Thanks to the quick work of the organizations below, we are all excited to announce the introduction of the region’s first Social Media Awards, The SoMe Awards (so – mee). This year’s award is on a tight time table, but your help with tweeting, blogging and spreading the word is appreciated. Most details are available at www.someawards.com. Don’t be shy – nominate yourself or a client close to you.

The Portland chapter of Social Media Club, SEMpdx and Software Association of Oregon are pleased to announce the first annual SoMe Awards to recognize outstanding Social Media projects and the people who created them.

Awards will be given in 7 categories based on factors such as originality, effectiveness and creativity. At least one member of the team who created the project must reside in Oregon or Southwest Washington to be eligible.

Award submissions must be received no later than 11:59 pm on Saturday, April 11, 2009 to be considered. Mark you calendars to attend the awards reception happening on Thursday, April 23. Location to be announced later this week. Check out www.someawards.com for more details.

Announcing the SoMe’s – PDX Social Media Awards is a post from: SEMpdx

SEOmoz Website

Social Media Marketing vs. Viral Marketing. Creating profiles on Web 2.0 sites vs. Linkerati – Targeted Content, Building friends & relationships in blogoshphers vs. Digg etc. SMM can rule the SERPS, control the brank, get link love, show the community you are a participant, traffic, influence traditional media.

Top Social Media Sites:
You Tube
Wikipedia
Yahoo Answers
Yelp
Linked-In
Flickr
Craigslist (Best of)
Facebook
Amazon
Myspace
Technorati
Judy’s Book
Newsvine
Twitter
City Search
Wikihow

Top Viral Marketing Sites
Digg
Reddit
Stumbleupon
Delicious
Netscape
Techcrunch
Newsvine
Boing Boing
Fark
Engaget
Techmeme
Lifehacker
Yahoo Picks

SMX Seattle: SEM Meet SMM: Rand Fishkin is a post from: SEMpdx

Scott Hendison of Search Commander, Inc is one of the founding board members of SEMpdx, and he was interviewed by Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal while attending the SMX Advanced Seattle event last week. – Watch The Video Clip

SEMpdx Board Member Scott Hendison Interviewed By Andy Beal (Video) is a post from: SEMpdx

“If there’s anything the Internet has shown, it’s that a lot of people have too much time on their hands. Todd Mintz, a Portland, Ore.-based Internet consultant, suspects iRazoo’s checks and balances won’t be enough to prevent efforts to move sites into the top spots mostly likely to be seen by users.

“There are very smart people out there who will figure out how to game it,” he said.

Depending on recommendations can be risky because the site can’t account for how smart users are, said Scott Hendison, another Portland Internet consultant specializing in search engine marketing and optimization — the practice of getting one group’s site to come up higher in search results than another.”

Read the full article

SEMpdx Board Members Quoted In Houston Chronicle is a post from: SEMpdx

“Kent Lewis remembers the moment distinctly. He was at a conference on search engine marketing last May when he approached Danny Sullivan — the godfather of the industry — and asked him about attending a similar event in Portland. The reaction: Port-where?

“People assume Portland is small,” said Lewis, president of Anvil Media Inc. “We’re in the Northwest. We fish. It rains. We couldn’t possibly be industry leaders. They forget about Intel and Nike. They see this little town with one skyscraper.”

Read the article

SEMpdx Featured In Portland Business Journal is a post from: SEMpdx

I just want to let everyone know that I, Todd Mintz, (along with Scott Hendison & a couple folks from Anvil Media) will be attending SMX Seattle on June 4 & 5. I’m reasonably sure that I’ll be 100% organic each day, so look for me there. I’ll post my updates on this blog for the people that aren’t able to make it.

SEMpdx is able to offer a free networking pass for people who can’t attend the full conference. It includes:

Access to the Networking hall to meet with our Premier Sponsors — Bruce Clay, Marchex, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! — and all the other exhibitors. See the Network page for the complete list.
Access to all SMX Advanced networking events, including SMX Bash sponsored by Microsoft June 3, the SMX Reception sponsored by Yahoo!, and SMX After Dark: Google Dance Northwest!

Click this link and use the promo code SEMpdxa07 when checking out. The same promo code will also get you $75 off your conference ticket.

I do want to meet all the SEMpdx blog readers that are going to be in attendence. So that you know what I look like, I’m attaching a recent photo of myself:

Todd Mintz Is Blogging SMX Seattle is a post from: SEMpdx


Click To Play

PORTLAND, Ore. (March, 8, 2007) Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland (SEMpdx) held SearchFest 07, the Northwest’s largest conference dedicated to search engine marketing (SEM). The full-day conference featured multiple learning tracks, workshops and expert panels to help businesses leverage SEM to increase awareness and revenue. The conference took place March 7, 2007 at the World Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon. This video is a small preview for the upcoming release of the session content video that is being produced. For more information on how you can obtain the full video, go to http://www.sempdx.org

SEMpdx Searchfest Video Preview is a post from: SEMpdx

Search engine marketing has been Stanford’s primary professional focus for the last several years with an emphasis on search engine optimization. Fascinated by SEO since 1995, he achieved high search engine position for his own sites, those of his employers, and for for clients. He has had articles published, lectured at universities, and presented in seminars.

Stan can help you plan, architect, design, implement your search engine strategy and monitor and improve results. He is putting what he has learned on his new website, Search Engine Marketing Today which includes SEO articles and a forum on which you can ask questions.

1) Tell me about Straight-On Consulting. What is a typical client engagement for you?
A prospect calls Straight-On and tells us that he/she has been referred to us or found our site via search engines. They launched their new site but are not getting high placement of the organic search engines or much traffic. The want us to optimize it for high placement on the search engines.

In many cases their sites are woefully unprepared to succeed in the search engine wars. This includes on-site issues like inadequate content, poor choice of keywords, ineffective optimization, and off-site issues like few incoming links. We start by developing a mutual understanding of high-level issues like branding, positioning, messages, and goals. Then we structure the Website to support them. We develop a multi-page strategy for delivering important, keyword-laden messages in the concentrated form noticed by search engines and understood by people.

We build a good technical foundation for search engine optimization dealing with site maps, links, link names, image ALT tags, heads, and on-page visible text. Online keyword research is done to choose the phrases most likely to achieve high position, draw as many targeted visitors as possible, and compel them to act.

Then we use our experience to author visible and invisible content. We test pages with professional search engine optimization software to verify that it is likely to do well with search engines. We take before and after “pictures” of site traffic, and search engine results position.

We regularly achieve high position on search engines for the terms we use in optimization, increase traffic, and help our clients achieve business goals for their sites.

2) In a typical campaign, do you tend to focus more on on-page factors or off-page factors (e.g. linkbuilding).
Both on-page factors and off-page factors are very important in achieving high position and traffic, but we learn towards emphasizing on-page factors. We also stress the importance of including content or tools on the site which merit incoming links, and will draw them. While we don’t do many link-building campaigns, we advise our clients to seek links from high-quality sites which relate to their site, stressing the importance of blogs, forums, business partners, and directories. We are always open to working with other professionals who specialize in link building.

3) How can a small business compete online against bigger, better funded competitors?
A small company can be smart about using search engine optimization, good Web design, and other internet resources to their advantage. They can turn the simplicity of their business into an advantage by focusing on simple, clear, and strong messages that can win with search engines and with customers. They can get more bang for their marketing bucks by working with a company like Straight-On.

Straight-On competes by sticking to our core competency, which is search engine optimization for data-driven sites, content management systems, ecommerce systems and ordinary HTML information Websites. Even if a project is not huge, our clients know that their business means a lot to us and we will work hard for them. We don’t have to feed a full time staff, but through associates, we bring all of the talent necessary for success, at a reasonable price, and have stood behind our work for over a decade.

SEMpdx Board Member Mini-Interview: Stanford Davis of Straight-On Consulting is a post from: SEMpdx

As President of Anvil Media, Inc., Kent Lewis is responsible for managing operations, marketing and business development to achieve the company’s mission: to make every client a testimonial and case study. Lewis founded Anvil Media in 2000 to help clients increase visibility, leads and sales through their Web presence. Current Anvil Media clients include American Red Cross, Cardiac Science, CreditReport.com, InFocus, Kettle Foods, Oregon State University, PC World, Pearson, Planar, ReliableRemodeler.com, Thrifty Airport Parking and TransCore.

1) Tell me about Anvil Media. What is a typical client engagement for you?

Anvil Media is a full-service search engine marketing agency that specializes in both paid (PPC) and organic (SEO) marketing services. Although we were founded in 2000, we started hiring employees in 2004 and are now one of Oregon’s largest SEM agencies. With 50 clients at any given time, we have a mix of ongoing and project-based work. While a standard SEM engagement includes ongoing management of SEO and PPC programs, we do have clients that benefit from the more cost-effective SEM consulting projects. Both special projects and ongoing clients appreciate our social media optimization, online reputation management and SEO PR service offerings, which we’ve been refining over the past few years.

2) What is the best way for somebody to learn Search Marketing?

When I jumped into the world of Internet marketing in 1996, there were very few newsletter or Web site resources, let alone books or classes. I was a self-taught SEM professional, but we’ve been able to develop a training regiment for new hires that lack the necessary SEM experience. Short of talking your way into an SEM agency with no experience, I recommend taking a gradual approach to learning. Start with the free resources like Web sites, newsletters and forums. Move up to books and seminars, then graduate to full coursework. A few of my favorite resources include: clickz.com, dmnews.com, seomoz.org, sempdx.org, sempo.org, searchengineland.com and searchenginewatch.com.

3) How do you define a successful Search Engine Marketing Campaign?

Speaking in generalities, a successful SEM campaign meets the desired objective (awareness, leads or sales are common with our clients). A truly successful campaign integrates existing knowledge, best practices and marketing programs (i.e. press releases, direct mail and advertising campaigns). Based on our experience, the clients with the most successful campaigns simply follow our advice. They ensure our recommendations are implemented from stem to stern, including initial keyword selection, key messages and offers in ad copy, landing page and Web site design and most importantly, conversion tracking. I personally wouldn’t be happy with less than a 400% ROI on any SEM campaign, although we’ve seen 6x that return for some clients.

SEMpdx President Mini-Interview With Kent Lewis of Anvil Media is a post from: SEMpdx

1) What is GTS Services and what is your role there?
GTS Services is primarily a software solutions company focused on the auto and flat glass industry. In short, their goal is to build profitability for each of their clients in the glass industry by offering business solutions that cut cost, increase margins, and make doing business easier.

I am the Director of Internet Marketing Strategies, so my role is to develop strategies for these businesses to succeed online. Some are large companies with full-blown marketing plans and budgets. Others are one location glass shops with very little budget or forward looking strategy development. Its my goal to build success for each, and find ways to overcome the challenges that each faces in their respective markets.

In other words, I research, develop, and implement online marketing plans, and integrate them with current offline marketing strategies and business models.

2) What is the business case for search engine marketing?

Other than a few large companies, the glass industry has been slow to adopt the Internet as an effective marketing medium. The business case here is not just for SEM, but for Internet Business Management in general; to get the (mostly privately owned) glass companies to embrace the Internet and use it effectively to increase their respective market share.

3) When a business owner outsources SEM, how much oversight should he/she maintain over the SEM process?
If the SEM consultant is worth the cost, the business owner should need to give very little oversight. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be involved. It’s important for principles to be involved to ensure everyone is going down the right path.

That said though, a good SEM/SEO/Internet Marketer…should have a total handle on the company’s online business. they should be able to proactively see problems, find solutions, and consistently drive online success.

SEMpdx Board Member Mini-Interview: Scott Orth (GTS Services) is a post from: SEMpdx