Andy Beal’s SEM Scholarship contest is well underway and there are some great articles out there. I wanted to give a shout out to my friend and fellow China traveler Nicole St. Martin aka SEMgirl. Nicole has written an article for the contest entitled “So You Wanna Be A Search Marketer” where she talks about the qualities you need to make it in this wacky seo world. Her first and my personal favorite quality for a search marketer is “passion”. Now one thing that many of the people I know in this field have and that is passion. Just take a look at responses to guys like Jason Calacanis and Dave Pasternack when they bash seo. This industry if full of passionate people. Please take a look at Nicole’s entry and read some of the others ones while you’re there and feel the “passion”.
April 16, 2007
April 1, 2007
SEM training offered by Search Engine Strategies in New York
SEM training courses will be offered by Search Engine Strategies in New York prior to the SES conference. The courses will be held on Monday April 9th and the SES conference will start on Tuesday. The sem training will be led by Shari Thurow, Matt Bailey, Jennifer Laycock, Debra Mastaler, Amanda Watlington, Greg Jarboe, Nan Dawkins and Rob Key.
Search Engine Strategies sem training will include;
Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques – Shari Thurow
This presentation will demonstrate how these skills are essential for building a user–friendly, search–friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.
Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques – Debra O’Neil-Mastaler
Need links? In order to rank well and successfully promote your online business, you need an effective link building program as part of your over-all SEO strategy.
Search & Analytics Workshop: Using Analytics to Increase Search Effectiveness – Matt Bailey
Analytics are a gold mine of information, just waiting to be uncovered. The results of your campaigns, effectiveness of the website, and the efficiency of your rankings can all be measured with a good analytics program.
Getting Found in All The Right Places – Greb Jarboe – Amanda Watlington
Everyone who promotes Web sites as part of their work should attend this workshop. Web marketers should understand how to optimize and leverage their content and its distribution across news, blog, social, image, audio and video search engines.
Viral Marketing & Link Baiting – Jennifer Laycock
In this workshop, you will gain a better understanding of the concepts, ideas and implementations that are required to launch a viral marketing or link baiting campaign.
Creating an Effective Social Media Strategy – Nan Dawkins – Rob Key
The power of social media, together with its increasing visibility in search engines, has made it incumbent for brands to engage in these “Web 2.0” environments, including blogs, social networks, wikis, and more
March 26, 2007
SEM Scholarship – take two from Marketing Pilgrim
If you didn’t get a chance to follow last year’s SEM Scholarship contest, then you don’t want to miss this. Andy Beal’s pulling out all the stops and offering a scholarship worth more than $10,000. That includes a full conference pass to Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, and the winner will have their article published in Search Marketing Standard, an sem industry magazine.
Last year’s winner Ben Wills wrote a great piece on social media and has been a busy guy since he won. The new Marketing Pilgrim SEM Scholarship Contest is on again and “this time it’s bigger, better and badder than before!”
I entered this contest last year and really enjoyed the challenge of driving as much traffic in a week as I could. I finished 12th out of 48 entries and had a great time doing it. My entry was in the last week when other procrastinators like myself waited until the last minute. So we were competing against more weekly entries than the others.
This year all entries will be printed at the same time and there will be 5 finalists instead of the 4 last year. Contestants will also have 4 weeks to promote their story. The finalists are chosen based on the number of unique page views they have and then the excellent panel of judges picks the final winner.
The deadline for all entries is April 6, 2007.
- There will be ONLY ONE ROUND OF ENTRIES. Unlike last year – with four weekly deadlines – there will be just one chance to submit your article.
- The biggest suggestion from last year was that one week to build traffic to an article, really didn’t demonstrate the true abilities of a search marketer. This time around, you’ll have a full 4 weeks to spread the word, drive traffic, build links, etc.
- We’ll have five finalists this year, instead of four.
Once again the panel of judges is a who’s who list of the search marketing world.
Kim Krause Berg – UsabilityEffect.com
Jim Boykin – WebBuildPages.com
Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz.org
Andrew Goodman – Page-Zero.com
Michael Jensen – SoloSEO.com
Kalena Jordan – SearchEngineCollege.com
Jennifer Laycock – SearchEngineGuide.com
Todd Malicoat – Stuntdubl.com
Boris Mordkovich – SearchMarketingStandard.com
Lee Odden – TopRankBlog.com
Elisabeth Osmeloski – SearchEngineWatch.com
Neil Patel – PronetAdvertising.com
Barry Schwartz – RustyBrick.com
Brett Tabke – WebmasterWorld.com
Laura Thieme – BizResearch.com
Aaron Wall – SEOBook.com
This is one contest you don’t want to miss either as a participant or a reader. There were some great articles last year and I imagine this year there will be even more.
If you don’t want to miss the contest updates and deadlines, subscribe to the RSS feed. Best wishes to all the contestants!
March 3, 2007
SEO Class launches March 23rd with a pro bono workshop in New York
Another search engine marketing training course, SEO Class, announced they are launching with an inaugrual one day event in New York. This one day event is open only to non profit organizations. The first commercial class will be a two day session and will also be held in New York on May 17 – 18. Cost for the SEO Class runs $2,999.
The presenters, all of the are well know in the search marketing industry, include;
Jeremy “Shoemoney” Shoemaker – an important player in the search engine marketing world, and his knowledge and expertise make him one of the top go-to guys for PPC, arbitrage, SEM, branding, and online income optimization. Jeremy is also a cofounder of the Elite Retreat.
Rae “Sugarrae” Hoffman – Nine years ago Rae started a small website about her son and his medical condition that became one of the first international support groups and largest website in general on the topic.
Todd “Stuntdubl” Malicoat – has been creating websites since 1997, and embraced the seo school of thought in mid 2002. He is currently an independent marketing consultant from the SEO school of thought.
Greg “GoodROI” Niland – a moderator at Webmaster World and every week he hosts the GoodKarma Internet Marketing radio show on WebmasterRadio.fm.
Michael “Graywolf” Gray – has a passion for computers and technology began in the early 1980’s as he spent his free time learning to program, and by participating in early online communities like AOL, compuserve, and Prodigy. He began publishing personal and hobby web pages in 1997 and professionally for online businesses in 1998.
February 28, 2007
SEO Clinic brought to you by the friendly folks at SEJ
The friendly folks at Search Engine Journal recently announced their SEO Clinic. If you’ve ever seen Pimp My Site at Search Engine Strategies or followed Neil Patel and Cameron Olthuis at Pronet Advertising’s Pimp My Links then you have a good idea what the SEO Clinic is all about.
If not, then you’re in for a real treat. SEO Clinic is free but not for the faint of heart. You might get some Simon Cowellesque remarks so be prepared. You will definitely get some great advice about link building, site navigation, usability, copywriting, social media optimization and other seo techniques from the people listed below, as well as the occasional guest.
Loren Baker : I’ve been involved in SEO for almost 10 years and my specializations are in basic on-site content oriented SEO, meta data, link building, local search, news & blog search optimization and social news marketing.
Carsten Cumbrowski :Carsten tends to lean more to the technical side of SEO, building affiliate sites, working with content management systems & databases, supplemental results, and even dabs in the grey hat on occasion.
Jessica Bowman :Jessica is also a long time SEO expert and her focus is on usability, driving conversions and reeling in users.
Garrett French : Garrett’s strengths are in SEO copywriting and social media optimization. Mr. French is currently starting a new company, so his time is sparse, yet his insight is valuable.
Ahmed Bilal :Ahmed is another SEO and Search Marketing specialist with expertise in professional blogging, link baiting and link building.
Rhea Drysdale : Rhea, the newest Resident Pimp, focuses on merging SEO, Paid Search, Social Media Optimization, content development, split testing and Public Relations initiatives all into one fine and effective SEO campaign.
Gemme van Hasselt : Gemme is an Internet Marketing Consultant who lives in Shanghai and specializes in SEO. With his base in China and International background, Gemme can lend some outside gathering of the box ideas to SEO campaigns.
To participate, fill out the SEO Clinic form here and cross your fingers. You’ll surely learn a thing or two and your website will only get better.
February 21, 2007
7 reasons to treat yourself to an Elite Retreat seat
If you haven’t heard about the Elite Retreat then you’ve most certainly have heard about the people involved. And the Elite Retreat may be playing in your town. The original Elite Retreat was held in San Antonio,Texas and included Aaron Wall, Lee Dodd, Jeremy Schoemaker and Dave Taylor. Jeremy Schoemaker, Cofounder says in their introductory video, “Come join us for two days that will change your business life forever”.
Planned retreats are scheduled this year in San Francisco, Orlando, Chicago, Phoenix and Dallas. Here’s a recap from the San Antonio Elite Retreat by Chris Hooley.
The next Elite Retreat is being held in San Francsico March 19th and 20th. The Elite Retreat is in fact “elite”, as in exclusive and pricey coming in at $4, 950. So is it worth it? Well I’ll give you 7 reasons to go and then you tell me.
1. Guy Kawasaki – Keynote Speaker – venture capitilast
2. Jeremy Schoemaker – sem expert
3. Lee Dodd – social networking expert
4. Aaron Wall – seo expert
5. Darren Rowse – blogging expert
6. Kris Jones – online media expert
7. Neil Patel – marketing consultant
So you tell me. Is it worth it? All I know is this is a pretty impressive lineup and I’d sure go if I could. Go ahead, treat yourself. By the way, Joe Whyte has some great interviews with some of these guys over at Lunar Pages Blog.
Date: Monday March 19th and Tuesday March 20th
Location: San Francisco Downtown Courtyard, San Francisco, CA
Meals: Breakfast and lunch will be provided Monday and Tuesday.
The Leaders: Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, Lee Dodd, Aaron Wall, Darren Rowse, and more!
Attendees: This event is very exclusive and has limited availability. Attendees will be chosen by an application only process. The purpose of this event is to take your business to another level, from good to great. Bring your business plan or current site objectives with you and we will help you optimize your business structure. This would definintely benefit you to bring your team or just your coder so you can work together on what you learn.
Hotel Information: The San Francisco Downtown Courtyard is located in the heart of beautiful San Francisco. The rate for hotel rooms is $209/night and reservations may be made by calling the hotel at 415-947-0700 and use “Elite Retreat” to get the discounted rate. The deadline to book your room at the group rate is by March 10th.
February 2, 2007
Rerun: A Cuttlet, Sullivanite, Whalenone, Fishkinhead, Grehanian, and McAnerinist shares his A list
A list’s are a hot topic these days so I decided to ante up with my sem seo A list. I’m only a D lister, make that D- lister! This A list is of the people I look up to. Let’s call them my sem seo look up to’s but please don’t call them my heroes. Sorry if you didn’t make this list, or if you don’t agree with my choices.
One quality my sem seo look up to’s share in common is that they share and share they do. If you took all the content they’re responsible for and stacked it up, well you get the picture. Thanks to all of you for not only sharing but for being just great fun to be around!
These guys are great but they’re not my heroes. I think they have hero like qualities by my heroes are those young men and women fighting for us each day. My heroes are all of those that have gone before them. My heroes are the people that care for those less fortunate. My heroes are those that first respond to a disaster. My heroes are everywhere but my look up to’s are on my sem seo A list. And no Kim, I didn’t add Jill to keep you from blogging about this.
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