Search Engine Strategies Conference

The Search Engine Strategies conference was held in San Jose, CA this week. Well over one-hundred vendors had booths set up in the exhibit hall, and the conference cost $2,000.00 to attend all of the speeches and course-ware. Due to budgetary constraints, I had to forgo attending the sessions. The show floor was packed on Tuesday, with the usual collection of marketers and attendees.

Search Engine Optimization is a topic that is widely implemented at major companies with a large web presence, and numerous niche markets on the web. The SEO technique includes using traditional marketing psychology, with targeted keyword research, to focus deep into a small niche market. Large companies do this by starting at the top of the market, and dividing down into smaller and smaller niches, hoping to discover those with the least competition, and the most participants.

Google was there demonstrating their 'Analytics' tools to a large crowd all day. A number of clever websites were using analytics to track their campaign's successes. Google has also started exploring 'social-marketing'. They nearly purchased digg www.digg.com a huge newsgathering and social contact type of site.

Microsoft was showing their new Live Search tool. The Microsoft Search Network has expanded greatly over the past months, with new features and tools for the small business. I plan on joining MSN this week.

There was a drawing for a 'smart-car' at the Omniture booth at the SES conference today, but I had to get back to my office and update my blogs, now numbering six! Trying to get enough daily traffic in each marketing niche, to begin trimming my blog count downwards. Learned a few ways to get web directories to find my site, so will report on the success of these tests in a future post.

Jeremy Shoemaker aka 'Shoemoney' was there, wearing an 'SEO Sucks' t-shirt. The reaction was either laughter or a blank stare from the show floor.

Here is a photo, courtesy of www.shoemoney.com, with David Naylor and Todd Friesen, legendary SEO marketers:


I was able to meet face to face with some of my Affiliate Marketing managers from companies like PepperJam Network and Affiliate.com. They were more than willing to spend time with me and explain all of the Search Engine marketing techniques that have evolved.

Most of my initial focus has been withing the 'Pay-per-click' space with Google Adsense and direct-linking, and some 'social-networking to get my name out there and discover the trends in thsi niche.

For someone like me just getting my feet wet in the web marketing space, software tools can be very beneficial in taking some of the guesswork out of campaigns. Smaller companies, like mine, start at the bottom, and try to discover markets too small to interest the large companies, but still containing enough participants to make a profit.

The amount of preparation required to enter these markets can be assisted by using tracking software such as Tracking202, you can check it out at: www.tracking202.com

Wes Mahler has provided a free sign-up and free trial so that you can see the benefits of the data from your clicks, who is clicking, where are they navigating within your site, which pages are most popular etc. Very professional tracking software, I am using it, and can recommend it personally!

So, go out there and make your mark, I am trying many techniques to get my daily readership and drive traffic to my various web properties. I do believe that I will have to pay someone to design my landing page at www.Chase-Marketing-Domain.com. Right now it's the Wealth Dr. of Beverly Hills, and his offers that a first-time visitor would see.

I understand that now that I have a domain, I can create sub-domains and host pages and other offers within these sub-domains. Respectfully, Nicholas