score, how it is implemented and tips on using it to your advantage

In House Day

In House: I’m responsible for SEO, now what? – Once the company decides to start SEO in-house, what’s next? In this session you’ll learn what you’ll need to start up a successful in-house SEO program that runs smoothly and reels in profits. Even if you’ve been doing SEO for a while, implementing these tactics now will increase the productivity and reduce the frustrations you face on a regular basis.

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

In House: Training the Company on SEO – In-house SEO isn’t easy, and often short staffed. In this session, you’ll learn how to bring in an SEO novice and work with the entire development team to help you execute SEO campaigns.

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

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

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

In House: 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

SEO Site Reviews – This panel of SEO experts reviews sites live on the web and offers advice on improving indexing and ranking. Volunteer your site or learn from the audience as others are reviewed. The session runs twice, with different sites reviewed each time.

Tactics Track

Productivity Tips For The Busy Search Marketer – Just having the right tools isn’t enough to save time. Instead, you might need the right techiques, as well. Plus, maybe you need to change your frame of mind on how you approach some tasks. After a busy conference, a fun session on how to be more productive, before you head home!

Agency & Paid Search Track

Paid Search Campaign Reviews – Does your ad campaign need help? This session of paid search experts goes live on the web to review ads and landing pages. Offer up your campaign or review or learn as others are examined.

In House Day

In House: 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.