SES 2009 - Search Engine Strategies Conference

Time flies...June is around the corner and so is Toronto SES 2009. It is as if it was just yesterday, I attended SMX Search Analytics Toronto and exhibited at Toronto Search Engine Strategies Conference back in 2008.

We will be again exhibiting at 2009 SES event which will be held at Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. This year’s SES conferences will be held on June 8th and June 9th. In addition, on June 10th, there will be some SEM and SEO training programs (more on SEM SEO Training).

I am so excited about this year’s SES conference. At a time of recession, more and more marketers are concerned about their marketing dollars. Search Engine Strategies is a great opportunity for marketers to learn more about the power of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

If search marketing campaigns are executed properly they can prove to be one of the most effective channels for marketers.

I will post more updates on the 2009 SES Toronto.

Nima Asrar Haghighi, SEM SEO Expert

Related Post: SES San Jose

Google Profiles – People Search Improvement or Social Media Supremacy?

Google announced earlier that by enhancing Google Profiles they give people a greater control over their online profiles when somebody searches for their names on search engines. Google has already started showing Google profile results at the bottom of US search queries for people names.

Currently only 4 profiles are shown for name-query searches. These results provide snippets from user-generated Google profiles and link to the profile pages. From your Google profile you can link to your blog, LinkedIn profile, or Twitter account. Currently the links are not using nofollow. However, that might change as spammers might start building bogus accounts just for the sake of link building.

By providing links to your other sites from your Google Profile, you can help Google better build a Social Graph of you on the Internet. Google can potentially use this data to better understand the relationship between sites, decide how to flow PageRank, and further personalize search results.

As Google Profiles evolves, Google will add more functionality to the product which will provide Google with more insight into people`s social connections.

Even the Google Profiles are currently shown at the bottom of the SERPs, they could potentially rank on top of the search engine results pages which could potentially divert the traffic from major social media sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter providing Google with more real estate/platform for socio-demographic advertising.

Nima Asrar Haghighi, SMO Expert

SMX Search Analytics – Toronto

After Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman departed from Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference and expo series, initiated SMX Search Marketing Expo. SMX brings together some of the sharpest minds in the search engine marketing industry.

Earlier in April, I attended Toronto SMX Search Analytics Conference and Expo. The purpose of Search Analytics is to provide marketers with insight into their visitors, customers and those who bounced away. The promise of the event is to equip advanced search marketers with tools, tactics and strategies that can maximize the effectiveness of their search engine marketing campaigns.

Toronto SMX Search Analytics conference kicked off by keynote speaker, Venessa Fox and covered topics such as:

• Analyzing & Converting Organic Search Traffic – Covering SEO KPIs
• Analyzing & Converting Paid Search Traffic – Utilizing Web Analytics to measure PPC campaigns
• Up Close with Google Analytics – Measuring traffic utilizing GA
• Top Ten Customized Search Analytics Reports – Creating Custom Executive Dashboards
• Successful Testing for Improved Search Marketing ROI – A/B and Multivariate Testing
• Traffic Segmentation & Why It Matters – segmenting organic and paid search traffic by location, demographic and psychographics to improve ROI
• Search Analytics & Competitive Intelligence – Analyzing competitors’ strategies and bit them at their own game
• Creating a Data-Driven Culture – Building an Analytics and data driven culture in the organization
  

The two-day Toronto SMX Search Analytics program was jam-pack of information. While SES Toronto is a great source of information for marketers interested in Search Engine Marketing, SMX series are more suitable for more seasoned search marketers.





Nima Asrar Haghighi, SEM & SEO Expert

Google Advertising – AdWords in a Nutshell

Advertising on Google has become an important part of Internet marketing mix. Google AdWords can be marketers’ best friend. Whether you are looking to raise brand awareness, lunch a new product, generate more leads, increase traffic to your site or sell products and services online, Google pay per click advertising can prove useful.

As I mentioned in my Google AdWords Consulting Might Just Save Your Campaign post, it is not a secret that if you do not know Google AdWords system well enough, you might easily ramp up your cost and spend your advertising dollars without gaining a positive ROI. On the flip side, if you can get Google advertising work for you, either through outsourcing SEM to a Google AdWords Professional / Company or by developing the necessary SEM expertise yourself, your business will prosper.

The first step is to set your objectives. Decide what you would like to achieve with your AdWords campaign. It is not uncommon that you have many competing goals. It is important to set your priorities and decide on the best strategies to maximize your Return on Investment. Based on these objectives you need to come up with some Key Performance Indicators.

Once the objectives are set, you can start conducting keyword research using various free or paid keyword tools and keyword research techniques. The result of your keyword research might influence how your final strategy shapes.

In order for your Google advertising to be successful, like any other marketing campaign, you need to segment your campaign. Segmentation in Google AdWords is more than just segmenting by geography, language and demography. You need to segment your Google AdWords campaign into various campaigns and Ad Groups based on the keywords your audience search for. I cannot emphasize the importance of segmentation enough. This could make or break your campaign as it affects how nimble your campaign is and can have a major impact on your Quality Score, cost per click (CPC), click through rate (CTR), conversion rate and ROI.

As the next step, you need to develop high quality Ad Copies that resonate both to your audience and Google AdWords system. By testing various Ads, you need to find the best advertising copy that generates the right balance between high CTR, Quality Score and Conversion Rate. The ad copies need to send visitors to relevant landing pages that are optimized for search engines, usability and conversion.

Congratulations on building your professional Google AdWords PPC Advertising campaign. If you have done all the steps right you are off to a great start. A great campaign structure could dramatically increase the chances of a successful advertising on Google. However, you need to keep a close eye on your PPC advertising campaign`s performance. This should be done utilizing the SEM KPIs that you have developed for your Google advertising when you were defining your campaign objectives. Whether you are using Google Analytics or any other Web Analytics application it is important to constantly monitor your campaign’s performance against your KPIs and tweak your keywords, bids, ad copies and landing pages to maximize your company`s ROI.

Toronto SEM Expert - Nima Asrar Haghighi

Most Popular SEM SEO Expert BLog Posts of 2008

After a great and relatively long vacation in Dubai, I am back in Toronto. It's the time to ponder how another year passed, what I have achieved and what I should plan for 2009. So, I reviewed 2008 traffic to the site. Here are the most popular blog posts:

1. SEO KPIs
2. How to Create XML Sitemaps
3. Outsourcing SEO SEM Services
4. Customer Retention Strategy
5. Landing Page Load Time Impact on Google

Also by reviewing the keywords that have sent traffic to the site, I have identified some topics that people are seeking information about. I will gradually address the issues in the upcoming posts in 2009.

Nima Asrar Haghighi