Category: E-Books → SEO conference SMX West 2011

You may not be familiar with the names, but companies like Demand Media, Seed.com and Associated Content are big businesses built on closely watching what people are searching for and creating content to match. Using cheap or free labor, these пїЅcontent farmsпїЅ sometimes get derided as being low quality. They disagree. A look at some of the issues, as well as lessons from publishers who think SEO from start to finish.SEO SMX West 2011 пїЅ San Jose, CAпїЅContent FarmsпїЅ Or The Smartest SEOs In the World?
Ask The Search EnginesAsk the SEOs,Google Instant: 6 Months Later
In-House SEO Operations: How Things Get Done,Industrial Strength SEO
Inner View: GoogleпїЅs Keyword Research Tools,Ratings, Reviews & Reputation: Their Growing Impact On Search,Searcher Behavior In A Multiplatform World
SEO Myths, Mistakes & The Madness of Crowds,The Spam Police
WhatпїЅs Really Important for Technical SEO?,WordPress SEO
Your Toughest Technical SEO Questions Answered

Moderator: Matt McGee, Executive News Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Luke Beatty, Vice President & General Manager, Yahoo! Contributor Network, Yahoo!
Matthew Brown, Founder, AudienceWise
Byrne Hobart, Marketing Consultant, Blue Fountain Media
Gil Reich, VP of Product Management, Answers.com
Tim Ruder, Chief Revenue Officer, PerfectMarket

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Ask The Search Engines

YouпїЅve heard the lingo: PageRank sculpting, duplicate content penalties, canonical tags, sitemap structure, nofollowпїЅ and most recently a lot about the potential impact of Google Instant. In this session, you can ask questions and get direct answers from engineers from Google, Microsoft and the other search engines about crawling, indexing, ranking and other organic search issues.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Matt Cutts, Software Engineer , Google Inc.
Duane Forrester, Sr. Product Manager пїЅ Webmaster Outreach, Microsoft
Rich Skrenta, CEO, Blekko

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Ask The SEOs

YouпїЅve heard the lingo: PageRank sculpting, duplicate content penalties, canonical tags, sitemap structure, nofollowпїЅ and most recently a lot about the potential impact of Google Instant. In this session, you can ask questions and get direct answers from engineers from Google, Microsoft and the other search engines about crawling, indexing, ranking and other organic search issues.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Greg Boser, SVP of Search Services, BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Todd Friesen, Director of SEO, Performics
Stephan Spencer, Founder of Netconcepts, Co-author of The Art of SEO, StephanSpencer.com
Jill Whalen, Founder and CEO, High Rankings

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Google Instant: 6 Months Later

When Google rolled out Google Instant results, delivering actual search results and ads as you type, search marketers were unsure of what to expect, and what (if anything) would have to change going forward. This session takes an in-depth look at Google InstantпїЅs impact on search results, using hard data to detailing the effects of on clickthrough rates, searcher behavior and other key metrics, with a focus on what marketers need to know to maximize performance in this new world of search results.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Erez Barak, VP of Product, Optify
Anthony Coleman, Paid Search Manager, Search Influence
Othar Hansson, Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google
Avi Wilensky, ceo, founder, Promediacorp

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In-House SEO Operations: How Things Get Done

In this session weпїЅll talk about SEO operations (the systems, templates, worfklows, etc.) when doing SEO in-house. This session will be less about SEO tactics and tools you hear about, and more about the integral workings of in-house SEO from idea to launch, and how the nitty-gritty details donпїЅt get lost along the way.

Moderator: Jessica Bowman, Founder, SEOinhouse.com

Speakers:
Robin Aguilar, Principal SEO Analyst, AOL
Jeremiah Andrick, Online Customer Acquisition Manager, Logitech
Jessica Bowman, CEO, SEOinhouse.com
Jason Nazaar, CEO, Docstoc.com

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Industrial Strength SEO

Managing SEO for a large web site isnпїЅt for the faint of heart. YouпїЅve got major technical challenges, such as dealing with content management systems, optimizing for thousands or millions of keywords, multiple domains, often in multiple countries, constantly changing contentпїЅ and those donпїЅt even factor in the major пїЅpeople challengesпїЅ of training and managing diverse teams, dealing with competing stakeholders, placating meddling executivesпїЅ and the beat(ing) goes on. In this session, our panel of experts have all wrestled with SEO for huge websites and won, and share their unique insights and battle scars.

Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Tony Adam, Director, Online Marketing, Myspace
Adam Audette, CEO, AudetteMedia
Dennis Goedegebuure, Director SEO, eBay, Inc.
Jenny Halasz, VP, Strategy, Acronym Media

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Inner View: GoogleпїЅs Keyword Research Tools

GoogleпїЅs numerous keyword research tools are powerful, and best of all, free пїЅ but what are they really telling you? How exactly do they work? And is it a good idea to trust the signals that the keyword tool, trends, autosuggest and insights for search are recommending? Come get an inside look at how these tools work and how and when they can best be used for effective keyword research.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Baris Gultekin, Group Product Manager, Google AdWords, Google

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Ratings, Reviews & Reputation: Their Growing Impact On Search

The Internet amplifies everything. Today, the opinion of an individual is more powerful than ever. It only takes one angry blog post or nasty review to change how people perceive your company and what the search results look like for your name. Consumers rely heavily on the opinions of their peers, and search engines пїЅ Google, especially пїЅ appear to be placing greater value on ratings and reviews as a vital piece of business information and perhaps as a ranking signal. This session looks at the current reviews landscape and offers specific tips for business owners to understand why reviews are so important, how they influence search results, and how to use reviews пїЅ both positive and negative пїЅ to grow your bottom line.

Moderator: Matt McGee, Executive News Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Rhea Drysdale, CEO, Outspoken Media
Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance
Gregg Stewart, President, 15miles

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Searcher Behavior In A Multiplatform World

Understanding searcher behavior is one of the central pillars of effective search marketing. And more than ever, itпїЅs important to not just understand what people are searching for, but how they are searching пїЅ using a computer, television, mobile device пїЅ because this provides important clues as to why they are searching and may change the experience you offer to them. Recent results-enhancing searcher behavior research methods and their uses will be discussed in this session.

Moderator: Gord Hotchkiss, SVP, Mediative

Speakers:
Jacquelyn Krones, Senior Product Manager, Bing, Microsoft
Bryson Meunier, Associate Director, Content Solutions, Resolution Media
Taylor Schreiner, Senior Director, Strategic Research & Insights, Yahoo Search
Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

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SEO Myths, Mistakes & The Madness of Crowds

Myths are prevalent in the SEO industry, in part because someoneпїЅs job or reputation is tied up with a myth that may have been at one point true, or because some technology du jour пїЅ like Google Instant пїЅ is being avidly discussed on industry forums (often by clueless newbies). ItпїЅs time to squash these persistent pesky myths, and our panelists will be skewering the most pernicious ones, backing up their claims with empirical test results and occasionally painful personal experiences.

Moderator: Matt McGee, Executive News Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Greg Boser, SVP of Search Services, BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.
Stephan Spencer, Founder of Netconcepts, Co-author of The Art of SEO, StephanSpencer.com
Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
Jill Whalen, Founder and CEO, High Rankings

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The Spam Police

In addition to constantly trying to improve the user experience, search engines are engaged in an ongoing war with spammers who seek to subvert the rules and get top rankings, regardless of user experience. In this panel some of the top пїЅspam copsпїЅ discuss how they uncover new spam tactics, how they separate the wheat from the chaff, what to do if your site is inadvertently penalized and more.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google Inc.
Sasi Parthasarathy, Program Manager, Bing, Microsoft
Rich Skrenta, CEO, Blekko

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WhatпїЅs Really Important for Technical SEO?

How do you prioritize improvements to technical architecture? What will make the biggest impact? Is it really all that important to speed up client-side page load times? Server side load times? Change your IIS configuration to stop generating those default.aspx pages and case-insensitive URLs? What technical SEO advice is just the latest fad and whatпїЅs really going to make the difference in improved customer acquisition from search.

Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Greg Boser, SVP of Search Services, BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.
Jonathan Hochman, Founder and President, Hochman Consultants
Todd Nemet, Director пїЅ Technical Projects, Nine By Blue
Brian Ussery, CTO, Search Discovery Inc.

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WordPress SEO

WordPress has morphed into a fully-featured alternative to traditional content management systems, with many web sites using it as a primary content publishing platform. But like other content management systems, WordPress isnпїЅt always search engine friendly. This session explores how to deal with search engine optimization, scalability, security and other issues unique to WordPress.

Moderator: Matt McGee, Executive News Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Sean Carlos, CEO, Antezeta Web Marketing
Joost de Valk, Search Strategist, Onetomarket
Rob Kerry, Head of Search, Ayima Search Marketing

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Your Toughest Technical SEO Questions Answered

No powerpoint here! This session is all about Q&A to solve the specific technical issues youпїЅre having. Bring your toughest questions! Topics will likely include URL canonicalization (pagination, faceted navigation, breadcrumbs, parameters, analytics tracking, IIS URL issues, redirects, localized URLsпїЅ), aggregation and duplication (search results pages, tag pagesпїЅ), crawl inefficiency (when should you 404 vs. redirect? Is the canonical tag the same as a 301? How to use status codes effectively), internationalization (serving regional content based on IP address, blocking certain regions from restricted contentпїЅ). Our panelists will have real answers to these tricky issues and more.

Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google Inc.
Marshall Simmonds, Founder and CEO, Define Media Group, Inc.