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One of the people that you will want to hear speak at SES San Jose is Liana Evans of KeyRelevance. Li is the director of Internet marketing at KeyRelevance and a member of the “Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO)” panel on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, at 1 p.m.

I’m bummed out because I’ll be speaking at the “News Search SEO” session at the same time, so I won’t be able to hear what she has to say in San Jose.

So, through the magic of YouTube video, I’ve interviewed Li – so I won’t miss her keen insights entirely – although there is no substitute to hearing her first hand.

Li is a search marketing guru (literally), especially on topics like social media optimization (SMO). So, here’s a sneak preview of what she has to say.

Why Your Social Media Campaigns Should Socialize More

Liana is also famous for her Flickr photos from sessions, panels, exhibits, the night life, and everything in between at Search Engine Strategies conferences and she won one of the Flickr photo sharing awards for SES London 2008.

Li specializes in social media marketing, blog optimization, link building and viral marketing. I like to hang out with her at SES conferences because Li has a background in both public relations and information technology.

Li is the creator and main contributor to Search Marketing Gurus and has assembled a well rounded group of professional search marketing professionals to contribute to the blog. Oh, and she’s shared her secret for finding the best cheesesteak in Philly with me – not that this has influenced my favorable opinion of her at all.

I went to my first Search Engine Strategies back in the spring of 2002. And one of the SEO experts speaking at that search engine conference was Jill Whalen, the CEO of High Rankings.

Six-and-a-half-years ago, Jill spoke at a session entitled, “Writing for Search Engines.” And six-and-a-half-years later, I’m still quoting her SEO copywriting advice in the “Introduction to Search Engine Marketing” sessions at SES conferences because it was “built to last.”

As Jill says, “Good SEO work only gets better over time. It’s only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change.”

And next month, Jill will be speaking at SES San Jose at the “Building a Search Friendly Site” session on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, at 10:30 a.m. as well as the “Keywords & Content: Search Foundations” session later that day at 2:45 p.m.

I recently interviewed Jill and asked her to share some of her SEO copywriting tips. The video interview is below.

Copywriting: High Rankings Jill Whalen

Jill is a pioneer in search engine optimization. She founded High Rankings in 1995 and since then, it has grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the United States, providing hundreds of clients in more than 40 industries with expert SEO consulting, website audit reports, SEO campaigns and in-house SEO training classes.

Jill is also the founder of the popular High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum, the author of The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines, and the co-founder of the Search Engine Marketing Network for New England (SEMNE).

If SES San Jose is going to be your first search engine conference, then I strongly encourage you to attend both of the sessions where Jill will be speaking. Her advice is “built to last.”

It’s that time of year again. Search Engine Strategies San Jose will be held the week of August 18, 2008. And whether this will be your first SES San Jose ever, or the sixth one in a row that you’ve attended since 2003, you might need to spend little time optimizing your schedule for what search engine marketers call “the big one.”

A quick look at the conference at a glance will tell you why. There are a total of 77 conference sessions, strategic development workshops, Orion panels, and keynote presentations crammed into the four-day Search Engine Strategies conference. And on the fifth day, there are an additional six SEM training workshops.

Since there are five concurrent tracks during the SEM conference and three concurrent workshops during the SEM training, no one can attend everything – unless, of course, you bring a team of five or more people to SES San Jose.

And deciding which sessions to attend isn’t just daunting for the first-time attendee. It’s also a challenge to SES Alumni.

If you compare last year’s conference at a glance with this year’s conference at a glance, you see that only 12 of the sessions and two of the workshops are repeats. And four of the “repeat sessions” are Site Clinics or the Organic Listings Forum, which examine new web sites or issues every year. This means almost 88% of the content at Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2008 will be brand new!

The rate of change in the search engine marketing industry comes as a surprise to some – especially the bean counters over in finance. They act like going to one SEM conference a year ago means you don’t really need to go to another one this year. But you can’t learn search engine marketing the way they learned the multiplication tables.

So, if they give you any grief about taking a team of people to SES San Jose 2008, remind them that it will get increasingly harder to manage the bottom line if you don’t continually find new ways to increase the top line. Who knows, skipping this year’s conference could end up costing a bean counter his or her full-time position next year.

If the folks in finance don’t buy that argument, then build your business case for attending the show. And do it in the next couple of weeks.

If you sign up before August 1, you can save $200 off the cost of Platinum Passport. And, if you bring more than two people from your organization, the third, fourth, and others registering at the same time qualify for 50% off their registration fee.

I’m not making this up. Read the registration information for yourself.

If you sign up for a full-day of the SEM training workshops, you’ll save $145 off the cost to two half-day workshops. And, if you make reservations by July 23, you should be able to find hotel rooms for $179 per night.

All in all, bringing a team of four people to the four-day Search Engine Strategies conference as well as the fifth day of SEM training can cost your company under $12,000 – less than $3,000 per person – not counting airline reservations.

This means your business will break even if your entire team discovers new Search Engine Marketing (SEM) opportunities, learns better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, or finds different Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising options that generate an extra $1,000 a month. And, if each member of your four-person team finds a way to generate an extra $1,000 a month, then you’ll be showing a very healthy return on investment (ROI) from bringing them to SES San Jose.

How realistic is this scenario?

According to the Search Engine Strategies San Jose website, you will learn:
• How search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements;
• How to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors;
• How to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results;
• How to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy – and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t!
• How to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines;
• What’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from it.

But wait! There’s more!

According to data and research provided by Efficient Frontier, the average cost-per-click (CPC) in the “Total finance” category, which includes auto finance, banking, credit, financial information, insurance, lending, and mortgage, was $2.96 in May. So, if each member of your team finds a way to generate 338 extra clicks per month – less than a dozen clicks a day – then he or she will be providing your organization with a very healthy ROI.

Can each member of your team come back from SES San Jose with new, better or different ways to generate a dozen extra clicks a day? That’s the business case that you can make to the bean counters. And trust me on this: The folks over in finance will love it when you talk numbers to them.

So, let’s say you get the okay to bring a team of four all the way to San Jose. They still won’t be able to cover every session. And now each person is on the hook for coming back to the office with new SEM opportunities, better SEO techniques, and different PPC advertising options that can generate 338 extra clicks a month.

Tomorrow, I’ll recommend the sessions and workshops that an SES newbie, an SEO specialist, a PPC specialist, and an SEM veteran should attend – to ensure that your business gets the biggest bang for its bucks. It’s not a difficult task. There is so much great content being presented.

Greg Jarboe: Search Engine Strategies (SES) is asking us to teach a full-day SEO training class about “Optimizing for Universal Search” on Thursday, July 17, 2008, at the Renaissance Seattle Hotel, 515 Madison Street, Seattle, WA 98104?

Amanda Watlington: I don’t believe you.

Greg: Would you believe SES is sending us to teach a Google universal search engine optimization training workshop in Microsoft’s backyard?

Amanda: No.

Greg: How about going to Seattle to get a proper cup of coffee?

Amanda: I demand the Cone of Silence!

Greg: Okay, if you insist. I’ll download the Cone of Silence blog widget. So, now that our conversation is enshrouded in a transparent sound-proof shield, what’s the problem?

Amanda: Who in Seattle wants to learn search engine optimization strategies from a couple of SEO experts from Boston?

Greg: Well, our “Optimizing for Universal Search” workshops at SES London and SES New York were well attended. And if British Red Coats and New York Yankees didn’t mind that their SEO classes were taught by a couple of search engine optimization experts from Boston, why should Seattle companies?

Amanda: True, we haven’t dumped their tea in our harbor or faced them in the ALCS. But, give me a couple of specific examples of companies in Seattle that would benefit from sending their search engine optimization specialists, public relations professionals, and corporate video producers to a full-day SEO workshop on universal search taught by a couple of SEO experts from out of town.

Greg: Good idea Amanda – although a comprehensive list would include every member of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. But, conduct a web search using Google for the term, Steve Ballmer, and you’ll see an example of a company in Redmond, Washington, that needs help optimizing for universal search.

Amanda: I see YouTube videos and websites integrated into a single set of results. So, who is responsible for managing this special blend?

Greg: No one is which means anyone could be. I’d hate to be on the receiving end at Waggener Edstrom when one of their largest PR clients calls to ask, “What do you know about blended search?” But, they are not alone. Google the term, Seattle Mariners, and you’ll see that there are a lot of media companies in the Seattle area that have dropped the ball, too.

Amanda: I see news results blended in with the web listings above the fold. But the news sources displayed in the universal search results are from The Associated Press, SportingNews.com, and The Canadian Press, not the Seattle Times, Seattle Post Intelligencer, KING5.com, KOMO, or KIROtv.com.

Greg: Right, and according to Steve Lohr of The New York Times, search engines are “delivering 30 percent or more of the traffic on some newspaper, magazine or television news Web sites. And traffic means readers and advertisers, at a time when the mainstream media is desperately trying to make a living on the Web.”

Amanda: So, we’ve seen YouTube videos and news results blended into universal search results. What about images?

Greg: Ah, the old leading question trick. That’s the second time I’ve fallen for that this week. Well, Google the term, Starbucks logo.

Amanda: I see three images at the top of the search engine results page. Don’t tell me that clicking on any one of the Starbucks logos doesn’t take you to a page in the Starbucks Coffee Company press room.

Greg: Clicking on any one of the Starbucks logos doesn’t take you to a page in the Starbucks Coffee Company press room

Amanda: I asked you not to tell me that. You realize you’ll be facing every kind of danger imaginable if you show this example to Starbucks coffee drinkers?

Greg: And loving it! But wait! There’s more! Use Google to search for the term, Seattle hotels downtown.

Amanda: I see two pushpins on Google Maps. Hold on, the Renaissance Seattle Hotel is missing! Greg, the location of our SEO training class about “Optimizing for Universal Search” isn’t on the map!

Greg: It’s a shame that they didn’t use local SEO instead of web SEO.

Amanda: Okay, you can invert the Cone of Silence. I’m ready to use it as a loudspeaker.

Greg: This is the Search Engine Watch Blog. We don’t “loudspeaker” here.

Amanda: Never mind. I’ll use YouTube. Their slogan is “Broadcast Yourself.” So, where’s the video interview that we conducted about our upcoming SEO training class?

Greg: Missed it by that much!

Amanda: Then, how are we supposed to provide more information about our universal search engine optimization training workshop? Oh, this is utter KAOS!

Greg: Sorry about that Chief! We could try image optimization.

Amanda: That just might work. I hope I wasn’t out of line with that crack about utter KAOS.

Greg: I don’t mind, 99. Let’s just hope that business professionals in Seattle “get smart” and attend our universal search SEO training class.

Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR and Amanda Watlington of Searching
for Profit will teach “Optimizing for Universal Search” in
Seattle on July 17, 2008.

Geoff Ramsey, the co-founder and CEO of eMarketer, recently shared 0.001% of the information that his team of researchers and analysts knows about Internet market trends during his morning keynote at Electronic Retailer’s LiveEdit Lab.

Why can I be so precise?

He presented 60 slides out of the 54,000 charts available to eMarketer’s subscribers. You do the math.

Now, I’m not going to try recapping all 60 of his slides here.

Instead, I’m going to highlight three key market trends that Ramsey touched on. Plus, I’ll pass along his analysis of how each of these new trends is profoundly affecting the business landscape.

Slide #15

The first market trend that is worth highlighting is the percentage of Internet users who are watching video online monthly.

According to eMarketer, it’s 73% – or 137 million Americans. And by the end of the year, eMarketer estimates that 154 million, or 80% of Internet users, will be watching online video.

About a year ago, I reported on a survey conducted by PR News and Medialink which found that “PR pros aren’t using online video as often as they’re watching it.”

Well, they better start using it now. Online video isn’t an emerging market trend. It’s already emerged – big time!

Slide #18

Ramsey said, “Online video is a great way to engage with your customers.” And he recommended:
• Placing video footage of your products on your Web site (e.g., create a video demo!);
• Placing video ads on other content video sites, e.g., on YouTube and product category-related sites; and
• Creating your own Webisodes – content so entertaining that people will come to watch it (and share it with others).

Slide #24

The second market trend that deserves serious attention is the percentage of large companies that already have a blog. According to JupiterResearch, it’s 34%.

Last August, at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, I caused a stir in the blogosphere when I said, “Getting excited that you’ve got a blog is like getting excited that “the new phone book’s here!’”

Now, less than a year later, it appears that if your company doesn’t have a blog already, it’s going to feel even more like Steve Martin in “The Jerk.”

Slide #28

Ramsey said, “Advertisers should explore creative ways to leverage the power of blogs.” And he advised:
• Monitoring the blogosphere not only with professional services, but also on your own;
• Working with existing relevant bloggers, in ways that will encourage them to link to your site;
• Placing advertising on popular blogs; and
• Creating your own blogs — to create a community of interest around your product.

Slide #44

While the third market trend didn’t surprise me, it may come as a shock to some others in the industry.

A survey by AdMedia Partners found that 69% of senior media execs think social media is “over-hyped.” (I should disclose that AdMedia Partners is a client.)

And Hitwise has validated this skepticism by reporting that only 4% of US online retail traffic is driven by social sites, which is significantly less than the 29% of online retail traffic that is driven by search engines.

Slide #48

So, what’s a marketer to do? Ramsey outlined four strategies for gaining consumer insights into social networking:
• Looking, listening, lounging and learning;
• Advertising on the big social networking portals, e.g., MySpace and Bebo;
• Getting vertical with your social advertising on smaller, niche sites like Flip.com; and
• Building your own social network, e.g., Procter & Gamble’s Capessa community site.

Now, six slides out of 60 are only 10% of Ransey’s presentation. And that’s just 0.0001% of the information that eMarketer knows about Internet market trends.

So, you may want to dig deeper. Nobody wants to be the last one on the block to spot key market trends.

Search engine marketers in the US tend to look West when trying to spot new SEM trends. As Frederick Jackson Turner first observed back in 1893, the frontier has always had a significant influence on American perceptions.

But, if you stare into the sunset too long, you might not see the other “new frontier” North of the Canada-United States border that’s also shaping search engine marketing trends. While Search Engine Strategies Toronto ended last week, I’m still sorting through some of the new SEM trends that I spotted by looking in a different direction.

One of the more intriguing trends that I noticed was this one: More than 80 employees of the Yellow Pages Group (YPG), Canada’s largest directory publisher, attended SES Toronto. YPG also owns and manages Canada’s most visited online directories, YellowPages.ca and Canada411.ca, so the company is no stranger to local search or Search Engine Strategies Toronto.

Now, I’ve often encouraged SES alumni as well as first time attendees of Search Engine Strategies to “bring a couple of colleagues along with you” to an upcoming SEM conference. And I’ve seen companies send teams of more than a dozen people to other SES conferences. But, I’ve never seen a group quite as large as the one I saw at SES Toronto last week.

So, I tracked down one of the key players behind this new trend. His name is Darby Sieben and he’s the Director of Online Services at the Yellow Pages Group. You can watch my interview with Darby on the SES Conference Expo channel on YouTube.

Yellow Pages’ Darby Sieben at SES Toronto 2008

Or you can read my interview with Darby Sieben of the Yellow Pages Group below. He has some very interesting insights into small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Q: The Yellow Pages directory story started 100 years ago by connecting Canadian buyers with sellers. YellowPages.ca went online in 1995. Has the Internet dramatically changed the way people approach the shopping experience?

A: Yes and No. By this I mean, the need of connecting buyers and sellers has not changed and never will. The way in which they go about doing it has changed and will continue to evolve and the Internet is only one way. Consumers are more complex today and depending on the need and particular circumstances will connect using a combination of ways including print, internet, voice, mobile, etc. The key piece of advice to a SME in this evolving world is to understand that this is about syndication of their information across multiple media platforms.

Q: According to comScore Media Metrix, the Yellow Pages Group reaches 41% of all online Canadians — and ranks #8 out of the top properties in Canada. In the United States, the SuperPages.com Network reaches about 16% of all online Americans and ranks about #21 out of the top properties in the United States. What’s going on in the Great White North?

A: The main difference between Canada and the US is the fact that the Yellow Pages brand in Canada is trademarked; we are the sole owners and users of the brand. In the US, the value and strength of the brand has been diluted as there is confusion. Second, I believe we are a very progressive directory player. We were the first to sign a deal to license data to Google, we work with all the major search players and we continue to push the envelope on technologies such as our 411 voice services, SMS, IM and our mobile platforms. Syndication of our advertiser’s information is very important. We believe in the anywhere, anytime and on any platform to get information.

Q: The content and keywords found in a print advertisement in the Yellow Pages Group and contained in a business profile on YellowPages.ca are fully searchable on the web and made available to your online partner network including Google, MSN and Yahoo! Isn’t that that a strange brew?

A: We don’t think so. If we examine a key barrier to search, that would be content. YP.ca and the search players are only as good as content that is digitized. The issue is that half of Canadian SME’s don’t have a website. We view print as the start of a very incredible journey for a SME because it contains very important pieces of content that consumers look for in the buying process. Those ads get digitized; keywords extracted, bucketized and distributed on YP.ca for our users as well as being pushed to search engines who index. It creates some incredible synergies and creates an ROI for our advertisers. To add one point here – a few years back we launched an initiative called the WebNumber. This is where we have mapped every phone number in our directory to a URL. For example – http://7804517857.yp.ca (this is the phone number for a Harley Davidson Dealership in Edmonton, Alberta). If you type that URL in – you land on their merchant page and can see their video and a host of rich content about that business. Many of our clients will register a domain name and simply point it to their page instead of investing in expensive design services.

Q: More than 80 people from the Yellow Pages Group attended Search Engine Strategies Toronto last week. Why did you bring everyone except the McKenzie brothers to the conference?

A: Well Bob and Doug are launching a cartoon version of their hit from SCTV to be aired this fall, so they were unavailable. On a serious note it is all about further learning’s and understanding. In 2007 we signed Canada’s first reseller agreement with Google and have bundled AdWords with our print and YellowPages.ca advertising. We also launched last year full customized search marketing solutions based on a budget spend and have been testing and continue to sell a guaranteed clicks product. To really become the CMO for small businesses you need to understand all sources of generating results for your customer.

Q: You mentioned that you are bundling Google with your print and YellowPages.ca advertising – isn’t Google considered a competitor?

A: We are definitely in a world of cooperative competition. You referenced ComScore earlier; here is a key fact that best explains the strategy. If we examine the unduplicated audience between Google Maps and our properties – what you realize is that there is a significant boost in audience reach. Both of us have around 31-32% reach and combined we reach over 50% - that is incredible for any SME who is looking to be placed in the path of consumers when they are making buying decisions. One thing I would like to add is that in terms of the purchase funnel – YellowPages.ca generates a very high ROI because by the time users come to us they tend to already know what they want to buy or are very close to a buying decision and need to do some comparisons. We tend to be further down the purchase funnel than search engines and the measurement for SME’s has to go beyond clicks to include phone calls and store visits. As we often say, nobody comes to YellowPages.ca to surf they come to buy and this remains a key focus for us.

If you’re getting ready to go to Search Engine Strategies Toronto next week – or still on the fence about whether to attend SES Toronto June 16-18 – then check out the buzz from more than two dozen search blogs that has been leading up to the SEM conference.

If fact, the buzz in Canada has been louder this year than the one coming from the periodical cicadas that emerge every 17 years from underground haunts on Cape Cod. (Hey, I’m not making this up. Just read “Cape is again abuzz” from The Boston Globe.)

What Google calls “the buzzing blogger community” has been blogging about the speakers who will be speaking at Search Engine Strategies Toronto. I should know. I was among the first bloggers to start buzzing about “Why search engine marketers should attend SES Toronto 2008.”

But, I haven’t been alone.

More than two dozen other search blogs joined the chorus. Here’s a list of the posts about next week’s SEM conference that I was able to find today – and I’m sure that I’m missing more:

An Analytic Approach to SEO and PPC

Entrevue - Eric Morris de Google Canada

Search Engine Strategies (SES) Toronto

Speaking Schedule for June: Millennial Financial, DM Days & SES Toronto

Andrew Goodman On Toronto SES

Interview with Eric Morris from Google

Portrait Québecois des moteurs de recherche

Search Engine Optimization - Toprank’s CEO shares tips and Tricks

Interview: Jane Motz Hayes on SEO and Usability

How To Succeed With Search

SES Toronto 2008: Interview with Jill Whalen on SEO Donts, Myths, and Scams

Interview with Mitch Joel

Metamend Speakers at SMX Advanced and SES Toronto

Mission Critical for Non-Profits to Make the Search Connection

Is Your Web Site Accessible?

My interview with Matt McGowan, VP of Marketing - Incisive Media

SES Toronto 2008

SES Toronto - Combine Professional Development with Family Fun

SEO Myths with WestJet’s Lyndsay Walker

Speaking at SES Toronto 2008

SES Toronto, Here I Come!

Search Around the World - an Interview with Alicia Morga about Search Marketing for the Hispanic Market

Urban Mapping to Speak at SES Toronto 2008

Is There A Need For More Search Conferences In Canada?

So, “the buzzing blogger community” has really been abuzz about the SEM conference that gets underway on Tuesday, June 17, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (South Bldg.), in Toronto, Canada. It’s not too late to register to find out what all this buzz is about for yourself.

With SES Toronto coming up June 16-18, 2008, we interviewed June Li, the founder and managing director of ClickInsight. June will be one of the speakers at the “Giving Credit Where It’s Due: Which Campaign Sold What?” session, which will be held on Wednesday, June 18, from 4:00 to 5:15 p.m.

June has over 20 years of e-business, marketing, manufacturing, logistics and sales experience. She is also an associate instructor for the web analytics program at the University of British Columbia, as well as an instructor for a web analytics course at the University of Toronto Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information Studies.

June has spoken and moderated at the Emetrics Summit and is a contributing writer to OneDegree.ca and the AIMS blog.

Q. You founded ClickInsight, a business that creates successful strategies for clients to multiply their online leads and sales. Can you provide SEW readers with a sample of some of your latest Web analytics projects? What is the latest “buzz” in the field of Web analytics?

A. We use web analytics to help businesses accelerate their results from marketing initiatives. Almost all of our business breakthrough projects involve an analysis of search marketing, either organic or paid. And since Canada is a net exporter of goods and services, with the Canadian dollar as strong as it is, there’s been increasing interest in using search to get more qualified leads. Cold calling is such a probability game, why not attract the buyers who are need your goods and services and are looking for what you have to offer?

Analytics is a necessity for defining baselines for improvement. Businesses that have not optimized their site for search or are not using paid search should look at their organic search keywords using their web analytics system. What searches are driving traffic to their site? More often than not, the search keywords include just the company name in some way. This means only the people who already know about your organization are coming to your site, and you’re not reaching new prospects. And if you are getting generic, non-branded searches, don’t stop there? You may not be visible to your target market, and unless you drill down to see who your visitors are, you won’t know what you’re missing.

What’s the latest buzz? Social media measurement and mobile analytics. Both have great linkages to search and positioning on the search results page.

Q. How does your company make use or not make use of Google analytics?

A. We and many of our clients make use of Google Analytics (and other tools) to assess the impact of marketing and site changes. We want to see whether our changes have the intended impact on where our visitors are coming from, what’s driving them to our sites, and what’s not. Google Analytic’s new benchmarking availability is interesting and has definitely triggered some very interesting discussions. We also use Google Analytics to mine and analyze onsite search to see what people think you should have on your website. Perhaps what they’re looking for isn’t present or is difficult to find.

But Google Analytics can’t tell you what might work better. So we also use and recommend Google Website Optimizer for testing alternate options and 4Q (4Q.iperceptions.com) to “listen” to the voice of the customer. Without listening, you won’t have the insight on what might be improved or the reason why people behave as they do on your site. And if this still doesn’t provide what you need, surveys and usability testing might be next.

Q. What got you fascinated about Web analytics to begin with? Did you ever suffer any of the experiences that so many of your clients come to your company for to help solve?

A. Since I started with web analytics on the client side, I’m quite familiar with the issues companies have managing web analytics data, reports and analysis.

Without analytics, you’re guessing as to what’s happening on your website and with your online marketing initiatives. And who can afford to guess, particularly now that we’re seeing the economy slowing down and in Canada, coping with a stronger dollar. Web analytics won’t solve everything (it’s not magic and it’s not perfect) but you’re much better off with the insights analytics can provide than none at all. Web analytics practices continue to evolve, integrating with data mining and expanding to include social media and mobile analytics.

Q. What excites you about Search Engine Strategies Toronto? What do you look forward to most?

A. This will be the 4th Search Engine Strategies I’ll have attended in Toronto, and they get better every time. Last year, I was happy to see there was much more discussion “beyond the click” and about landing page conversion, the money-making “value event”. I’m sure this year will bring yet another advance in the community.

SES is a great place to gauge the pulse of the search community, where businesses are at with search, learn what leading organizations are doing, and have fun discussions about the current myths of search and what the crawlers are up to now, where they’re going next.

Q. You teach a Web Analytics Training course at the University of Toronto. Do you plan to draw upon any of it for your presentation at SES Toronto?

A. Absolutely. The Web Analytics training course at the University of Toronto is an introductory course intended to help those who need to show value from website content understand not only the technical basics but also the management and organization pre-requisites for success. Key to using web analytics is a clear understanding your goals. Only then can you set up your analytics plan to properly (and sanely) assess performance and progress towards attaining your goal. I’m really looking forward to the panel I’m on. We’re tackling the topic of Multi-Channel Measurement. Goal setting is critical to ensuring you don’t drown in multi-channel data and can actually make sense of what you’re measuring.

Q. Put on your prognosticator helmet: What is the future of Web analytics? Say over the next 10 to 20 years?

A. 10-20 years? We’re having problems with 2-3 years! Web analytics will become “analytics”. With new online and integrated technologies proliferating, the tools to measure will evolve, perhaps not fast enough but they’ll evolve. For sure things will get more complicated, and that’s what keeps it interesting and fun!

Search Engine Strategies Toronto is coming up June 16-18, 2008. To give attendees a sneak preview of some of the trends in search engine marketing that will be discussed at the event, we’ve interviewed Ken Jurina, the President and CEO of Epiar.

Ken will be one of the speakers at the “SEM Toolkit: Marketers Share” session, which will be held on Wednesday, June 18, from 12:45 to 2:00 p.m. And Epiar and Yahoo! Canada will be hosting The Official Search Engine Strategies Toronto After-Party on Tuesday, June 17.

But, we interviewed Ken primarily for his expert opinion. Scoring tickets to his party was only a secondary consideration. (As Maxwell Smart would say, “Would you believe I’m from New England, which still thinks the term ‘party’ means Boston Tea Party?”)

Seriously, as president and founder of Top Draw and Epiar, Ken has more than 15 years of expertise in traditional advertising and Internet marketing. And I’ve heard him speak at SES New York, Chicago, San Jose, and Toronto.

Q. Can you give me a brief overview of some of the trends the search marketing industry is seeing this year and what the next 5 to 10 years might look like?

A. The Microsoft bid for Yahoo! accompanied by the subsequent bid withdrawal, along with the much talked about Google-Yahoo! search advertising partnership have certainly resulted in much speculation regarding the future of search marketing as we know it. I also don’t think the deal is entirely off the table just yet.

Ask’s withdrawal from mainstream search as it abandoned its efforts to compete against the search giants in March has also affected the search landscape. Over the last 12 months Google’s search share has increased slightly, Yahoo! search share has remained stagnant in aggregate, and Microsoft’s share has fallen.

If we look at trends from the perspective of consumer behavior we continue to see increasing growth in the use of image and video search. Another consumer trend significantly affecting the search marketing space is the astronomical increase in the influence of social media marketing, in the form of consumer feedback and reviews, on brands, ecommerce conversions and tactical refinements of on-page content.

Google’s Universal Search results have been seen to have an impact on the traditional F-shaped heat maps generated by eye-tracking studies as eyes are now first drawn to image and video search results. The inclusion of the OneBox, as well as Sitelinks and ‘Search Within a Site’ search box features, are all affecting the usability of the results in the organic listings. User interaction is facilitated by these features and the probability is that the trend in click-throughs will skew towards increased searcher interaction with more ‘visible’, usable, graphic listings – assuming the relevancy factor is retained.

Google has also recently revised its display URL protocol in AdWords, and has been experimenting with the inclusion of video results in the paid search listings.

As to what the future holds, I think current behavioral trends and further improvements in the relevance and universal appeal of results provided by the search engines will continue unabated. However, based on the dramatic events in the industry in the last few months alone, at this stage I think it would be fool-hardy and irresponsible to attempt to predict anything more specific.

Q. How will marketers have to adjust their budgets to compensate for the upcoming changes?

A. Marketers should seriously consider budgeting for continued SEO initiatives, particularly regarding Internet market research on consumer search behavior. Assigning marketing dollars to image and video production and optimization is imperative, as is integrating with relevant social communities. Brands need to aggressively begin to empower brand proponents and embrace reputation management (RM) tools. RM has only recently gained the recognition it should have attained years ago. With the huge growth in both social influence and social media marketing, and the impact of reviews and consumer feedback on online purchase decisions, the need for brand transparency is becoming ever more important. Consequently, the need to facilitate consumer feedback and interaction is key to future success in the search and ecommerce space.

Q. How important is it to understand all the online touch-points of your visitors?

A. This answer is basically an addendum to the previous one. Understanding where and how your online market interacts online, what they do, and what they want, need and expect to achieve at each touch-point is imperative.

Meeting them on common ground in forums, on blogs, and in the social space is very important. Openly dealing with detractors and embracing and supporting evangelists is best done in this space.

Consumer exposure to your brand and online offering is unlikely to be limited to the information housed without your official web site. Review sites, feedback consumer forums and blogs are going to discuss businesses with or without official permission – freedom of expression online has reached previously unimagined new heights as regards the impact of this freedom on brand reputations. Proactively embracing the social space via RM tools and facilitating interaction on your own blog or site is no longer something to merely be considered, it has become a necessity. Advertising these social – touch-points via paid search is also something to be considered.

Q. When we talk about “tricks of the trade” used by search marketers, can you share a bit on what kind of “competitive intelligence” is required and what exactly is “exotic analytics?”

A. RM tools allow you to see what’s being said about you and your competition in the online space. Internet market research allows you to see how your consumers are behaving online and what terms they are utilizing when searching for your offering.

By understanding what your online market is really looking for – not what you think or want them to look for – can provide competitive intelligence on brand awareness and market share. It can also identify new product or service opportunities, consumer feedback and trending data, and a host of other factors that will allow you to refine your online offering.

As for “exotic analytics”, different web analytics software packages offer different levels of service and different features. Some are highly advanced for sure – trying to predict visitor behavior based on trending for example. However, a wealth of information is available through the basic measurement standards if it is analyzed properly and thoroughly.

Q. What excites you about Search Engine Strategies Toronto? What do you look forward to most?

A. The Epiar / Yahoo! Canada Party on Tuesday June 17 of course! There will be more details to follow closer to the event but you can expect it will be a party to remember like we are known for.

Q. Are there any advantages to being a Search Marketer based in Canada rather than any other place in the world?

A. Numerous advantages:
• 85% of Canadians have high-speed Internet access (one of the top ten levels of broad band penetration in the world);
• 94% of online Canadians interacted with Google and Microsoft sites in February;
• Canadian online business reaped $62.7B in 2007, an increase of 26% year over year, but the proportion of private sector companies who sold goods and services online remained relatively stable at 8%.

The market is big, it’s relatively untapped, and the returns are obvious. The future of search in Canada is promising. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that online ad spend will grow faster in Canada than anywhere else in the world over the next 5 years for two primary reasons:
1. high broadband penetration
2. lower online market saturation

It’s great to be Canadian, eh!

Chris Boggs, manager, Search Engine Optimization for Brulant has joined Search Engine Watch Forums as Associate Editor. Chris is a highly sought after speaker on the circuit. He’s presented at Search Engine Strategies (SES), PubCon and SMX among others.

Chris will be teaming up with Search Engine Watch Forums Editor, Frank Watson, founder of Kangamurra Media.

Chris and Frank write the weekly SEM Crossfire column for SEW Experts: debating, arguing, and discussing the hottest search engine marketing and SEO issues in the industry.

So what can you expect from Chris in the Forums? The best example may be found here.

I also asked Chris to warn me about what kind of trouble he plans getting me into:

“I am very excited to become more involved with SEW Forums. I can really say that I learned a lot from the forums when it they first started, and I have continued to benefit from community participation. I have unfortunately had less time to participate at SEW forums as I used to, but I plan on ramping back up during the off-hours. One thing I am tied of seeing at SEW and other forums is so-called experts coming in and making absurd or non-factual statements.”

Hey, me too, Chris. But what do you plan to do about it?

“Those types of participants can take my new position announcement as notice that I’m tired of being nice. I and other Moderators plan on urging people to back up their statements with proof, or suffer public ridicule. Those people that are newer to the industry and openly want to learn (and do not claim falsely to be experts) will hopefully be less likely to be derailed by advice based on zero sum experience.”

Wow. You heard it here first.

Hello Chris, goodbye B.S.

photo credit: SearchEvangelist on Flickr