The Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo will open today at the New York Hilton with at least 133 sponsors, exhibitors and speakers showing the latest tools and zeroing in on the latest trends and issues in search. AOL Search, Ask.com, 24/7 Real Media, 360i and Yahoo are just some of the big name companies that will be in attendance.
The three-day conference begins with a keynote from search guru Danny Sullivan. The days to follow will be filled with innovative thoughts and recommendations having to do with search — the fastest growing sector of direct marketing.
The sessions planned for this year’s show are different than other ones. This year, more attention will be dedicated to integrating search into the marketing mix, and there will be more forward thinking sessions. Also those offered will focus on the latest information and strategies on video search, pod cast, audio and mobile optimization.
Industry executives are excited about this show, because over the past year there have been many innovative technological advances and significant developments that have affected advertisers and search engine marketers. The conference presents an opportunity to address these advances.
The ad dollars spent on search also highlights the industry’s powerful value and might. A recent SEMPO survey noted that advertiser spent $9.4 billion on search engine marketing in 2006. How to calculate the return on investment from the dollars behind a company’s search marketing efforts will be among the topics discussed.
Some of the other topics include:
- How to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank a company at the top of search engine results;
- How to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors;
- How to build links that generate traffic to a company’s Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines;
- What’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how companies can profit from those changes.
