Search Engine Strategies (SES) – this is the “grandaddy” of search engine marketing conferences started by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman back in the 20th century. The first SES was held on November, 18 1999 in San Francisco, California.

The conference went international that same year. It is regularly held in Chicago, London, New York, Toronto and San Jose each year. It has made a brief apperance in China as well. The conference has gone from a one day affair with a few hundred participants, to a week long event with more than 6,000 attendees. How many people get their search engine marketing training at these conferences?

Search Marketing Expo – Danny and Chris left Search Engine Strategies and started their own search engine marketing conference, SMX, in June 2007. The first SMX event was the Search Marketing Expo Advanced, a two day event held in Seattle. Today SMX has a variety of conferences including SMX Social Media Marketing, SMX West as well as several international events including SMX Munich, SMX China and SMX Singapore among others.

Webmaster PubCon – This conference actually officially started in London in 2000 when “over 125 WebmasterWorld members showed up at the Cittie of Yorke Pub in London”. The conference was first held in the US in Irvine, California in 2002 and has been hosted in many other cities including, Austin, Boston, Orlando, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. Lately Pubcon has been held in Las Vegas, obviously a crowd pleaser.

Those are the ‘big 3′ in search marketing conferences but there are several smaller conferences that are worth noting. Please add any I may have missed in the comments, thanks.

Scary SEO – sponsored by Dave Snyder and Jordan Kasteler of Search & Social and held in Boca Raton, Florida in October on the 24th and 25th.

Think Tank – put on by one the friendliest guys in seo, DK from Purpose Inc. Here’s what he says on his web page. “The think tank will start off by bringing the ThinkTankers together to meet and become friends”. This was last held in Del Mar, a beautiful upscale resort town in northern San Diego county, September 27 – 28, 2008.

Search Fest – SEMpdx is holding this Search Engine Marketing conference in the Pacific Northwest. SearchFest 09, will take place at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon on March 10, 2009

Elite Retreat – this conference is an exclusive event started in 2007 by Jeremy Schoemaker. Their tagline is ‘Two days that will change your business life!’ You actually have to apply for this event and is more than just search marketing but that seems to be the target audience. Next event to be held February 18th-20th, 2009 in San Francisco, California.

Search Marketing World 2008, Conference & Expo – held in Ireland April 3rd, 2008 at the Crowne Plaza in Dublin.

SEO Roadshow – Last held in Limerick, Ireland October 11, 2008.

Two days that will change your business life!
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. Bring your business plan or current site objectives with you and we will help you optimize your business structure.

Leaders at this Elite Retreat in San Francisco are Jeremy Schoemaker, Neil Patel, Aaron Wall and Brian Clark, Andy Liu, Margie Zable Fischer with the keynote from Guy Kawasaki. Here’s feedbck from the frst Elite Retreat held last year in San Antonio, Texas by Chris Hooley of ThinkBait.

I know that I sometimes sound like a fan boy when I talk about some of the SEOs I respect, but seriously, this was worth so more than the price tag. I made at least one good friend and a few awesome new business associates (more so than when you go to a big conference). The reason I think they should raise their price is because the size of the group made it special, and the info the we got was so much more specific than any other conference I’ve ever attended. More people will want to be at the next conference for sure, but I don’t know that it will be as effective. The price, certainly was worth it. Great job to all invovled in the Elite Retreat!

Enrollment during November reached peak levels as a broad spectrum of agency, in-house and etailer marketers registered for courses. “These professionals know they are going into the New Year with the competitive advantage of high-end SEM knowledge,” says Terry Plank, dean of SEMPO Institute. “As they complete their courses, they can immediately put this knowledge into practice to better serve clients and achieve greater success.”

Simon Heseltine, one of the first to complete the Fundamentals course writes about his experience on his blog Search Engine Tigers. Keep in mind this was early in the process and things may have changed.

All in all, its not a bad start for the SEMPO institute. I’d like to see them do some randomization in the questions, and maybe implement and external testing / maximum amount of retakes policy. Then the certificate of completion will actually mean more. As for whether I’ll recommend that the rest of my team take it. I will, but probably in a month or so, when some of the kinks have been corrected. I’ll also be signing up for the advanced courses when they become available.

Search Engine College, has launched a neat little wiki chock full of info about search engines and search engine marketing. It looks like a lot of work went into compiling this incredible resource. The developers, Kalena and Jerry Jordan are asking users to suggest resources and definitions to be added. The Search Engine Wiki (BETA), is the world’s first vertical wiki dedicated to search engines and search engine marketing. The idea behind Search Engine Wiki is to provide a collaborative online library of search engine marketing (SEM) resources.

Some of the extensive resources found on the site include:

Lists of international search engines – categorized by country, type and industry.
A glossary of definitions for common terms used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
A library of search engine marketing articles.
Employment resources listing SEO, PPC and SEM job vacancies.
A collection of popular search engine marketing blogs and news feeds.
Frequently Asked Questions about search engines and SEM.
Lists of popular search engine marketing tools and time saving software.
Links to upcoming search industry conferences and events.
Introductions to well known search industry personalities.

Kalena and Jerry Jordan are the founders of Search Engine College, an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses. They are also country sponsors (Australia) for the China Search Marketing Tour.

I’ll be speaking on the Keyword Research panel with my friend Farah Sadiq from here in Singapre and the session will be moderated by my Canadian friend and host of the China Search Marketing Tour, Ian McAnerin. I’ll also moderate the Succesful Site Architecture session. Hope to see you there!

Farah Sadiq has had 12 years of hands-on and managerial digital marketing experience in Asia. Prior to joining Acronym Asia, Farah was the Head of Media at Profero Singapore Pte Ltd, In 2003, Farah joined Oracle Asia Pacific technology marketing team as their lead for all digital marketing and direct marketing activities. She had worked with international brands such as Daimler Chrysler Asia Pacific, Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Group, Buena Vista International, Citibank APA, Ericsson APA, Fuji Xerox APA and Seagrams APA.

Ian McAnerin is a well known expert in international SEO and the founder of McAnerin Networks Inc. He is the President of the Search Marketing Association of North America (SMA-NA), a moderator for both the High Rankings and the Search Engine Watch forums, and is widely published. He also has special interest in SEO legal issues due to his legal background.

Here’s the email;

SEMPO Institute is Pleased to Announce
Advanced Search Advertising is now open for enrollment.

Advanced Search Advertising gives marketers the ability to get more return on their ad buys by providing a deeper level of strategy and tactics. The class is the most comprehensive class available to marketers and it comes at a time when online advertising is growing in importance. Topics include PPC Models, Keywords & Campaign, Copywriting for Ads, Bidding & Ranking, Landing Pages, Success Metrics, PPC Program Specifics, Reporting & Analytics and more.

Enjoy the flexibility of learning via the Internet. Work at your own pace and at your own convenience, from home, work or the local coffee shop. Earn a Certificate of Completion upon successfully passing the tests within the course.

The course fee for Advanced Search Advertising is US $2250 and has a prerequisite of Fundamentals of Search Marketing. SEMPO members, full-time students and military personnel receive course discounts which are detailed on SEMPO Institutes enrollment page.

Please contact Katie Donovan at kdonovan@sempoinstitute.com with any questions regarding this course or any other offering from SEMPO Institute.

Best regards,

SEMPO Institute
www.sempoinstitute.com

In his most recent game, I correctly guessed that it was Kim Krause Berg’s Cre8tive Flow blog. Kim who is one to give credit where credit is due wrote;

One teeny clarification…the blog is not entirely mine. It’s the Cre8asiteforums blog and has a staff of writers from both the Membership and the moderators. It’s Editor in Chief is Elizabeth Able.

So Chris asked me a few questions so he could write a bit about my blog. Normally I’d just send him the answers in email but I wanted to let everyone know about the great job he is doing at the MIMA blog so I’m posting the answers here. Of course Chris can get my answers and put them on the MIMA blog but he’s already mentioned me several times and I think his readers may be tired of hearing about me. My site China Search Marketing Tour was the subject of game 3 and he interviewed Boris Mordkovich about the hot magazine, Search Marketing Standard and reviewed the edition that included my article on sem training.

Here are the questions Chris asked;

There are quite a few training courses popping up around the industry, what should people look for when trying to decide which one to take? * Are there any standard certifications that are accepted industry wide? Do you think there is any practical way of creating one? * How do you think search marketing education will evolve? One last thing: how did you guess Kim’s site?

There are quite a few training courses popping up around the industry, what should people look for when trying to decide which one to take? Chris there are indeed quite a few sem training courses popping up these days. I think people interested in taking these courses should look for the training that best fits their needs. You can tell pretty quickly how advanced some of these courses are and you should find one that meets your skill level. People should also see who the instructors are and do a little research about them. And finally, find one that fits your budget.

Are there any standard certifications that are accepted industry wide?Good question Chris, the simple answer is no. Since there are no industry standards then any of the certification programs have to stand on their own merit. For example SEMPO offers their own search marketing certification but those courses are developed by SEMPO members and the standards are based on what those members determine to be best practices. That could be different standards than other sem certification or training courses.

Do you think there is any practical way of creating one? Again because of there are no industry standards then developoing an industry wide acceptable certification would be difficult. I’d like to see some independent organization rate the training programs and help integrate an experience component to the certification.

How do you think search marketing education will evolve?I think there will be more and more sem training and certification courses popping up as the need for search engine marketing experts grow. The good ones will rise to the top as people who took the courses get hired by leading search marketing firms and the others will struggle. Again experience will always trump a certification so people should make sure they develop a portfolio of their work.

One last thing: how did you guess Kim’s site?Now Chris if I told you that then everybody would use my method and it wouldn’t be fair. Let’s just say I like to network on MyBlogLog and leave it at that.

Thanks Chris for you work on the MIMA blog and for the fun “Guess the Internet Marketing Site”, game. Best wishes to you and all the MIMA members.

Much of my time since I’ve been back is catching up with the work at my current job and preparing for interviews for a new job. Well all that work paid off and I accepted the position today. My new title is Regional Head of Search – Asia Pacific at Neo@Ogilvy.

Neo@Ogilvy, owned by WPP Group’s Ogilvy & Mather, is a full-service digital and direct media company that manages digital media investment for global clients covering digital advertising and direct marketing, digital and direct TV, direct response print and email, email marketing, search marketing, and new forms of digital media such as blogs and vlogs

If that company sounds familiar, its because you may have heard about it when they bought Bill Hunt’s company, Global Strategies International. Bill and his lovely wife Motoko, a fellow blogger at Multilingual Search and active SEMPO member, are kind and generous and its been wonderful knowing them over the last couple of years. I used to study Bill’s book Search Engine Marketing Inc., every morning when I went into work early to avoid the traffic. And now to think I’ll be working for Bill, and in Singapore no less. My wife Annie and I are really looking forward to the move and invite all of you to come visit us.

Blog posts will continue to be light as we prepare for our move but I will post when I get a chance and pick up again regularly when we get settled. Thanks by the way to Bill for making this happen and everyone in the search marketing industry for all your love and support. It would be impossible for me to name each and everyone of you but you know who you are. SEO’s rule!

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.