Let the Conferences Begin!

It’s Fall 2012 conference season!  It’s like back to school for marketers!  Sometimes DBE is the student, sometimes we’re the professors.  In any event, we enjoy the information exchange with the other smart people driving the digital marketing industry forward.

Here’s what’s coming up in September and October:

Next week I’ll be at Content Marketing World in Columbus, Ohio from September 4-6.  I’m looking forward to listening to all of the speakers and the questions from the engaged audiences they’re sure to attract.  Joe Pulizzi’s conferences are always spot on and I absolutely enjoy them start to finish.  Registered?  If not yet, save $100…use discount code DBE12 for $100 off the registration fees. Expires at 5:00 p.m. Eastern on Friday 8/31.

In New York City on October 1, Marc Englesman our director of client strategies, is hosting a panel discussion at SMX East:  What Worries Digital Marketers & What You Can Do About It.  The session is sponsored by SEMPO, the industry association for search (and social) marketers.  According to SEMPO’s most recent State of Search Report, algorithm updates, mobile, and local were the top emerging trends that marketers are challenged to address. And while both agencies and brands similarly prioritized these challenges, the survey results showed that there are differences in how they are responding to them. It’s sure to be a lively discussion with representatives from agencies and client-side teams. 

On October 4, I’ll be speaking at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston, joined by our long-time client Deborah French of Q Center.  We’ll be talking about how B2B companies can leverage SEO-cial and quantify the results to make the CMO proud.  I’m going to overview SEO-cial concepts for marketers and share a few, short case studies.  Deb is going to kick it up a few notches with her presentation on how Q Center approached social media marketing and integrated it with SEO.  She’ll share the early missteps, what she learned from them, and the successes that followed—what she thought she knew and what she knows now. Good stuff!  Want to make your CFO happy?  Use this promotion code to get $200 off:  SPEAK200

Then I’m off to Hollywood—Digital Hollywood that is.  I’m speaking at the Digital Hollywood conference in Marina Del Rey from October 15-18.  My session is at 2:15 p.m. on Thursday and I’ll be sharing perspectives on how to repurpose SEO-cial to build audiences for entertainment properties:  trailers, direct to Web films, webisodes, RP games, and more.  California here I come!

But wait, there’s more.  Marc is in Santa Clara from October 22-25 speaking at the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) on October 25.  He’ll share perspectives and case studies for why Real SEO Requires a Really Integrated Content Marketing Strategy and demonstrate how a planned and intelligently executed interweaving of content—text, infographics, video, and more—on owned, earned, and paid properties enables companies to tell their stories in ways that make connections and generate quantifiable business actions with forecastable ROI.

We hope to see you in our travels.  If you’re where we are, let’s connect in person!

SEO and SEA Comparison Reloaded – What’s Changed?

In 2005, we published “SEO and SEA Comparison,” and to date, it’s still one of our most popular blog posts.  The reality, though, is that a lot has changed (and surprisingly stayed the same) in the past seven years.

For starters, we’ve replaced the term “SEA” or Search Engine Advertising with PPC – Pay Per Click advertising. This broader term applies to both search engine ads, as well as social media ad formats. 

SEO is still SEO, however, the key signals that search engines use to evaluate websites have shifted considerably since 2005, as outlined by SEOMoz:

With Google’s latest algorithm updates, the emphasis on the number of links to improve your SEO has shifted to focus more on the relevance and authority of the links, the quality of your site content, and the overall user experience.  So since 2005, we’ve introduced a new concept to achieve top listings…

SEO-cial = SEO + Social

Social signals have become increasingly important to search engine ranking algorithms.  When used with traditional white-hat SEO and PPC, it creates a dynamic digital marketing program:

Viewing SEO, PPC, and context marketing as a single unit – SEO-cial – affects your SEO in a multitude of ways. 

The quality of your content on your properties – not only your website, but your social media channels as well – also contributes toward your SEO.   High-quality, keyword-targeted content gets shared and talked about, which earns you more relevant in-bound links from authoritative sources!

The key takeaway from our update is not to compare SEO and PPC, but to emphasize how vital it is to use them in tandem.  As components to an SEO-cial approach, they each have their own distinct qualities that, in unison, make them powerful tools in allowing your page to dominate search engine rankings.