Featured speakers from the major search engines include Google’s Avinash Kaushik, Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist, Baidu’s Tianfang Feng, Chief Consultant, Search Engine Marketing and Yahoo’s Chi-Chao Chang, VP and GM, Global Search Operations and Marketplaces.

Additional speakers include yours truly David Temple, Global Search Lead, Dell, Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing, Crispin Sheridan, Advisory Board & Sr Director of Search Marketing Strategy, SAP, Allen Qu CEO, Netconcepts China, Brent Payne SEO Director, Tribune, Bill Hunt, SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting and others.

SES bills itself as “the leading global event series that educates delegates in search and social marketing, putting a special focus on tactics and best practices. SES Events provide instruction from the industry’s top experts, including representatives from the Search Engines themselves.”

Here are other Singapore SEMPO members;

Mr. Wayne Eo
Managing Director & Chief Internet Strategist
OOm Pte Ltd
Optimal Online Marketing

Mr. Adrian Tan
Director
clickTRUE Pte Ltd

Mr. Rif Chia
Director & Principal Consultant
Easy Business Needs

Mr. Shi Heng Cheong
Director
Finggle Pte Ltd

Mr. Jason Chew
Project Manager/Consultant
JasonChew.Net

Mr. Manoj Aravindakshan
Director
On Target Media & Marketing

Mr. Leonard Tan
Search Marketing Director
PurpleClick Media Pte Ltd

Tour Provides Opportunity for SEMPO to Learn about the Local Market and Promote
the Search Industry in Asia SINGAPORE–(Business Wire)–

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), www.sempo.org,
today announced that it will hold a series of events in connection with ad:tech
Singapore, June 9. Singapore is the first stop on a three-city Asian tour that
SEMPO is undertaking to foster the awareness of search engine marketing and
connect professionals in the region with Western markets. It will also provide a
rare occasion for search industry executives to network with local search engine
company representatives. Other stops include Beijing on June 12 and Mumbai on
June 15.

With the goal of creating a better understanding of search and its role in
marketing, the SEMPO delegation, which consists of Jeffrey Pruitt, SEMPO
Chairperson, Bill Hunt, SEMPO Board of Director. Motoko Hunt, Chairperson of
SEMPO Asia, and Paula Hunter, Director of Operations for SEMPO, will host a
number of evens. For more information about SEMPO’s Asia tour, visit

http://www.sempo.org/public_groups/asia/sempo_asia_tour/

SEMPO events in Singapore, all being held at the Suntec City International
Convention Centre, include:

* Seminar with presentations by representatives of search engine companies,
SEMPO and other organizations involved in the state of search, SEO, SEM and
social media
* Press conference
* ad:tech networking party with SEMPO representatives, delegates and sponsors

“Although SEMPO has had an active Asia Committee for some time, this is our
first official SEMPO Asia tour to spread awareness of SEMPO as a global
organization,” says Jeffrey Pruitt, SEMPO chairperson and the leader of the
SEMPO delegation. “We’re looking forward to networking with Singapore’s SEM and
SEO industry leaders and meeting the local media.”

For details about SEMPO’s Asia tour, visit
http://www.sempo.org/public_groups/asia/sempo_asia_tour/ or send an email to:
Asia-tour@SEMPO.org.

About the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)

SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing
industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Its purpose is to provide a
foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships,
fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating
research, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in
marketing.

Representing thousands in over 30 countries, SEMPO has more than 850 members. It
represents the common interests of companies and consultants worldwide and
provides them with a voice in the marketplace. SEMPO’s education and outreach
initiatives are funded in part by Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Superpages.com, ABC
Search, SMX and Search Engine Strategies. For more information, or to join the
organization, please visit http://www.SEMPO.org.

SEMPO
Jamie O’Donnell, + 415 606 5914
pr@sempo.org

Copyright Business Wire 2009

I’m really upset I didn’t make SMX Nanjing, China which is going on right now (September 23-24). It’s the first search marketing conference I’ve missed in China in 3 years. Inway Ni has done a great job of promoting search marketing in China and it is always been a privilige to be a part of his conferences. He made a great move partnering with SMX and is now putting on 2 conferences a year.

The good news though is SMX is coming to Singapore. When I moved here last year I didn’t think there would be a search marketing conference here for awhile and was pleasantly surprised when Barry Smyth contacted me asking about venues, etc. Search marketing is growing by leaps and bounds and this conference is going to expose many businesses to the advantages of sem. It will also draw speakers and delegates from around the region.

Gillian Muessig, president of world renowned search marketing resource SEOmoz.org, will be the keynote speaker and Bill Hunt, Motoko Hunt, and others will be here. After flying to the US for SES it is great to think of everybody coming over here, well not everybody, but you know what I mean. Hope to see you here if you can get out this way.

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!

I’ve got great news.  You are all  invited on the China Search Marketing Tour, May 19 – 28. The China Search Marketing Tour is an event partner of Search Engine Strategies which is being held in China May 25 – 26. Don’t worry if you haven’t been studying your Chinese, the entire conference is interpreted live.  You’ve gotta get your deposit in right away though. There are only 35 , 31, 28, 24, 22, 21,19, 17 tour memberships available so hurry. Call 1.800.865.6221 to join now. You can customize the tour to fit your schedule.

Here’s a list of those that are planning to go, in no particular order;  Abilash Patel,  Rand Fishkin, Matt Bailey, Kalena Jordan, Ian McAnerin, David Temple, Bill Hunt, Nick Wilsdon, Anna Wilsdon, Brooke Schumacher, Neil Patel, Dale Hursh, Cameron Olthius, Jarrod Hunt, Troy Ireland, Clint Danks, and Nicole St. Martin.

Here’s just a bit of the itinerary;

Today,  your introduction to China’s capital begins  with a tour of the largest open public area in the world,
Tian An Men SquareThen visit  the Ming Dynasty’s Forbidden City’s Imperial Palace including the living quarters and museums. In the afternoon you’ll tour the Summer Palace first built in 1750, destroyed in the war of 1860 and restored in 1886. Stroll in the footsteps of Empress Dowager CiXi as you visit the pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges which form an unmatched harmonious environment. Enjoy one of the most classic gardens in the world.

The tour includes;
4 & 5 Star Hotels
(In room high speed access at all hotels)
Additional guides/translators
Networking events
Business meetings
Transportation to and from airport
Transportation to and from all events
Flight Beijing to Shanghai, Xiamen, Hong Kong
All Meals include Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Entrance fees at tourist sites

Full tour in China 10 days- $2,750 plus $500 single supplement. Save $250 if you are a member of SEMPO or any SMA.  China Custom Tours +1.800.865.6221 will also arrange for your international airfare or customize your travel plans. Don’t wait, sign up now!

Update: The person with the most correct guesses will win a sponsorship on the China Search Marketing Tour, event partner of Search Engine Strategies.  For every person you match to what they said or who they tagged first, you get a point. So get guessing and pay attention to those memes! If you want to write your own questions about a meme on your blog then this would be a metameme.

A meme, in case you don’t know,  is “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” as defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976).  Richard was a zoologist and evolutionary scientist by the way. And no, that’s not a typo, it was indeed thirty years ago. I haven’t heard the word meme mentioned much since then but it’s all meme all the time on the blogosphere.

Now I’m not a meme-theorists by any means and I don’t understand “variation, mutation, competition, and “inheritance” nor how they “influence their replicative success”.  But  I do know memes flourish in the social media world and memes are here to stay. You can put it down to what those meme theorists call, memetic copying which means “to copy behaviour from observing other humans”.  Other species that can memetic copy besides us humans, are chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, dolphins and birds. Memetic copying in birds for example is when the young bird learns to sing from their parents.

The best description I found was by Susan Blackmore in this interview in response to the question about the life cycle of a meme.

Denis Failly – “How birth and spread of the ideas, are there any specific emerging conditions for a Meme, a kind of life cycle ?”

Susan Blackmore – “Any meme that can get copied will get copied. So the world is full of the successful memes – the rest having simply died away. There are countless ways in which memes can emerge. Every time you speak a new sentence that is a potential meme that might, or might not, get passed on. Your brain is a vast melting pot for memes and can easily put together old memes in new combinations to make new ones. This means that there is constantly a creative evolutionary process going on inside your head and between you and the people you communicate with. 

Some memes have long life-cycles. Plato’s Republic is a memeplex (group of memes that get passed on together) that first emerged thousands of years ago, was widely circulated, then nearly died out, and was later revived many times. Then it was translated into different languages and spread all over the world by modern technological meme machines.Other memes have short life cycles. A piece of gossip you heard and passed on to your neighbour may go no further and simply die out there.”

This pop quiz is about the meme “5 things you didn’t know about me”. Were you paying attention? I do know  Solo SEO was paying attention, just look at their The Blog Tag Tree. Nice job guys, you really took it to another level. 

If you were paying attention, what did you learn? This is not an open internet quiz by the way, you know, like an open book quiz. See how many you can get right without looking them up.  Just match the name to what they said and who they tagged and leave it in the comments. Example; Andy Beal 1b or Lisa Barone 5e.  

You’ll also notice there are more names than there are statements or list of who they tagged. Only the names that have both a statement and list of people they tagged are correct. You didn’t think this was going to be easy did you?

Chris Winfield  -  Andy Beal   -   Amanda Watlington   -   Danny Sullivan  -  Kim Krause Berg    -    Ian McAnerin 

 *Lisa Barone    -    Todd Malicoat    -    Rand Fishkin    -    Chris Hooley    -     Jarrod Hunt    -    Bill Slawski    – Lee Odden

Matt Cutts   -  *Dazzlin’ Donna Fontenot    -    Eric Enge - Jonathan Mendez    -    Joe Dolson -  Li Evans    -    Matt McGee    Jill Whalen

Who said what?

1. I’ve had conversations with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Not at the same time though…

2. Most people would never know I worked for several years for oil company lobbyists, as well as several Republican lobbying firms, plus the PA Dept. of Treasury

3. I’ve recently gotten very good at Ping Pong, although I’m nowhere close to as good as these guys.

4. When I worked at the Superior Court of Delaware, I once helped rescue a Capitol Police Officer and a County Sheriff from an escaping felon.
Bill Slawski correctly guessed on 1-21 by Keri Morgret

5. When I think of my little brother, my eyes well up. He goes to college in Pennsylvania and I only get to see him during Christmas. He’s my heart.

6. I think ichthyosaurs are pretty cool and discovered that domain name hadn’t been registered several years ago. Danny Sullivan  correctly guessed on 1-21 by Jill Whalen

7. I’ve been asked to STOP singing Karoke in no less than 5 countries so far (Canada, US, China, Japan and Korea).

8. Dachshunds are the coolest dogs in the world!

9.  My favorite sport is football – especially LSU football. In my family, we were raised from birth to be LSU footballs fans.

10. I played intramural football at the Univ. of WA my senior year and was team captain.

11.  I started my career as a hardware engineer, designing PC Boards for Loran C Transmitters (the navigation systems everyone used before GPS).

12.On a restless note — I love to drive. One summer I actually drove by myself from Seattle to Northern California, then on to Michigan and then back via the Dakotas to Seattle.

13.  I collect anything to do with pirates, I have for nearly 15 years now.

14. I own a set of turntables that I mix and scratch hip-hop and breakbeat music on just for fun (sample). “stuntdubl” was my “basement dj name” for music long before it was my online seo alter ego.

15. In 1999 I produced and directed the feature length documentary film “Tramps Like Us, The Music and Meaning of Bruce Springsteen”.

Who did they tag?

a. Ben Wills, Robert Scoble, Shoemoney (cos I know nothing about him), Neil Patel and Jeremy Zawodny.

b.Marc Macalua, , Stephan Spencer,  Dr. E. Garcia, Cindy Turrietta or Brooke Schumacher

c. Kim Krause, David Temple, Karl Ribas, Matt McGee and Li Evans.

d. Cameron, Neil and Rand have all been tagged already. I don’t see that SEOFangirl has been though.  Neither has Rebecca from SEOmoz.  I dont know if Rand is going to let Rebecca post a tag reply though, considering how much they are working on trying to reduce the noise, but she is definitely one of my favorite writers.

e.I would like to tag the following to add to the Wolf Clan line. Sophie Wegat, Barry Welford, Darren Moloney (Daz), Tamar and Chris and Dazzlin’ Donna Fontenot.

f. Here are the five people I’m tagging: Keri Mogret, Melanie Phung, Eric Hebert, John Mueller, and Tomy Lorsch.
Bill Slawski correctly guessed on 1-21 by Keri Morgret

g. Gary Price,  Mara Calishain  (who is a way, so maybe when she gets back and all’s better) Avi Rappaport,  Phil Bradley, Greg Notess

h. Yeah, Lisa, I’m dying to know what the asterisks mean as well! And Kim, I also saw that sentence in mybloglog stats yesterday, and was asking people why in the world someone would search for that. Now I know why, and I feel so much better!

i. Tagged no one

j. Hmmm – time to tag. How about Tamarof 10e20 (Techipedia is her personal blog), Greg of GoodROI, Brian of Copyblogger, TallTroll and incrediBILL. Not sure which of those have been “tagged” already or want to participate but I would be interested to see each of their responses.

k. Now here are some folks I’ve tagged that I want to know more about:Lisa Williams, Jeff Molander, Sam Harrelson ,  Rick Klau, Sam Decker.

l. OK now to tag 5 others:  David Wallace, Eric Enge, Debra Mastaler, Joe Dolson and since no one tagged him yet – Danny Sullivan, however if I missed that someone has, I’ll tag my fellow Eagles fan, Aussie Webmaster.

 m. So my attempts to tag some people: Michael Jensen, author of the blog tag tree, Philipp Lenssen, of Google Blogoscoped, David Temple, of SEO SEM Training & Certification, Vanessa Fox, of Google Webmaster Central, and that’s about all I can think of right now …

n. I’m going to make this a little difficult and tag: Jim Boykin, Greg Boser, Todd Friesen, Aaron Wall, and see if we can get Matt Cutts to admit he was like James Bond at the NSA
Added: After digging around on some sites – three of my tags have already been tagged, so I’d like to call out Cameron, Jarrod, and Mike.

o. My blog tags are Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Marshall Sponder, Matthew Roche and Bill

Put your answers in the comments and I’ll produce the answer sheet by Jan 30th and determine who got the most correct answers.  

Bonus question 1, what does the * next to two of the names mean?

Bonus question 2, who said “I don’t own a TV (and no, I only have 2 kids, and yes, they do moan about the lack from time to time!)” and tagged  “Being new to the blogging game, I’m not sure how many of bloggers I know or read will be up to this, but in case you are… James Enck,  Ian Hay,  Henk Kleynhans, Mike Stopforth, Avinash Kaushik  … you’re “it”! Hint: His name is not on the list at the top but is first on another list).

Furl – del.icio.us -  Technorati -  BlinkList -  Digg -  Google -  StumbleUpon -  Add to My Yahoo

Bill Hunt, co author of “Search Engine Marketing Inc. : Driving Search Traffic To Your Company’s Web Site“ is the CEO and founder of Global Strategies International (GSI).  In the book Bill shares the tips and techniques he’s learned working with numerous large search engine marketing (SEM) projects for clients such as AT&T, IBM, Intel, The Hartford, and Zurich Financial. You can learn a lot just by reading the book so imagine what you can learn at the sem seo training program.  The training program includes;

Module 1: Understanding Search, Your Website, and Your Market