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On Monday, June 16, 2008, before the start of the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, Canada, there will be four search engine marketing training classes. While each of the half-day SEM training workshops costs CAD 795, if you register for a full day, the cost is CAD 1,395.

That’s a savings of 195 Loonies – which is worth between 97 and 98 Toonies. (SES Toronto Conference Chairman, Andrew Goodman, has been trying to help me translate American into Canadian, but Search Engine Strategies Global Content Director, Kevin Ryan, thinks it’s a lost cause.)

Seriously, why would you want to take a search engine marketing training class or two – independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto?

There are three key reasons.

First, you’ll be provided with “guided, hands-on exposure that puts theory into practice in a highly interactive environment,” as it says on the Search Engine Strategies Toronto website. These SEM training workshops will be taught by Debra Mastaler, Todd Malicoat, Adam Goldberg and Liana Evans, and I can personally vouch for three of them. (While I don’t know Adam Goldberg personally, he’s an ex-Google Insider who started Google’s Inside Sales team in NYC in 2003. So, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

These search engine marketing experts will provide you with the tools and techniques you need to become (or remain) outstanding in your field. (I know there’s a joke about a guy who is out standing in his field, but I forget the punch line.)

In the end, you’ll not only walk away from the search engine marketing classes with the knowledge and skills you need to be a successful search engine marketer, you may also “jump-start your career and enhance your professional know-how,” as the SES Toronto website puts it.

Second, all four of this year’s SEM training workshops are brand new. Compare them to last’s year’s line up of search engine marketing training classes. There are absolutely no repeats.

In Track 1, Debra Mastaler of Alliance-Link.com is teaching “Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques” from 8 a.m. to noon. And Adam Goldberg of ClearSaleing is teaching “Search Engine Marketing Metrics and Myths” from 1 to 5 p.m. (I love the use of alliteration in the titles of their SEM training workshops.)

In Track 2, Todd Malicoat of Stundtdubl is teaching “SEO Tools” from 8 a.m. to noon. And Liana Evans of KeyRelevance is teaching “How to Effectively Use Social Media for Search Marketing Campaigns” from 1 to 5 p.m. (Just because they don’t alliterate their titles doesn’t mean their search engine marketing training classes won’t be fun.)

I interviewed Todd and John Marshall of Market Motive at ad:tech San Francisco a couple of weeks back, when Market Motive announced it has teamed with Search Engine Strategies to provide online classes for training in search marketing, web analytics, and web conversion techniques.

Todd also talked about his SEM training workshop at SES Toronto. Check out the video interview below.

Stundubl’s Todd Malicoat’s Upcoming Session at SES Toronto

There’s a third key reason why you would want to take a search engine marketing training class or two – independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto. (There are always three key reasons to do anything. Hang on a second, I’ll remember it.)

You get a lunch break. (No, that’s not it. The lunches are getting better at all of the Search Engine Strategies events, but that’s not a reason to take workshops covering optimization and advertising strategies, analytics, tactics and best practices.)

Oh, now I remember. Whether you’re a consultant, site designer, website owner, or in-house marketing professional, you can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn firsthand about the latest developments in search engine strategy. (I thought I was having a “senior moment” there.)

No matter where you are on the SEO or SEM learning curve, you’ll leave these intensive workshops with the necessary skills and tools to improve your business results and take your search engine marketing to another level. “Something that never looks bad on your permanent record,” according to Greg Marmalard in Animal House (1978).

See you at the Intercontinental Toronto Centre Hotel, which is a different venue than the main Search Engine Strategies conference, which is being held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, which is attached to the InterContinental Toronto Centre Hotel. (Was that clear? Check Google Maps.)

See you at SES Toronto.

Has there been a change in the SERPs? You might find out about it first - from Twitter.

Twitter has been breaking all sorts of news lately, from weather events to earthquakes. Now, it’s becoming a great source for finding out about possible search engine updates.

This morning, I read the following:

@alscillitani: anyone else noticing their rankings change several times over the last 24 hours in google. Up, down, back to up, ??? weird!!

@danlondon: @alscillitani I am seeing a few rankings bounce around. what is up?

This is a great way for Search Engine Marketers to put social media to use. It’s easy to think that social media must be used for marketing and sales, but remember that tools like Twitter are great for networking and keeping up with the industry.

What are your thoughts on Twitter and search engine marketing? Let us know by leaving a comment!

Related Reading:
Is Twitter the New Google Alternative?
Twitter and Search

Fredrick Marckini, chief global search officer of Isobar, will be giving the opening keynote speech at SES Toronto on Tuesday, June 17, 2008. Fredrick also gave the opening keynote at SES London back in February.

While he was in London, I interviewed him about his keynote speech on search engine marketing trends and his duties at Isobar. You can get a pretty good idea of Fredrick’s perspective by watching the YouTube video below — which has just been posted in its entirety. (A portion of Fredrick’s interview was included in our Day 1 roundup.)

And, as you’ll see, YouTube’s recent site updates now enable you view the high quality video by just clicking on the television icon below and to the right instead of using the format 18 code.

Fredrick Marckini at SES London on Search Engine Marketing

You can also get a sense of Fredrick’s point of view by reading: Fredrick Marckini iProspect Exclusive SEO Interview with Dan Horton.

Fredrick Marckini founded iProspect in 1996 and is recognized as a leading expert in the field of search engine marketing. He has authored three of the SEM industry’s earliest books, including Secrets To Achieving Top-10 Positions (1997), Achieving Top-10 Rankings in Internet Search Engines (1998), and Search Engine Positioning (2001). He is considered one of the pioneers of search engine marketing and was named to BtoB Magazine’s Top 100 Marketers 2005 and 2006 lists.

Fredrick is a frequent speaker at industry conferences around the country including: Search Engine Strategies, ad:tech, the iMedia Summit, Search Insider Summit and the eMarketing Association Conference. He has written bylined articles for Search Engine Watch, CMO Magazine, BtoB Magazine, iMedia Connection, ClickZ and numerous other publications. He has been interviewed and profiled in a variety of media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times of London, Inc., Investors and Business Daily, Internet Retailer, National Public Radio, and others.

Fredrick serves on the Board for the Ad Club of Boston, and was a founding Board Member of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). He earned a bachelors degree from Franciscan University in Ohio.

According to the UK Search Engine Marketing Report 2008, released today by E-consultancy in association with Search Engine Marketing agency Neutralize (*\*), the industry is thriving in the UK with 63% of companies planning to increase their paid search (PPC) budget and 61% planning to increase their search engine optimization (SEO) budget.

In a press release, Lucy Cokes, the Managing Director of Neutralize (*\*), said, “It appears evident that search engine marketing is now cemented in the minds and therefore budgets of UK marketers. It is fantastic to see a greater understanding of the benefits of a well managed search marketing campaign and budgets being increased accordingly across both paid and organic search.”

Now in its second year, the UK Search Engine Marketing Report is based on the results of a survey completed earlier in the year by more than 1,000 respondents from both agencies and companies with first-hand experience of search engine marketing.

One of the key trends found in the report is this one: Since 2007, the proportion of companies conducting PPC and SEO exclusively inhouse has declined. Correspondingly, the proportion of respondents using an agency for both disciplines has gone up.

For more information, go to http://www.neutralize.com/media-centre/research-reports.

It’s only Day 1 at SES New York 2008 and the folks from Pan Communications have already found more than 40 stories that have been written about the Search Engine Strategies conference. If you want a comprehensive list, Matt McGowan, the Global Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media, will be posting one later this evening (or early tomorrow morning) on the Search Engine Strategies Blog – when he gets back from the Saint Patrick’s Day pub crawl.

In the meantime, I’ve looked through the news articles and blog posts from Monday, March 17, 2008, to try to identify the top ten stories on Day 1 of the event. While this list is no substitute for actually attending SES New York 2008, it will give you a quick summary of some of the highlights.

1. Yahoo! Cozies Up To Its Click-Fraud Critics
Andy Greenberg of Forbes.com says, “At Monday’s Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in New York, Yahoo! announced a partnership with click-fraud auditing firm Click Forensics to share pay-per-click advertising data and work together to identify fraudulent clicks–those designed to pump a Web publisher’s advertising revenue or drain a competing advertiser’s budget.”

2. Search Spend Seems Healthy Despite Slowing Economy
Kevin Newcomb of Search Engine Watch says, “Despite an increasingly gloomy economic forecast, spending on search engine marketing continues to grow beyond expectations. Preliminary results of the 2007 State of the Market Survey were released today at Search Engine Strategies New York by SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.”

3. Kicking Off SES New York 2008
Mike McDonald of WebProNews interviewed Matt McGowan about Search Engine Strategies New York 2008, which kicked off today with about 8,000 attendees. Matt explained what can be expected in the week ahead.

4. Orion Panel: Getting Vertical Search Right
Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable covered the Orion Panel: Getting Vertical Search Right. Barry says, “Jason Finger talks about his online food service. They link people with local restaurants and caterers. Steven Krein is from a human powered health search service. Bill Tancer gives the Hitwise line, love this guy. Josh Stylman from Reprise Media. Paul Forster from Indeed.com a Job Search site.” Barry adds, “This is a unique session.”

5. Analytics: Data Into Action
Lisa Barone of the Bruce Clay Blog covered the Analytics: Data Into Action session. Lisa says, “Kevin Ryan gets things started and says next time he’ll get a bigger room. Hee, seriously. And it’s not that the room is even small, it’s just there are about a gazillion people trying to get in. The SES conference series is alive and well, people.”

6. Neil Patel interviews Jason Calacanis, SES NY 2008

Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising interviewed Jason Calacanis, founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, who will be the afternoon keynote speaker on Wednesday, March 19, 2008. The two discuss issues such as spam, the search engine optimization (seo) philosophy as a whole and its problematic frictions between publishers and users in the battles for visibility and search relevance.

7. Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics at SES NY 2008

I interviewed Avinash Kaushik, author, blogger, and Analytics Evangelist at Google about the standing-room-only-crowd at the Web Analytics: Measuring Succession session, where he spoke. He also talked about trends in web analytics over the next 24 to 36 months, his highly-rated blog, Occam’s Razor, and his recently published book, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.

8. Session: Organic Listings Forum
Lee Odden of the Online Marketing Blog covered the Organic Listings Forum. Lee says, “Organic Listings Forum with Mike Grehan moderating and Jill Whalen, Dave Naylor and Greg Boser on the panel. Here we have an all star SEO cast available to answer questions about organic SEO.”

9. SES New York: Video Made the SMB Star (Kelsey Group Track)
Li Evans of Search Marketing Gurus covered the Video Made the SMB Star session. Li says that Mike Boland of the Kelsey Group, who moderated the session, said, “Users are coming to expect Video as part of their search results.”

10. Ad Exchanges - What You Need to Know
Mona Elesseily of Traffick wrote a preview of the Ad Exchanges are Everything session, which will be held at SES New York 2008 on March 19 2008 (Day 3). Mona says, “To learn more about the changes in ad exchanges, I interviewed both Ramsey McGrory, VP of Exchange Development, Right Media and Jay Sears, SVP of Strategic products and business development, ContextWeb.”

Despite an increasingly gloomy economic forecast, spending on search engine marketing continues to grow beyond expectations. Preliminary results of the 2007 State of the Market Survey were released today at Search Engine Strategies New York by SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.

According to the survey, search engine marketing spending exceeded projections in 2007, and marketers say they will continue to increase their spend on search, which would lead to continued healthy growth. One caveat: if there’s no inventory to buy as a result of a recession or economic downturn, it won’t matter what marketers say they want to do.

While some of the increasing spending is new ad dollars, some of it is the result of shifting marketing dollars from other offline and online marketing endeavors, with offline ads the biggest losers.

Search is taking spending away from things like magazines, direct mail and newspapers moreso than TV, which is a bit puzzling, says Kevin Lee, executive chairman of Didit and co-chair of SEMPO’s research committee.

“I’m surprised we’re not seeing as big a shift from TV. Search is getting more budget from offline media that are usually used to narrow-cast, instead of TV and radio, which are broadcast media,” Lee said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but maybe it’s because it’s being moved from something niche-y to something else that’s niche-y? As search becomes more recognized as something that brand advertisers can use, I’d expect to see more TV and radio dollars shift as well.”

Respondents are expecting to increase their search spend this year, due to factors like advertiser demand; rising costs of keywords and pay-per-click campaigns; an increase in the number of small-to-midsized businesses using search engine marketing; and greater consumer participation in search and increased interest in targeting, such as behavioral and demographic targeting of searchers.

Key preliminary findings include:

• The North American SEM industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007, exceeding earlier projections of $11.5 billion for 2007
• North American SEM spending is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, up significantly from the $18.6 billion forecast a year ago.
• Marketers are finding more search dollars by poaching budget from print magazine spending, web site development, direct mail and other marketing programs.
• Paid placement captures 87.4% of 2007 spending; organic SEO, 10.5%; paid inclusion, .07%, and technology investment, 1.4%.
• Google AdWords remains the most popular search advertising program, but both Google and Yahoo sponsored search spending has decreased from a year ago.

SEMPO will present more detailed findings from the study on Thursday at the SES New York conference.

Matt Bailey of SiteLogic found a way to work OSU into a discussion of SEO and SEM at SES London last month. Now, I don’t object when he gets feisty about topics like Search Engine Visibility and Site Crawlability, as he did at SES Chicago last December. But, he knows I’m a Wolverine from the University of Michigan. And, when he gets feisty about the Ohio State Buckeyes, I have to draw the line.

And redraw the line. And then wear a Buckeye sweatshirt whenever my team loses the annual Big 10 football showdown. Hey, people are starting to say I’m “sartorially challenged.”

So, ignore the part of the interview about what I’ll be wearing again this year. Instead, listen to what Matt has to say about the Search & Analytics Workshop that he’ll be teaching at SES New York next week. Despite the fact that he’s from Ohio, he actually does have a lot of interesting things to say about using analytics to Increase search effectiveness.

Matt Bailey, SiteLogic, at SES London 2008 on Networking

Matthew Bailey is president and founder of SiteLogic Marketing and an internationally-recognized authority on search engine marketing, website analytics, usability, and accessibility. As a consulting and training company, SiteLogic focuses on helping organizations take control of their websites and their web marketing plans.

Sought after worldwide as a seminar presenter and teacher, Matt speaks regularly for The Direct Marketing Association, Search Engine Strategies conferences and training classes, the American Advertising Federation, and many private training seminars. Matt is known for his conversational, entertaining speaking style and his ability to make technical topics both understandable and practical.

Matt oversees The Direct Marketing Association’s SEO training program and is the trainer for the DMA’s web marketing seminar. He has consulted with hundreds of companies, including Goodyear, Hilton International, JCrew, Gradall, Moen Faucets, American Greetings, and Samsonite.

And Matt may not even be a Buckeye. I think he just enjoys giving me a hard time. So, to keep our interview from becoming one of the most viewed on the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on Youtube, let me encourage you to view the many other fine video interviews that you’ll find there — early and often.

At Search Engine Strategies London last month, I interviewed Kevin Ryan, VP, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies & Search Engine Watch, about the UK event as well as asking him for a preview of SES New York 2008, which starts next week.

Kevin talks about big-picture sessions versus tactical sessions, and how he structures SES conferences to address attendees’ needs in both areas. He expands on these topics in his column, SES New York and You, which was posted this morning.

While in London last month, Kevin looked ahead to SES New York, which starts on St. Patrick’s Day — a significant holiday for a lad named “Ryan.” Oh, he also talks about the Universal Search panel — a significant topic for anyone in the industry.

Kevin Ryan at SES London 2008 on All Search Great and Small

In case you didn’t already know this, Ryan is a seasoned industry veteran. His former roles include vice president, interactive media, for the Interpublic Group agency; Wahlstrom Interactive; and CEO of Kinetic Results, a 2006 Advertising Age top 20 search engine marketing firm.

Ryan recently founded a strategic consulting firm, Motivity Marketing, and has written over 200 articles on search and interactive marketing as search editor for iMedia Communications, a trade publisher and event producer serving the interactive media and marketing industries. His former client roster includes notable brands such as Rolex Watch USA, State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, Minolta Corporation, Samsung Electronics America, Toyota Motor Sales USA, Panasonic Services, and the Hilton Hotels brands.

Additionally, Ryan has volunteered his time with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), and several regional nonprofit organizations.

While others have interviewed him before, this is the first time that I’ve interviewed Kevin for the SES Conference Expo channel on YouTube. Check it out.

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Today Spot Runner announced its acquisition of Weblistic, a provider of local online advertising, in an all-stock transition. Spot Runner is an internet-based television ad agency headquartered in Los Angeles. The company says in its press release, “The acquisition of Weblistic will enable Spot Runner to correlate TV and online advertising with phone- and Web-based responses to provide tracking, analysis and results.”

The result promises to be an integrated offering of online, TV, and radio advertising for small businesses in their local markets. Spot Runner’s press release cites proprietary iProspect-Jupiter Research study proving the value of TV in search engine marketing:

“TV advertising is the number one impetus for people to search for a particular company or product online, surpassing all other forms of advertising, even word of mouth (iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study conducted by Jupiter Research, June 2007)”

The acquisition is part of a greater trend that The Kelsey Group’s Michael Boland labeled the “Webification of Small Businesses.” This is where B2B companies lure small businesses in with traditional funnel marketing techniques, starting with a free service in the hopes that SMBs will upgrade to premium services in the future.

If you’re a small business, you’re unlikely to have the in-house resources to handle a broad marketing strategy. Since Spot Runner handles everything from production to placement, adding the coordination of Weblistics online advertising services looks like a win-win for both companies as well as their customers.

Spotrunner was initially dubbed by the media as “Google Adwords for TV.” Now that Google TV Ads has broadened its reach, competition will heat up. As Spot Runner chases Google, Google TV Ads may find itself wondering who let the dogs out.

Google doesn’t produce TV commercials,but it boasts a network of video production companies to help new TV advertisers. Videos submitted through the system are vetted for quality.

The deal consolidates the local search space further: deep-pocketed Weblistic competitor ReachLocal hired a huge salesforce to sell PPC (paid search) and SEO (search engine optimization) to small and medium-sized enterprises. Merchant Circle relies more on telemarketing to scale SMB customer acquisition. Weblistic found itself squeezed in the middle with a smaller sales force and telemarketing efforts.

The combined Spot Runner and Weblistic teams now face a univeral search challenge as SMBs start optimizing SERPs for blended search and, eventually, video highly-targeted video ads.