The metrics that marketers are using today to make decisions regarding how their budgets are allocated to online advertising vehicles are flawed. If you do not understand how metrics can produce false positives, you can be led into believing you are making smart decisions, while the reality is that your decisions are completely wrong.

Part workshop, part training, this session allows you to create a game plan for what you need to be doing in your in-house SEO program, right now, to make SEO top of mind, high on the priority list and get your SEO changes live on the site.

Paid Search is one of the fastest and most effective ways to gain a presence on the search engines. Done incorrectly it can also be one of the costliest. There are many diverse components to a pay per click campaign, but all have to work together to achieve the best return. This comprehensive training program will familiarize attendees with a multitude of paid advertising subjects.

Changes in landing page efficiency can dramatically improve the profitability of your online marketing programs. This fast-paced and practical hands-on training will provide you with a crash course in landing page optimization and testing. It will also allow you to develop a personal action plan that is tailored to your specific business. All participants will receive an autographed copy of Tim Ash’s bestselling book Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide To Testing & Tuning For Conversions.

Blogging is a low cost method of getting high-quality traffic to your website – the perfect recession buster! With more than 71 million blogs currently being tracked by Technorati, the opportunities for businesses to speak with their customers is nearly unlimited. That’s why more and more companies are turning to the blogosphere to connect with consumers. Never before have businesses had such effective access to the frustrations and desires of their target audience.

A search-engine friendly Web site is a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers. In order for a site to be search-engine friendly, it must meet the terms and conditions set forth by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask, etc.) Additionally, the site must satisfy the needs of site visitors.

If this is your first Search Engine Strategies conference, you won’t want to miss this illuminating introductory session. Two long time SES faculty members will walk you through the week and help you to understand the various offerings and events. They will present a short overview of the Introduction to SEM session that will be held immediately following and they will explain the differences in the various session levels. They will also cover the logistics, networking opportunities and special event details, thoroughly preparing you for your whirlwind week. Also discussed will be the glossary of the terms and phrases that are frequently used at SES events that will be included in the SES magazine.

The U.S. economy is in the midst of a recession, consumer spending is declining, and not even the brightest economic minds can pinpoint when things will begin to get better. Like most other industries, online search marketing has undoubtedly been impacted by the current economic environment.

Join comScore for a presentation of the current state of the U.S. online economy, with a particular focus on the search landscape. How is today’s economy impacting consumers’ online behavior? How is consumers’ use of search and comparison shopping sites changing in today’s economic climate? The presentation will include an in-depth analysis of consumers’ online behavior as well as insights from recent comScore research, helping search marketers gain a better understanding of what they can do to maximize their business during these challenging times.

With search marketing gobbling almost half of all online marketing dollars, it is imperative for all entrepreneurs and or C-Suite management to be fluent in search. This fast-paced session is designed to give you a jump start. It will rip through the alphabet soup of search — the PPC, SEO, SEM, CMS acronyms — to delve into why and how you can manage search strategically, how to align search to meet strategic organizational/marketing goals, budget for this effort, find the KPIs that fit your organization and break down the barriers to success in the organization. Whether you choose to attend the other strategic sessions in this track or this week’s optimization and best practices sessions, this is a must-attend session that will provide a framework for getting the most out of this conference.

As knowledge of SEO practices moves from the offices of the optimizers to the board room, the standard metrics used by the practitioners of this former dark art are straining under the weight of the all powerful bottom line. The days when upper management was impressed by subtle changes in Page Rank have been replaced by questions of LTV and ROI. As more resources are being dedicated to creating the perfectly optimized and keyword rich landing page, C-level executives are demanding proof of the return they are receiving from these resources.

This panel will discuss a myriad of ways to move beyond Page Rank, indexed pages or linked sites and into metrics that can make you a hero and, better still, get your budget increased to a respectable level.

Certain industry pundits have been heard to say that SEO is dead. And others say it’s alive, well and kicking. Forums, blogs and newsletters on the subject abound. And there’s no doubt that you can get some really up to date and on-the nail information. But there’s also the BS element. So how do you tell what the good stuff is and what the guff stuff is?

Join our panel of search community leaders. They were some of the first authoritative voices out there and continue to be so. They have been monitoring the flow of conversation in the SEO world for up to ten years now. They have heard opinions on everything from Black hat/White hat SEO, dynamic delivery, Flash, Google index updates, universal search… And everything else that goes with it.

This session will provide a clear and concise overview of the key concepts involved in search engine marketing. Who are the major search engines, and how can you best optimize them to gain “natural” or “organic” traffic without cost? Learn how to achieve top ranking or placement by utilizing search engine advertising opportunities. This is a must-attend basic session for anyone new to Search Engine Strategies events.

Hard times are here but you can flourish. You may not have been in the trenches the first time around when the likes of Boo.com, eyeballs, and the Pets.com sock puppet ruled the mind space of online marketers. In this session veterans of that first downturn in online marketing will talk about the strategies that helped them survive those difficult times and show how they intend to survive again. Don’t miss this session; you’ll take away key strategies to ensure you are one of the lucky ones who flourish in this current round of turbulent times.

With the popularity of sites like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, brands increasingly need to engage with their customers outside their website. The portability of content and viral connectivity that occurs online requires a new approach to branding. Participants will learn strategies for increasing brand awareness and protecting brand equity in today’s socially connected web as well as tactics that can be implemented in today’s resource and budget constrained environment.

Getting someone to click on your search ad is only half the battle. Once visitors arrive, the landing pages you display to them are a crucial component in converting them into buyers. This session looks at ways to test and tweak your landing pages to get that conversion. Note: The session is designed for those who are already familiar with how paid placement works.

As the world becomes smaller and search marketing becomes more complex, the era of “ranking well in Google” is over. This is especially true for companies who are targeting multiple markets or countries. This new opportunity also brings many new complexities to be considered other than standard SEO. This session tackles these key issues critical to successfully developing, optimizing, and launching the Global Websites that would meet those next generation marketing goals, without losing control or your mind.

Get one-on-one advise for usability, design, copy, link development, and any technical issues that may prevent your Web site from receiving high quality search engine traffic and visitor conversions.

This is your exclusive opportunity to interact, explore, and talk tech with the very innovators and industry experts who are leading search marketing into new terrains beyond THE search engine. Five of today’s most cutting edge, outside-the-box-thinkers/market-defining innovators (reviewed and pre-selected by our experts) will present their respective “killer search apps” to the expert panelÑincluding thought-leaders from Yahoo! and Microsoft, Jennifer Slegg (“JenSense”), and the workshop audience, for critical review and feedback.

Search marketing can help the company in more ways than the SERPs. In this session, you will learn how to take your in-house search marketing program to the rest of the company to add value in areas such as marketing research, marketing copy, prioritizing product releases, customer service and more to provide a consistent customer experience, boosted revenue and an organization that works smarter, on a daily basis, with the search marketing data available today.

The move to a predominantly digital marketing strategy can be overwhelming. Migrating from staid traditional channels to the open waters of the web can be daunting – especially for companies that are unsure of how to properly measure search, display, email and social media. This session will arm you with the information you need to know about migrating budget to digital without impacting your brand awareness or the equity you have built up in your brand. Participants will learn from companies that have started moving significant resources away from TV, radio and print and into search, social, display and email. Lessons learned will be discussed as well as the metrics and tools need to gauge the success of a balanced digital marketing program.

For marketers to become successful in their SEM efforts, PPC can no longer stand for “Pay Per Click” – it must stand for “Pay Per Conversation.” Many marketers agree that the current state of the economy is having an impact on their marketing plans. That’s why every dollar and click matters. Every click is a potential customer trying to engage you; will you continue the dialogue or have them bounce off your landing page just moments after they arrive? What you want to do is engage and persuade your visitors to keep taking the next click, all the way through the purchase funnel. To achieve that, you must demonstrate the value of your products and services in all your marketing, especially when sales are decreasing. You do that by planning content to improve relevance and test continuously until you have the best conversation. This session will show you how to identify missed conversations and what you can do to improve them and your PPC ROI.

Nothing in search marketing is as certain as change. Ten years ago Google did not exist Ñ now it’s a verb that means searching on the Web. Growing use of media such as video, social and personal appear to provide new avenues for searchers. What are the early adopters embracing now? How will your customers find you? What media should you keep in your sites and what should you discard? This session is a long-view look at weak signals and trends that appear to point in new directions.

Get your Google AdWords PPC advertising campaigns and landing pages expertly analyzed, with specific recommendations for improvement and optimization. Or just come to watch and learn a wide range of tips and best practices!

Discover how search engines rely on link analysis as an important component for rank web pages. Learn also how to increase traffic to your site by building quality links in an appropriate manner.

What if you could conduct market research, organize focus groups and build your customer base all without spending a dime? Thanks to social media, you can. Small businesses around the world are acquiring loyal customers, gaining valuable insight and boosting business by pounding the social media pavement. Find out how small companies with even smaller budgets can freely tap the world of social media to improve business and increase sales.

The current economic recession calls for radical measures to control marketing spend and make it as cost effective as possible. The last downturn a decade ago saw the emergence of Google’s pay-for-performance model as the preeminent way to advertise online cost-effectively. Now that keyword advertising on general search engines has become mainstream, marketers must look elsewhere for untapped opportunities where there is less competition for attention. Vertical search engines provide this opportunity. Vertical search category leaders – such as in travel, shopping and classifieds – have seen an explosion in traffic but are relatively unexploited by advertisers. Attend this session to find out what vertical search engines are doing for marketers in this recession that Google did for them in the last.

Paid placement is a form of search advertising that provides a top ranking in return for payment. Every major search engine offers a paid placement program. Learn what’s available in this session that is especially geared toward beginners, with details on programs from major providers and advice on how to succeed.

How are smart companies using social marketing tools to promote brands and reach out to customers? Is it possible to do so without investing a fortune?

How many keywords do you need in your paid search account? What keywords are your customers searching for? How do customers find products after they reach your site? Learn how to target the right terms in your paid and organic search marketing, and where these keywords should be used.

Search marketing has long been touted as one of the most affordable ways to market a business, but these days, competition is fierce. What’s a small business on a budget to do? Come and hear the tips and tricks that will help you pick up the valuable traffic being left behind by your competitors. Learn from the best how to maximize your exposure via organic, paid search and local search without emptying your wallet.

Travel marketers discuss the challenges of smart search marketing in tough economic times, when leisure travelers are hard to come by and businesses slash budgets. Experts in four key areas of travel search marketing – Organic, Paid, Social and Local/Mobile – share successful strategies and creative campaign ideas to attract and increase traffic, proving that it is possible to generate positive ROI with limited resources.

Google believes in releasing new products and features early and often, and a few months ago we began testing a new interface for AdWords intended to make campaign management faster, clearer, and more intuitive. The set of features included in the new interface has grown substantially since our initial announcement. Now we’d like to invite you to preview the new AdWords interface live at SES and tell us what you think!

Ariel Bardin and Angela Lai, AdWords product and engineering leads, will take you on a tour of the new interface, showcasing new features and demonstrating how the new interface can make day-to-day campaign management more efficient. We’ll close with an extended Q&A where you can share your feedback and ideas directly with the AdWords team. Finally, all session attendees will receive priority access to the new interface, so be sure to bring your AdWords Customer ID.

The addressable audience on ad networks, exchanges, and other platforms is ever larger, as are your options for segmenting that audience. This session will touch on the possibilities — and the realities — of media planning in a world where portal power is a fading dream but targeting is more powerful than ever.

Need some help, or just another pair of eyes to check your website? The Express Clinic with Matt Bailey will help you identify minor changes in your website that could provide major results. If you are particularly daring, bring the access to your analytics (if they are hosted online), and we will really dive in!

The paid search marketplace has rocketed from virtually zero to more than $10 billion in the past decade, which begs the question: Is the search marketplace on the verge of maturing in North America or will advertising dollars continue to flow into search? As ROI and performance become increasingly important, will search gain a larger share of advertising revenues or is search generally or at least across some categories, becoming too expensive and competitive? Can search make an argument for value beyond pure performance and results? Will further insights and performance gains be realized as they relate to an overall SEM+SEO strategy for a brand or has the industry discovered most of the tricks? This panel takes a hard look at the current value proposition of search and what the future holds for the North American search marketplace.

Your landing page has severe and fundamental problems and could have a much higher conversion rate. Join us on the exhibit show floor for complimentary mini-critiques by landing page optimization expert Tim Ash, author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization from Wiley Press.

Not yet running a blog? Not syndicating your content through web feeds? Then you’re missing out on an important area that can help your overall SEO efforts. Learn more about the unique advantages blogs and feeds offer to search engine optimization.

How many keywords do you need in your paid search account? What keywords are your customers searching for? How do customers find products after they reach your site? This advanced session will demonstrate how to target the right terms in your paid and organic search marketing, and learn where these keywords should be used.

Community-built web sites, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft Tagspace, Wikipedia and new sites allowing content to be shared through “tagging” can be a great way to tap into links and search-driven traffic. This session looks at some social media services and strategies and demonstrates how to tap into them in an appropriate manner. Hear how-tos and tips from search marketers who have discovered what they have learned from their experiences in optimizing social media.

More and more site owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content. If you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue? What happens if you syndicate content through RSS and feeds? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

Does your PPC ad make a promise that your landing page can’t keep? Make sure that your ad copy and landing page contents are in alignment with each other to ensure a smooth and profitable visitor experience. This clinic will examine actual ads and landing pages offered up by volunteers from the audience.

News search engines offer a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics or to help with a public relations launch. In this session, we look at how to make use of press releases and news content to tap into the power of news search.

How can you best tap into long tail terms? Are there targeting techniques you’re overlooking? This session examines these and other techniques to help you get more out of paid search.

Social media has many faces. One is the purist viewpoint of social media whereby social media practitioners see social media and only social media. Another is the advertising and PR approach. Here practitioners want to control what social media can do. Add into the mix the search marketing viewpoint where practitioners see not only links but also how to complement PPC and SEO. And finally there’s the perspective of the end user that marketers tend to forget about! How can marketers utilize all four aspects of this powerful medium to their advantage and create successful strategies? This panel will discuss effective ways to combine several elements of social media ranging from blogs to networking to social news – to form successful social media strategies. Every business is different but attendees will walk away from this session with a solid foundation for social media strategy.

Can you use a competitor’s trademark in your own search advertising? Or what if a competitor has an ad running on your trademarked brand name? Should you engage professional legal help or are there other options? What if bloggers are posting negative or false claims about your brands and these are spreading with viral speed through other blogs? Are there ways to get these damaging messages out of the search engines? This session will provide an exploration of these and other brand protection issues.

SEO Tools of the Trade: What’s in YOUR toolbox?
If you are responsible for your company’s search engine optimization, then you know that you need all of the various tools of your trade close at hand. This session will describe the tools that will help you to accomplish your tasks including indexing, competitive analysis, site ranking, diagnosing and remedying problems, page level information, site level information, on-page optimization and much more.

“Focusing on white-hat search engine-compliant SEO methods, the course covers techniques allowing you to change your sites while staying away from the techniques that will get you in trouble. Others that have completed the extended course have raved about it, and this training will be no exception.

The Bruce Clay SEO Training offers a specific and clear view of the techniques required to beat your competition in the war for search results supremacy for your properly selected and targeted keywords."

How do you make your website better? If this is your challenge, then this is the workshop you’ve been waiting for. This workshop will give you the tricks, tools and techniques needed to improve navigation, increase engagement and improve conversion rates.