The SMX East Panels You Shouldn't Miss
I’ve got my pass for SMX East 2014 and I’m ready to go to one of the biggest Search Marketing conferences in the country. After scouring the agenda, I thought I’d share my top must-see panels with you, as well as give you this Twitter cheat sheet of key moderators to follow:
Tweets from https://twitter.com/michaelb3600/lists/smx-east-2014
So which of the many, many panels do I recommend? Let’s take a look, starting with this year’s keynote:
Keynote: Jonah Peretti
What hasn’t been said about this year’s primetime speaker? Peretti co-founded Huffington Post and runs BuzzFeed. Aside from blowing the doors off how content is presented online, Jonah is renowned for using data to make marketing and content decisions. To whet your appetite for this can’t-miss speech, here he is talking to my own personal life keynote speaker, Stephen Colbert.
Day 1:
Search Engine Friendly Web Design
Lead by: Matt Van Wagner – Find Me Faster (@mvanwagner)
Search optimization is great, but if it isn’t carried through every step of your web design it will be all for naught. This panel will be perfect for anyone who has to go back to work in a marketing department and declare once and for all, “It’s not enough to launch a new site, we need to optimize!”.
Let’s Work Together: How SEO & SEM Can Help Each Other
Lead by: Monica Wright – Search Engine Land (@monicawright)
I’m pretty passionate about this topic. As someone who has divided his time equally between SEO and paid online marketing, I tend to view this as two sides of the same coin. Teams need to work hand-in-hand to fully reap the benefits of each. This includes sharing landing page data and optimization ideas, keyword research, creating mutually beneficial remarketing lists, and much more. If you work with both PPC and SEO, don’t miss this panel!
Reimagine Your 2015 International SEO Budget: Understanding New Opportunities in Global Search
Speakers from: Covario & IBM
Is international the final frontier of SEO? This panel will evaluate technical and traditional search tactics for driving international search business. Many of us can barely keep up with our own algo changes and local ranking factors. Listen to a group of experts speak on growing your businesses pool of interested searchers by targeting international markets.
Day 2:
25 Smart Examples Of Structured Data You Can Use Now
Lead by: Elisabeth Osmeloski – Search Engine Land (@elisabethos)
I looooove structured data and schema. What’s more important than feeding the beast and giving lots of info to the search engines that figure out what our sites are about? I’m excited to attend this panel and see if I have any gaps in my knowledge. We’re playing around with some innovative uses for Schema, but I can’t say anything yet (seriously, 4 people are pointing NERF guns at me while I type…) so stay tuned.
Creating A Seamless Shopping Experience: An Introduction To Local Inventory Ads
Lead by: Learn with Google
The Google-led panels are of particular interest to me this year. This one focused on the new local inventory ads that use updated data feeds to track in-store inventory for Shopping Campaigns. Awesome! I have yet to run one of these in AdWords, so I look forward to seeing them in action.
Deconstructing Pigeon, Google’s New Local Search Algorithm
Lead by: Matt McGee – Search Engine Land (@mattmcgee)
Pigeon rocked all of our worlds when it turned local search upside down this summer. It’s taken a while for Google to get the kinks out actually, especially when it comes to geo-modified brand names (say for example, restaurants whose name contain a location.) Right as I type, a Pittsburgh-based search for “Kentucky Fried Chicken” gives me a Google Map view of a KFC in Kentucky. This panel will discuss ways to monitor and diagnose Pigeon-related local search issues and should be quite informative. Search professionals are still digesting these recent changes, so I look forward to hearing from the experts.
Click for clucks.
Day 3:
Mastering AdWords Scripts
Led by: Matt Van Wagner – Find Me Faster (@mvanwagner)
Did you know you can use scripting to program automatic management and auditing of your AdWords account! It’s pretty cool! I’ll admit I’m a newbie and have only run a few scripts, so I’m very interested in learning more. This panel will have experts from Hanapin, RankHammer, Box and Optimyzr. If you are headed to this one, find me and say hi!
Automating Your PPC Campaigns
Led by: Brad Geddes – Certified Knowledge (@bgTheory)
Save time in your PC accounts by learning tips and tricks that allow you to automate common and high-level tasks. In a platform like Google AdWords, the work is never truly done. Automation tricks like saved filters, scheduled reports & shared libraries save you time to focus on big impact changes, not managerial tasks.
Are you jazzed yet? Make sure to tweet me @michaelb3600 with reviews of the panels you make it to. Want to meet up? Tweet me!