Ready to Register? Click Here!SMX Toronto Agenda Detail – April 28th

Agenda-at-a-Glance | Day 1 April 28 | Day 2 April 29 | Tracks | Speakers | Register Now
Workshops April 26: WAA Intro to Web Analytics 101 | Getting Started with Social Media
Workshops April 27: WAA Search Analytics 201 | SEO Training with Bruce Clay | Google Analytics Training Day
SMX Toronto Agenda – April 28, 2011 – Expo Hours: 9:30am-7:30pm
8:30am-9:20am
(50 min)

General Session Keynote

The State of Search Marketing

Search has seen more change over the past year than any time since the very early days. While the fundamentals of core search marketing remain constant, new innovations and features such as Google Instant and the incorporation of social signals into relevance algorithms have been significant. Updates like the recent “Farmer/Panda” tsunami impacted the rankings of thousands of web sites. And new features and changes to ad programs have presented both opportunities and challenges for marketers. In this keynote, Search Engine Land executive editor Chris Sherman looks at recent changes and talks about where things may be going as search continues into the 2010s.

Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

CIVIC BALLROOM

10-minute Transition to Breakouts
9:30am-10:30am
(60 min)

SEO Must Know Fundamentals [SEO-Fundamentals] 9th sphere

[SEO-Fundamentals-1] Search Friendly Design, Development and Architecture:

“I’m not designing my site for search engines” is a common designer objection to SEO suggestions. But when search engines collectively have more users than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can’t afford to ignore how they interact with your site.

Search engines are like the third major browser, and if your site breaks for them, it breaks for all those potential visitors. Learn more about creating search engine friendly sites that can be attractive to both search engines and human visitors at the same time.

Moderator: Alan K’necht, Founder, K’nechtology
Speakers:
Dawn Wentzell, SpeakFeel Corp
Lyndsay Walker, Founding Partner, Digital Always Media
Christine Churchill, President, Key Relevance

CIVIC BALLROOM NORTH

Search and Social for 2011 [Social]

[Social-1] Google Instant: Impact 7 Months Later

When Google Instant rolled out seven months ago, delivering actual search results and ads as you type, the concept of personalized search took on new meaning and more emphasis was put on localized results. Some suggest that searcher behaviour is more engaged, iterative and sophisticated. If so, has change in searcher behaviour impacted SEO and SEM results? This session takes an in-depth look at Google Instant’s impact on search results, using hard data to detail the effects on clickthrough rates and other key metrics, with focus on what marketers need to know to maximize performance.

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land
Speakers:
Bill Barnes, VP Business Development, Enquiro (a Mediative Company)
Jeff Lancaster, Managing Director, Outrider Canada
Ian Everdell, Usability Consultant, Mediative

CIVIC BALLROOM SOUTH

10:30am-11:00am
(30 min)
Break
DOMINION NORTH
11:00am-12:00pm
(1 hour)

SEO Must Know Fundamentals [SEO-Fundamentals] 9th sphere

[SEO-Fundamentals-2] Keyword Research, Content Gaps and Copy Writing:
The first step to success with any marketing campaign is to know your message. With search marketing, that means knowing the search terms that are being used by your target audience through each phase of their decision making process. And though it sounds obvious, it helps to actually use those words in your web pages and avoid lost visibility due to content gaps! This session covers the importance of textual content to search engines and how you can create HTML title tags and body copy that works to not only generate search traffic, but to impact the searchers decision-making process.

Moderator: Christine Churchill, President, Key Relevance
Speakers:
Christine Churchill, President, Key Relevance
Laura MacKenzie-Callow, Senior Search Marketing Manager, Intuit
Jim Hedger, Partner, Digital Always Media

CIVIC BALLROOM NORTH

Search and Social for 2011 [Social]

[Social-2]How Ratings, Reviews, Blogging and Other Forms of User Generated Content Impact Search:
People are contributing to review sites and forums, they are giving their thumbs up and down, voting for what they like and dislike; writing blogs and publishing pictures and video of events and happenings wherever they go, while on the go. Recognizing this development, search engines are incorporating user generated content into search results. While the fundamentals of SEO remain the same, in 2011, achieving high search visibility will require much faster, more comprehensive SEO and Social Marketing strategies. In this session marketers show real life examples of Social Search strategies at work and the impact on organic search results.

Moderator: Jeff Quipp, Founder and CEO, Search Engine People Inc
Speakers:
Jeff Quipp, Founder and CEO, Search Engine People Inc
Douglas Karr, Author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies and CEO DK New Media
Gil Reich, VP, Product Management, Answers.com

CIVIC BALLROOM SOUTH

12:00pm-1:15pm
(1 hr 15 min)

Lunch – CHURCHILL FOYER
Networking in the Exhibit Hall – DOMINION NORTH

1:15pm-2:10pm
(55 min)

SEO Must Know Fundamentals [SEO-Fundamentals] 9th sphere

[SEO-Fundamentals-3] Link Building Essentials (and yes, it’s official, re-tweets are a form of link-building):
Ever since Google created PageRank more than a decade ago, every good search marketer’s motto has been “I link, therefore I am.” In fact, links are cited as four of the top five factors in the SEOMoz 2009 Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. They’re important! Though linking seems easy, it’s a far more subtle art than most realize, and there are right and wrong ways to conduct your linking campaign. In this session, we’ll look at new link-building opportunities through social media, how to reach out and get quality links from relevant and influential websites, how to craft anchor text to build authority, and how to avoid commonplace mistakes that will hurt your web credibility (and search engine rankings).

Moderator: Christine Churchill, President, Key Relevance
Speakers:
Dawn Wentzell, SpeakFeel Corp
Dev Basu, President, Powered by Search
Kate Morris, SEO Consultant, Distilled

CIVIC BALLROOM NORTH

Search and Social for 2011 [Social]

[Social-3] The Social Search Dynamic: Social Signals & Search
Social Search is commonly defined as the inclusion of social content in the context of online search. It’s no longer theoretical. Both Google and Bing say that they factor social signals into their ranking algorithms for “regular” search results. Who you are socially, your authority, the authority of those who talk about you (or your company) all play a role. This session looks at how social signals are currently being used with search.

Moderator: Jeff Quipp, Founder and CEO, Search Engine People Inc
Speakers:
Jeff Lancaster, Outrider
Eric Enge, Co-Author, The Art of SEO

CIVIC BALLROOM SOUTH

2:15pm-3:00pm
(45 min)

SEO Must Know Fundamentals [SEO-Fundamentals] 9th sphere

[SEO-Fundamentals-4] SEO Live Site Reviews:

Join us for a lively, interactive session where the audience and our expert SEO Site Reviewers examine some attendee websites making recommendations on how to improve SEO effectiveness.

Speaker:
Christine Churchill, Key Relevance
Alan K’necht, K’nechtology
(Audience participation welcome)

CIVIC BALLROOM NORTH

SMX Technology Labs

DAC Group Lab: The Power of Scale

DAC GroupStop chasing search engines. Go to where they are headed: a better user experience. How’s that working, anyway? Half of all Google queries contain three or more words (meaning, specific searches), yet fully two-thirds of those yield no exact-match results – in other words, demand for relevant content is outstripping supply by nearly 30%!

What happens when you turn that equation on its head? By offering unique, non-duplicate QUALITY content all the way down the long tail; by creating a powerful, conversion-architected destination infrastructure for best-practice, channel-integrated marketing, is there a benefit? Yes. There is.

DAC Group and Amerispec of Canada, a ServiceMaster brand, had the challenge of generating qualified leads across a wide footprint in a way that was brand compliant and localized. This lab will show how to target, capture, direct, convert and monetize net-new qualified traffic – for the measurable benefit of the business:

  • Maximum yield through higher conversion to action
  • Greater share of ‘free’ traffic through SEO-ready content
  • Increased authority & relevance via the network effect
  • Scalability, economies, optimization & reporting

Are you ready?

There’s a target. DAC Group’s unique approach and proprietary technology platforms are the rocket fuel.

Speaker: Ken Dobell, President, DAC Digital

CIVIC BALLROOM SOUTH

3:00pm-3:30pm
(30 min)
Break
DOMINION NORTH
3:30pm–4:30pm
(60 min)

SEO Advanced

[SEO-Advanced-4] Industrial Strength SEO for Big Sites:
Managing SEO for a large web site isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ve got major technical challenges, such as dealing with content management systems, optimizing for thousands or millions of keywords, multiple domains, often in multiple countries, constantly changing content… and those don’t even factor in the major “people challenges” of training and managing diverse teams, dealing with competing stakeholders, placating meddling executives… and the beat(ing) goes on. In this session, our panel of experts have all wrestled with SEO for huge websites and won, and share their unique insights and battle scars.

Moderator: Gil Reich, VP Product Management, Answers.com
Speakers:
Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Laura Callow-Mackenzie, Senior Search Marketing Manager, Intuit
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay Inc
Guillaume Bouchard, President, NVI

CIVIC BALLROOM NORTH

Search and Social for 2011 [Social]

[Social-4] Leveraging Video and YouTube:
YouTube is either the second or third largest search engine in the world with 24 hours of video uploaded every minute and people watching 2 billion videos a day. If you are not leveraging the numerous marketing opportunities available through YouTube, you may be overlooking a huge potential source of traffic and revenue, not to mention social influence. In this session you’ll learn about the multitude of paid and free opportunities available to marketers as well as insight into proven methods for leveraging YouTube, and more importantly, getting found on YouTube.

Moderator: Meg Davis, User Experience Strategist at Extractable
Speakers:
Manny Rivas, SEO Account Manager, aimClear
Christina Keffer, Search Account Manager, LunaMetrics
Meg Davis, User Experience Strategist at ExtractableCIVIC BALLROOM SOUTH
15-minute Transition
4:45pm–5:45pm
(1 hour)

SEO Advanced

[SEO-Advanced-5] Your Toughest Technical SEO Questions Answered:
No power point here! This session is all about Q&A to solve the specific technical issues you’re having. Bring your toughest questions! Topics will likely include URL canonicalization (pagination, faceted navigation, breadcrumbs, parameters, analytics tracking, redirects, localized URLs…), aggregation and duplication, crawl inefficiency (when should you 404 vs. redirect? Is the canonical tag the same as a 301? How to use status codes effectively), globalization (serving regional content based on IP address, blocking certain regions from restricted content…). Our panelists will have real answers to these tricky issues and more.

Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Speakers:
Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Jonathan Hochman, Founder, Hochman Consultants

CIVIC BALLROOM NORTH

Search and Social for 2011 [Social]

[Social-5] Multi-lingual Social and Search:
Organizations that want to communicate information and/or sell products and services in both French and English grapple with multi-lingual strategies. Canada has two official languages, positioning many Canadian search marketers as experts at rolling out successful global search and social media marketing programs. In this session you’ll learn proven multi-lingual search and social media strategies, pitfalls to avoid and practices to embrace.

Moderator: Alex Langshur, CEO, Public Insite
Speakers:
Guillaume Bouchard, NVI
Ani Lopez, VKI Studios
Jean-François Renaud, Co-founder, Adviso

CIVIC BALLROOM SOUTH

8:00pm-11:00pm
(3 hrs)
SMX Search PARTY!
DAC Group
Search Engine People

SMX Search Party!
Located at Harlem Underground, 745 Queen Street West – Show your SMX pass at the door!

At-A-Glance | Agenda April 28 | Agenda April 29