Thanks to Sean Lowery and team for a great InnoTech and eMarketing Summit.

Here are our drawing winners:

SEMpdx 1 year Free Membership
Tom Berry, Marketing and Affiliate/Web Marketing Director, Pine Meadow Golf

SEMpdx Snuggies
Stacey Brown, President/CEO MindLink Resources
Alexa Meisler , Founder, 52PerfectDays.com

SEMpdx Mug
Ron Karsten, Director of Portland Campus DeVry University
Zach Schreckenberger, Apple

SEMpdx T-Shirt
Mike Wills, Internet Marketing Manager Netop Solutions

SEMpdx provided Site Reviews for attendees and we got a lot of great feedback:

“This was the best 20 minutes I’ve spend at the show,” said Tom Berry of Pine Meadow Golf

“Thank you so much for your feedback on my site. I so appreciate the marketing and technical expertise, it was really great!” said Alexa Meisler of 52PerfectDays.com

Thanks for attending and hope to see everyone at
Online Marketing Summit on June 16th

Big Fun, Big Prizes at InnoTech/eMarketing Summit is a post from: SEMpdx

Portland Code Camp and SQLSaturday Portland (http://portlandcodecamp.org/) are pleased to announce that these events will join together on Saturday, May 22, 2010 at the University of Portland. These free, community-driven mini-conferences emphasize learning through sharing among the local development community, and have become quite popular in the Portland area. Having the events at the same venue at the same time will allow participants to explore a greater variety of topics.

Portland CodeCamp has traditionally been an event where software developers working with the Microsoft stack of development tools could attend sessions and network amongst their peers. SQLSaturday started as an event where SQL Server DBAs could attend sessions, network, and expand their knowledge of the SQL Server environment. The realities of the larger development community are that no single product, vendor, technology, architecture, or approach has a lock on ‘the solution’ to ever increasing complex business requirements. As a result, Portland CodeCamp and SQLSaturday Portland have combined and expanded their scope in order to better serve the larger development community.

Portland CodeCamp is reaching out for significant interaction and inclusion with developers that work in the Mobile, Social, Cloud, and Gaming arenas –as well as the more traditional business problem solutions. SQLSaturday has expanded to include not only T-SQL, but PL/SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and any SQL platform –with a special interest on interoperability between platforms and developer tools.

Speaking Opportunity

Expected attendance at Portland Code Camp 2010 is over 500 software technical people from our region. These range from seasoned professionals from major technical corporations, to students and programming newbies. Some of these have an interest in learning how to develop search engine friendly Websites. You have the opportunity to help them learn.

Designing for Search Engines 101 is in demand. As an SEO or SEM you have probably been limited by the capabilities of the Website, calculating shopping cart ROI for example. This your opportunity to speak to any SEM/technical issue you feel may benefit this community.

If you want to speak, you go to their website sign up as a speaker, add your profile, then submit your session idea. If you are not sure what people will like, I recommend offering several ideas. They will select the one(s) that they want and get back to you. Deadline to submit is May 3rd.

Portland CodeCamp and SQLSaturday Combine Events in 2010 (SEO Speaking Opportunity) is a post from: SEMpdx

Read More At AimClear Blog

The Sin Of SEO is a post from: SEMpdx

Attention search engine marketers, web designers, developers, digital strategists, PR rockstars and social media mavens! The SEMpdx board would like you to join us for an evening of social networking!

When: Tuesday April 20th, 2009 at 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Where: Rontoms 600 E Burnside, Portland, OR 97214
Cost: Free!!!

SEMpdx April Networking is a post from: SEMpdx

Seriously folks, if you want to verify the quality of a SEO vendor, ask for references. Read their blog posts. Look at their LinkedIn page and see how much a part of the SEO community they are. However, using an SEO verification service when you can’t verify the quality of the Search Marketer doing the verifying is a valuable as making a donation to that Nigerian prince asking for help in rescuing his family fortune.

Read more here.
Peek a Boo I see you!
Verified SEO Open Challenge
Verified SEO Service Is A Scam Run By Charles Preston
Verified SEO Scam

Verified SEO FAIL is a post from: SEMpdx

What Portland-area digital marketing pro wouldn’t want the chance to meet Guy Kawasaki, business visionary, venture capitalist, author of nine books and nationally renowned speaker? Verizon and Cisco have recently partnered up to offer you a chance to not only meet Guy, but possibly land a personal two-hour consultation with him for your business.

Entering to win is simple. In an effort to promote its Verizon Collaboration Center, a Web-based service that offers small and medium businesses an opportunity to better coordinate and collaborate, Verizon and Cisco are hosting a video contest challenge. All you have to do is submit a short video that creatively showcases or describes the most challenging part of getting your team on the same page for a shot to win some awesome prizes, including a $2,000 reward card and a two-hour personal consultation with business visionary Guy Kawasaki. A winner will be selected after May 31st. Visit http://bit.ly/81Eevn for more information about the contest.

Roll ‘em: Your video could land you Guy Kawasaki! is a post from: SEMpdx

Landing Page Testing

Great session full of tips, and excellent advice about how to deal with landing page testing and optimization. Please bare with my gross spelling and grammatical errors, and special shout out to Evan Davies for the use of his laptop.

Mary Huffman kicked off the session by offering 10 aspects to test on your landing pages. These 10 items are great ways to squeeze more value out of the clicks.

Mary recommended testing every aspect of a page in a measured approach if possible. She even said the sometimes counterintuitive works sometimes, and the only way you would know would by testing.

Mary provided examples from WhichTestWon. Her top aspects to test were:

1.) Headline: Keywords in Headlines?

2.) Try Breaking Up Long Forms: Breaking Up a Long Form May Convert Better

3.) Length of Form: Short or Long

4.) Layout of Page: More Copy Can Be a Good Thing?

5.) Placement of security icon: Yay or Nay? Yay!

6.) Button Size: Bigger is Better

7.) Vocabulary: Training vs. Webinar.

8.) Photos: Know Your Target.

9.) Button Color: Make Your Most Important Button Standout.

10.) Photo vs. Video: Video Worked Best for New Users on Landing Page Only.

She followed up with a short stats lesson about data validity, sample size and determining test time. Long story short…..it may take awhile.

Finally, Mary touched on some great resources for marketers to use for testing.

Cameron Cowan from Omniture explained the dilemma most SEM’s run into. The no man’s land between the users and creative.

He highlighted that control of your landing pages is essential to success, as SEM’s agree costs for clicks are going up. He emphasized that not optimizing and testing your landing pages is a waste of money, and more importantly time.

He also spoke about Omniture’s new Test and Target product for landing page testing. It is a robust platform that allows companies to take a measured approach to the creation and testing of landing pages.

Cameron left off by saying SEMs must use their testing to target users. This will improve site experience, and should improve profitability which he mentioned gets lost in the shuffle of conversion metrics.

During the Q&A, Mary invited users to visit Which MVT, a landing page testing platform comparison site.

Well done on both accounts. Their slides are available at http://www.sempdx.org/slides

Speakers:

Mary Huffman – Ionic Media

Cameron Cowen – Adobe

Moderator:

Lisa Williams

Liveblogger:

Spencer Helm of Amplify Interactive, a Portland Oregon SEM agency

Landing Page Testing: Don’t just create . . . test. is a post from: SEMpdx

Making Friends & Generating Business

4 Point Plan for Facebook Domination

Speaker: Will Scott

1st remember to have a good time…and don’t interrupt people having a good time.  Rules:

1. Be real
2. Give to receive
3. Don’t be a jerk

4 Point Plan to Facebook Domination

1. Get team involved
2. Reach out to current fans
3. Give reason to get involved
4. Make new friends

Hold internal competitions

• Ask employees to recommend your brand to their friends
• Make it worth their while (e.g. $200 gift certificate)
• Nothing wrong with bribing your employees

Install Facebook fan box

• Already on site, makes great fans

Hold an external competition

• Ignore Facebook rules at your own risk
• Can hold on-site and off-site

Find fans you don’t already know

• Advanced demographics and kw filters through Facebook ads
• Value of fans
• Target fans
• Target people coming to an event
• Bday targeting
• 1:1 communication with event attendees/maybes

Lion Brand Yarn

Speaker: Ilana Rabinowitz

Facebook is a tool.  Use it as such.

Lion Brand Yarn’s Strategy

Become a valuable source of information and vital community.  Create a place where:

1. People interact with each other
2. Where fans can become brand advocates
3. For people to share stories, ideas, tips, photos, and experiences
4. To listen to consumers
5. For us to answer questions
6. Show appreciation to fans
7. Seen as individuals rather than a faceless corporation (President made video for fans and was joking around)

How do we know what to say on Facebook?

• Surveys (what are you interested in?)
• Looked at peaks in data (what updates are people interacting with?)
• Know customers after years of correspondence

Voice of Lion Brand

• One consistent voice
• Marketing department brainstorms ideas
• Used graduate student
• Maintain calendar but much is ad hoc

Building a fan base

1. Compelling content (e.g. custom comic strips)
2. Promoted through other media (catalog, newsletter, blog, website)
3. Fans get you fans
4. Suggest to friends
5. Advertise on Facebook

Facebook v. Print Ads: Facebook is extremely effective and measurable & can help engage with a younger audience

Facts of Life on Facebook

1. Cannot control conversation (competitor mentions, customer complaints)
2. Requires time and planning (but maybe not too much money)

Marketing with Facebook

1. Solicit Facebook fans wisely (they are earned capital)
2. Promotions can make fans disappear like crazy
3. Keep helping your fan base (continue to provide resources)

Facebook is Measurable

• bit.ly to measure clickthrough on links
• Facebook Insights to measure interaction with fan page
• Google Analytics to measure engagement from traffic from facebook.com

Benefits of Facebook

1. Builds relationships with consumers
2. Drive web traffic
3. Manage reputation
4. Acquire new customers
5. Builds word of mouth
6. Provides customer insight
7. Offer customer service
8. Amplify other marketing efforts
9. Replace/Supplement traditional advertising
10. Generate direct sales
11. SEO benefits on search engines

Q: Facebook Group v. Fan Page

A: Group makes sense where people engage with each other.  Page makes sense where people engage with the brand

Q: Facebook Do’s?

A: Use a company email as an admin.  Include keywords throughout fan page.  Don’t be a broadcaster – it’s not about you

Q: Analytics Used to Measure Performance?

A: Google Analytics to measure on-site engagement, fan behavior, conversions, URL variable.  Image tag to measure traffic on Facebook.  Facebook Insights are useful as well

Q: Tips and Tricks for Facebook Ads

A: Test, test, test.  Think about the venue you are advertising on

Q: Structure of Facebook social media team and requirements

A: LBY: Grad student works 3-4 days per week, knowledgeable of the brand; can do it in an hour a day

Q: Ideal Frequency

A: Rate of update is based on how frequently fans interact.  Test messaging during various days of the week/hours of the day

Q: What Media Gains Fans Fastest

A: Amplify everywhere it makes sense.  Facebook users hate Twitter. Twitter users hate Facebook.

Speakers:

Will Scott – Search Influence
Ilana Rabinowitz – Lion Brand Yarn

Moderator:

Hallie Janssen

Liveblogger:

Mike Nierengarten of Anvil Media Inc., a Portland SEM agency

Session Details

Making Friends & Generating Business (Facebook) SearchFest 2010 Session is a post from: SEMpdx

1.
If you’re thinking about investing in search marketing or other online services, it’s a great place to come meet the talent in person. SearchFest boasts more than 300 attendees and 44 speakers, many of whom are high caliber online marketing practitioners.

2.
You may learn something that can make you a lot of money. One of my clients came to SearchFest 2 years ago and made a single change to their URL structure and saw a 48% increase in revenue.

3.
Your admission price of $259 (between now and 3/8) includes 44 tracks/18 speakers of information that will help you improve your online presence AND you get breakfast/lunch & post show beer.

4.
Your competition may be going.

5.
Added Bonus: If you become a member of SEMpdx now and attend SearchFest March 9th 2010, you’ll get a full day of information from the countries best online marketers AND you can attend our Members ONLY “Ask the Experts” event on April 13th and ask the burning SEO/SEM questions you’ve been dying to ask the pros.

Register for SearchFest today!

Top 5 Reasons You Should Go to SearchFest If You Run Your Own Business is a post from: SEMpdx

David Szeleta will be speaking about “Advanced PPC” at SearchFest 2010, which will take place on March 9th at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available now. To purchase, please click the following link.

Online advertising expert David Szetela is Owner and CEO of Clix Marketing, one of the few agencies that specializes exclusively in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, creating and optimizing clients’ Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter advertising campaigns. Clix is also one of the few agencies paid according to their performance – as a percentage of profit or a commission per sales lead generated. Szetela’s 25+-year career working for small magazine publishers as well as Apple Computer and Ziff-Davis Publishing has provided him deep experience in direct response marketing. His articles on PPC advertising have been published in MediaPost, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, MarketingSherpa, on his company’s blog, http://www.clixmarketing.com/blog.

He is the Principal PPC Editor of the paper and online publication SEMJ.org (http://www.semj.org/editors.html) and the PPC expert faculty member for the online certification company Market Motive. He is also a frequent speaker at Search and Advertising industry events like Search Engine Strategies, SMX, PPC Summit and ad:tech, and he hosts a weekly radio show called PPC Rockstars (http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Advertising/PPC-Rockstars/), distributed by Webmasterradio.fm and iTunes. His book on PPC Content Advertising “Customers Now” was published in November 2009, and his Wiley/Sybex book “PPC Advertising on One Hour a Day” will be published in May 2010.

1) Google’s Content Advertising Network doesn’t have the best reputation with some advertisers. Can you explain why this is?

Many Google AdWords advertisers have tried expanding to the Google content network, only to see their costs soar, while revenue and profits failed to keep pace. Other advertisers shied away from the AdWords content network because they heard it delivered poor quality traffic. Nothing could be further from the truth; the quality of the traffic is just fine.

Content Network Advertising can often lead to excellent results—better than acceptable conversions (sales or leads) that deliver profitable revenue to the bottom line. The secret is for search advertisers to realize that they need to use very different tactics and best practices to control ad placement and attract high-quality site visitors.

2) Outside of Google’s content network, are there others worth using?

Google’s content network has incredible reach, however, there are independent networks and exchanges that also have great reach, and some nifty abilities such as setting the price you’re willing to pay across relevant sites on an auction basis. I wrote Customers Now in collaboration with the folks at ContextWeb who have the ADSDAQ exchange link, and I really think it’s worth taking a look at them if you’re building and testing content network advertising in 2010

3) When it comes to new target audiences, you are heavily in favor of content network advertising as a starting point for test campaigns. Can you extrapolate on that?

Yes, absolutely. It’s much cheaper to test messages and ads on a content network than on search. For instance, you can test new ads on a high-quality content site at the category level (i.e., food section). Or all the way down to the article-content level (i.e., the best imported chocolate). Also, content networks are great opportunities for inexpensively testing dynamic media like flash or video for response rate and conversions.

4) Can you tell me what you think are some of the unique practices for content ad campaigns as opposed to search advertising?

To begin with, the role and function of keywords in a content network ad group is very different than those in a search ad group. Content ad group keywords describe the types of pages where the advertiser wants their ads to appear. The advertiser is literally telling Google, “Show my ad on pages that contain most or all of these words.” For example, a vendor of vacation insurance might target holiday-goers by using a keyword list that contains the words ”Vacation Holiday Cruise Tours.”

Another big difference is content network ad copy must be very different from those used in search advertising. Objective number one of a content network ad is to distract the reader’s attention away from the page’s content. I emphasize in the book that ads need to yell, not whisper, and pop off the page, rather than blend into the surroundings.

In addition, I would recommend advertisers make very competitive offers in order to attract prospective new buyers – for example, free shipping or 20% discount for first-time purchases.
Finally, advertisers have a lot of latitude with ad copy and design, since there’s no penalty if the ad copy doesn’t match the keyword list. So it’s a good practice to test a wide variety of ads and offers.

5) What would be an example of a good image ad as opposed to a bad one?

A good image ad must be eye-catching enough to stand out from the content on the page. This can be a big challenge these days, with site visitors so accustomed to skipping right past banner ads, so a great banner ad needs to telegraph several concepts in rapid succession: “I’m worth looking at”; “I have something – a benefit – that you might be interested in”; “It’s clear what action you should take to find out more.” The benefit must be clear and immediately compelling, like “Save $300 per Year on Home Heating Oil – Starting Now!”

An example of a bad content ad is one that would blend in with the page so that the reader feels compelled to read the content on the page and not get pulled into the ads. In other words, an ad is not going to perform well if it simply blends like in chameleon into the background on a content page for which it’s being served.

6) What does the future hold for PPC advertising? Can you give us some insight for 2010 and beyond?

The trend of conversion optimization and performance-focused marketing are going to continue to gain importance in 2010. With smart phones becoming more prominent and people using their phones to search for information, product and services, mobile search marketing volume will continue to increase. This means if advertisers want to compete in this space, they are going to have to optimize their PPC campaigns for this distribution channel, as well as create mobile-friendly versions of their landing pages and websites. Furthermore, the Google Content Network will continue to expand in 2010. Advertisers wanting to boost their volume significantly need to learn how to take full advantage of this aggressively expanding network. And, speaking of expanding volume, advertisers who have the ability to appeal to an international audience need to start paying more attention to users outside the US. This summer, comScore released its Global Search Marketing report. This report stated that of the 100 billion global searches conducted monthly, only 22% were conducted in North America. Companies with global fulfillment capability need to reach out to a global audience, such as Europe and Asia Pacific (who were at the top of the comScore report for percent of global searches).

SearchFest 2010 Interview: David Szeleta is a post from: SEMpdx