The Importance Of Attending SEO Conferences , Expos And Events

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. Peter F. Drucker

Since 2000,  I have been upgrading my knowledge about SEO from the various blogs, forums, discussions and of course the plethora of information available on the Google webmaster blog and videos. The knowledge has been implemented on numerous websites to gain the necessary search engine presence and improve valuation of the digital assets of the companies concerned since then.

The field of search marketing is constantly changing as the search engines keep on upgrading their algorithms and the search behavior of the people also undergoes evolution over a period of time.

To keep up to that pace of upgradation is a challenge in itself. Though there is a lot of fresh information on the web about the latest developments in the field there comes a time atleast once a year when you want to interact with other professionals in your field to exchange news and views to get the confirmation and the confidence about all the self learning a person does.

In mid 2000 I used to search for such conferences , workshops, seminars and meetups so that I could get a chance to listen to other like-minded people , discuss and share knowledge and information mainly about organic search. But, usually such conferences were either held in Europe , America or Australia. In India I managed to attend some workshops organized by Google but they were focused on Adwords as a Google Product rather than SEO.

Such conferences are real time social media interactions which make you speak and listen as you discuss, share and thereby enhance your knowledge. Even if you are the shy kind you get to learn a lot merely by observation which have a lasting impression opening up new vistas of thought and imagination. As someone has aptly said,”The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination”

With this purpose of reaching out to people and sharing knowledge about SEO in 2007 I had approached Ahmedabad Management Association and offered the SEO programme designed by me which they readily accepted and as I had expected all the participants were people related to the web development and web marketing industry who were all on the lookout for such programmes to get confirmation and confidence about what they knew about SEO. This year in October we will be reaching out to other cities via our “Online SEO Training Programmes”.

Of course the opportunities vary from country to country and the decision of attending such conferences and workshops depend on the budgets, the distance to be travelled and the no. of days that you can spare for such an activity. But, Especially for the search industry I think as we make provisions from our business funds for Research and Development, Branding, etc. we should also create budgets, reserves , provisions and save for attending conferences and workshops which in the long run prove to be an investment rather than an expense.

Such conferences do not only give knowledge gaining and marketing opportunities to the professionals of that niche industry but if well coordinated , conducted and organized are giving rise to the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions/events) tourism market which give an overall boost to the economy.

For the first time in Jan 2011 ClickAsiaSummit was held in India at Mumbai which was totally focused on Search and Social on a large scale inviting speaker from other parts of the world.

I find myself lucky to be able to attend a second conference this year that is SMX East to be held in New York from 13th Sept. 2011 to 15th Sept. 2011 and I look forward to attend all the sessions focused on SEO.

Danny Sullivan on http://daggle.com/lessons-thoughts-year-anniversary-starting-business-2649 has mentioned about the SMX East conference to be - "........on track to be our biggest search marketing conference ever, SMX East, with record attendance."

Related Links About Conferences and Events:

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/01/highlights-of-conference-click-asia.html

http://sphinn.com/story/210293/

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-08-06/news/27704880_1_tourism-market-tourism-secy-mice

The Happenings And Discussions At #SMX Advanced Seattle On Day 1 - ( 7th June 2011 - A Curated Resource)

Author : Bharati Ahuja

I am sure every SEO and Internet Marketing Person would have loved to be at Seattle on the 7th of June 2011 to attend the SMX Advanced and catch up with what is the latest in the search industry. Atleast I was and hoping to be there next year or hoping SMX Advanced to select one of the cities of India as the venue.

Thanks to all the live blogging and Twitter by which we can keep ourselves virtually present at the event.

The details , discussions and the slides shared on Day 1 can be found on the following links:

 SMX Advanced Seattle Agenda – June 7, 2011

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/2011/full_agenda

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On Tuesday morning, SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin presented evidence at our SMX Advanced conference that there’s a high correlation between Facebook Shares and ranking well on search engines. In afternoon, the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts said that Google doesn’t see Facebook Share data at all. An SEO-search engine catfight? No, both actually agree.

 The Bing Party SMX Advanced  Seattle 2011

Read more on the following link:

http://searchengineland.com/its-not-he-said-she-said-over-google-rankings-facebook-shares-80601

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Day one of our SMX Advanced conference is wrapping up with a late afternoon tradition: Danny Sullivan’s “You & A” conversation with Google’s top spam cop, Matt Cutts. The session is due to start at 5:00 pm PST but, just between us, it’s bit hectic up front and gut feeling is that we’ll be a little late. (In other words, the Cuttlets are already out in force and Matt is being mobbed.)

Read more on the following link:

http://searchengineland.com/smx-advanced-liveblog-you-a-keynote-with-googles-matt-cutts-80576

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It’s the first session of the show so Danny spends some time going over the housekeeping stuff. He explains how people are supposed to tweet the sessions, how it would costs eight gazillion dollars to outfit the entire room with power strips and lots of other housekeeping stuff. You’re not here so that stuff probably doesn’t concern you. Luckily for you it’s time to get to the search stuff. 

Read more on the following link:

http://outspokenmedia.com/internet-marketing-conferences/seo-periodic-table/

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How hard can a panel called “The Really Complicated Technical SEO Infrastructure Issues” be to liveblog, right? It’s not like the panel is full of totally smart people who can think rings around the rest of us or anything… 

Read more on the following link:

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2011/06/the-really-complicated-technical-seo-infrastructure-issues-smx-advanced/

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Links To The Slide Decks by @jennita and @randfish of @seomoz :


http://www.slideshare.net/jennifersablelopez/the-social-mind-vs-the-seo-mind

http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/interesting-data-from-the-2011-ranking-factors

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Matt Cutts Has The Panda With Him  SMX Advanced Seattle 2011 - Hey! Don't  Miss The Shoes...

Hashtag for the show is #smx catch up with the trending topic for the SEO industry on http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23smx or you can follow @smx

The Leading Search & Social Marketing Events 2011 Has Started With (Asia & Europe)

As the year starts there are major conferences, summits and expos being conducted all over the globe for every major industry. As far as the search industry is concerned January 2011 saw the Click Asia Summit 2011 - CAS 2011 taking place at Mumbai – India which was a 3 day summit with a focus on ‘The Power Of Digital And Mobile Marketing In Asia’.

We covered the highlights of the CAS 2011 on our blog earlier on :


http://blog.webpro.in/2011/01/highlights-of-conference-click-asia.html

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/click-asia-summit-2011/27498/

The Complete 3 Day Agenda for CAS 2011 can be viewed here:

http://www.clickasiasummit.com/agenda/

The Speaker Profiles:

http://www.clickasiasummit.com/speakers/

In February 2011 we have the Search Engine Strategies - SES London being conducted from Feb. 21 2011 to Feb. 25 2011. The details of the following event can be viewed on the following links:

About Search Engine Strategies - SES:

Since 1999, SES has been the leading international conference series for webmasters, digital agencies, online marketers and corporate decision makers. Over the years SES has guided search marketers of all skill levels through the fast changing and complex world of search — the single fastest growing marketing sector… Read More On: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/about.html

Agenda Overview: SES London 2011 - 21-25 February

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/agenda.php

The Speaker Profiles:

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/speaker-profiles.php

SES Magazine View latest issue:

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/_pdfs/magazines/2011/sesmagazine-january2011.html


If we observe the agenda of both the Search events we can see that there is a clear focus on SEO, Social Media, Analytics Metrics and Digital Asset Optimization. Both the events CAS 2011 and SES London 2011 cover the basic and advance level tracks. Hence such events not only give an opportunity to the well established professionals in this field to get an idea about advanced concepts and trends but also give a platform to a newbie or a startup to get the direction and confidence to go ahead in the field of online marketing.

Other Search & Social Media Industry Events to look forward to in March 2011 are: 

Link Building Seminar 2011 Locations: London, UK and New Orleans, LA
View Details on : https://www.distilled.co.uk/events/linkbuilding-seminar-2011

SES New York From March 21st 2011 to March 25th 2011

View Details On: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/

The Highlights Of Conference Click Asia Summit 2011- ‘The Power Of Digital And Mobile Marketing In Asia’

Last week I had the Opportunity to participate in the largest marketing event in Asia
delivering Digital, Social and Mobile marketing solutions – Click Asia Summit 2011 .

It was a 3 day summit with a focus on ‘The Power Of Digital And Mobile Marketing In Asia’.

 

The highlights of the conference:

The conference started of with a very inspiring keynote by Gurbaksh Chahal, RadiumOne . It proved a point  that in order to be successful in the digital world one does not need a string of degrees and qualifications attached to his name but a focused approach , dedication and hard work. Gurbaksh’s session encouraged the entrepreneurs to take failure also as an opportunity and go ahead with more positivity rather than getting bogged down. 

The delegates had to keep choosing the options of the sessions available , trust me it was a tough one as whenever you made a choice somewhere you felt that you are missing out on the other session which was equally informative .  

The sessions on   Mobile Web: The New Mass Media by  Mahesh Narayanan, Google India and There's an App for That! By  Neil Burton, Web Spiders – UK proved that   mobile marketing strategy  has to be a part of your digital marketing strategy  if you want to future proof your online presence for the long run as statistics and data proved that more and more people are switching on to their smart phones to surf the web and downloading more and more Apps. For their smart phones.

But I think that as smart phones become smarter and internet connectivity becomes better and cheaper  for the handsets there will be no need to download Apps. But the handsets will be used more like we use our laptops today. We discarded our desktops for laptops, now we shall discard our laptops for smartphones and that will literally put all the power in the hands of the people as people will shop surf more online due to the ease and accessibility always available in their hands. Read more on : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-future-of-e-commerce-and-online-business/27002/

 The presentation on  Metrics-Analysis-Action! And the Day 2 Keynote on Digital Analytics By Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz    focused on the following points:

• No analytics signal is a signal in itself
• Data is not information and reporting is not analytics
• Always dive deeper  and track to find answers to how the offline and online advertising is lifting each other
• Data is not analytics –  As just having a car is not sufficient  you need a driver to drive it – Just data is not enough you need to analyze it and decompose the metrics to get answers which will help you to take corrective actions and right decisions.

Gillian’s informal way of speaking and reaching out to the audience for questions attracted everyone’s attention and made a dry topic like analytics very interesting .


 The sessions on : 

Advanced View on PPC vs. Organic by Jeff Adelson Yan, Levelwing

Search Engine Marketing - Dead and Buried? (PANEL)  by
Milind Mody, eBrandz
Navneet Kaushal, PageTraffic
Raghavendra Satish Peri, IBM

Best Practices: Online Marketing Vivek Bhargava, Communicate2 

They all focused on the importance of having a marketing mix of SEO, PPC, Local Search with a focus on Google Places. They also stressed on the fact on how one marketing strategy helps on leveraging the other sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. As these topics a very vast in themselves the extent to which they were discussed was not sufficient and satisfactory.

The first day concluded with a refreshing session by Mr. Anupam Kher touching the human side of technology and baffling everyone with a down to earth talk and chat on how success has made him more humble and how failure and adversities in life can make you a better person.

On day 2 the following workshops:

Ecommerce In India: Opportunities & Challenges (PANEL)
Dirk van Quaquebeke, Brandmile Ptd. Ltd.
Kunal Bahl, Snapdeal India

Digital Marketing, Lead Nurturing and Social Media for B2B Enterprises
Neil Burton, Web Spiders - UK
Anol Bhattacharya, GetIT

Mobile Marketing & Brands in the Mobile Web Environment
Naveen Tewari, InMobi
Rajiv Hiranandani, Altruist-Mobile2Win

Clearly stated the emerging of the mobile web and the current trend of mobile Apps. Kunal Bahl described the ABCD of Indians as A for Astrology, B for bollywood, C for Cricket and D for discounts.  and went ahead to discuss the success of Snapdeal India . The key factor for any ecommerce site to be successful is to give a predictable experience on the site to the visitor was the main takeaway. 

Dirk van Quaquebeke, Brandmile Ptd. Ltd. Mentioned that the India is fashion conscious, Indians have disposable income and are early   adapters to e-commerce and deals and discounts work well in the Indian market.

Neil Burton, Web Spiders – UK and Anol Bhattacharya, GetIT spoke about lead nurturing and Social media in a B2B scenario . The importance of content  for lead nurturing was highlighted . 


The content should be remarkable and  ignite conversations. The main takeaway - Content provides the context for conversations in social media. In a B2B scenario for social media forget about the image supply as much as information as possible. The main ROI for a B2B campaign is lead generation and building relationships.

• B2B is different  from B2C
• Create a strategy
• Talk business from start
• Talk numbers , statistics and data
• Build a community

The session on Twitter for Business by Pradeep Chopra, Digital Vidya was a runaway hit with a very  individual style of conducting the session Pradeep Chopra immediately connected with the participants and I am sure convinced everyone to start tweeting.


The # tag for the conference #cas11 surely became the trending topic.

On day 3 there were two specialized workshops to choose from, one was on Advanced SEO and the other one was on Social Media Marketing.

The SEO workshop  was conducted by Bill Hunt, Back Azimuth Consulting and Benedict Hayes, Communicate2


Rajiv Dingra, WAT Media spoke about the importance of blogging.

They were full day workshops covering the following topics:

Time	Advanced SEO Workshop	Social Media Marketing Workshop
9.00 am - 5.00 pm	Bill Hunt, Back Azimuth Consulting Benedict Hayes, Communicate2 Rajiv Dingra, WAT Media	Gaurav Mishra, MSLGROUP Asia Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz
	Introduction SEO Factors Architecture Content Authority The Algorithm SEO Campaign Strategy	1. Real-life social networking game How do we connect with others on social networks around our passions? How do connections lead to conversations, collaboration and community? How can brands connect with people around their passions?
	SEO for Complex Websites The Challenges The Specific Challenges for Large Sites What to Avoid in, Large Sites Especially How to Rope in Stakeholders How to Maximize your Search Shelf Space How to Centralize your Efforts The Downstream Impact How to Maximize Searcher Stimuli	2. Community-centric integrated marketing How is the social web changing integrated marketing and the role of agencies? How can brands create a series of integrated marketing campaigns that build upon each other? How can brands leverage owned, paid and earned media into their integrated marketing strategy? Pepsi Refresh case study.
	Managing Complex Search Programs How to Effectively Deliver Search at Scale Key Focus Areas for an Enterprise How to Integrate SEO in the Workflow Roles and Responsibilities within the SEO Team How to Make a Page Search Friendly What are Organic Search Diagnostic Metrics? What are Organic Search Performance Metrics?	3. Social web strategy for business impact How can brands leverage conversations, campaigns and communities for business impact? How can brands build online communities to organize and energize their evangelists? How can brands measure business impact, platform influence and program engagement? Dell case study.
	The Dynamic Issues in SEO Spidering About URLs Indexing Optimization Listing How to Manage Keywords Understanding the Intent of the Searcher	4. Social web strategy in the B2C context How can brands use contests to build high-engagement communities? How can brands use communities to drive retail footfalls? How can brands create cause-based communities to connect with their stakeholders? Starbucks case study.
	How to Manage Complex PPC Keywords Creative Development Google Quality Score Optimizing Landing Pages	5. Social web strategy in the B2B context How can brands use communities to strengthen relationships with partners? How can brands use communities to attract and motivate talent? How can brands use communities to establish thought leadership? Microsoft case study.
	How to Measure the Success of a SEO Campaign Reporting Executive Dashboard Search Health Report PLP Scorecard Search Effectiveness Metrics Integration Metrics How to Build a Business Case	6. Strategy on a post-it note game What are our brand values and business objectives? Who are our brand evangelists and what are their passions? What is our core platform and program strategy and how will we measure success?
	Searcher Intent Modeling Searcher Intent Modeling Overview Searcher Intent Modeling Steps Integrating Paid & Organic Search Keyword Arbitration The Challenges The Keyword Conflicts How to Allocate Keywords
	Link Building Digital Asset Optimization The Challenges A Checklist The Best Practices
	Enabling Success in a Large-Scale Global Search Marketing Program The Burning Issues Fundamentals of Search marketing Search Organization Audit Enterprise Search Ecosystem
	Managing a SEO Process Managing a Team Managing the Keywords Managing the Technology Managing the Performance Managing the Priorities

Conference Pics  :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64046153@N03/sets/72157626961170824/