Can’t-miss Search Engine Strategies San Jose Sessions, Day 2 Preview
Aug 12, 2008 SES Tour
The anticipation is brewing for Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. As a rare treat, I’ve been invited to the Googleplex to meet with various business groups and for a campus tour, so I’ll be heading to Silicon Valley a bit early and have to increase the frequency of my SES preview posts. Day 2 looks like a stunner, so if you’re just going for one day, make day 2 the day you attend.
11:00 AM — For the newbies to SEM out there that are reading my blog, a great intro is offered in the morning of day 2 at SES San Jose. Greg Jarboe has done well in past SES sessions to really explain fundamentals of our craft. Unfortunately, this is one of the timeslots that seasoned SES attendees look at and wonder whether they could possibly TiVo parallel sessions. Making the choice is aggravating, to be honest.
First off, you have some of the leaders in analytics talking at “Measuring Success in a 2.0 World” such as Avinash Kaushik and Jim Sterne, who are pitted against Tim Ash of Site Tuners presenting “Landing Page Testing & Tuning”. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to sit in on Tim’s presentation at SES NY, which makes the decision a bit easier (not unlike a great movie though, I’d love to see it again). So this time, I’m leaning towards the Analytics track.
1:30 PM — The Orion Keynote Panel looks to be a monster. Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan along with other industry giants are available to answer the tough questions about where we’ve been and where SEM is going. Not to miss!
2:45 PM — The sponsored sessions are busted out for mid-afternoon and include ThinkProfits.com, Omniture, Google, Microsoft and Medio. What the heck is ThinkProfits.com doing in that list? I’ve met Shawn Moore long time ago and while he may be considered one of few that heralded in SEO, I have not heard much from him lately.
The staples of the industry are all there however, and choosing one will certainly be difficult. I attended the Omniture session at SES NY in March and wasn’t too impressed, but things seem to be different now. They actually have a few testimonial speakers and Chris Knoch from the best practices group. Is it enough to have me attend their session? Maybe…
Google is probably the way to go. When they say get there early, they mean get there the day before. The Google session is always rammed-pack. I’m hoping my trip to the Googleplex will offset the requirement to attend Google’s sponsored session because, I admit, I’m a big boy and like my personal space. But I do love the Google swag! Choices, choices!
4:00 PM — Thankfully, my late afternoon choice for Day 2 is an easy one. “Landing Page Utopia” looks like a clear-cut winner in my books. Landing page optimization or conversion tuning impacts everything that sends clicks to our pages including sponsored search, affiliate marketing, organic search, and returning customers. Should be an interesting session. If you’re set on going to Tim Ash’s earlier session, you may get more of the same in this one, in which case I recommend checking out “Identify, Analyze, Act: SEM by the Numbers”.
Day 2 ends with the much raved about Google Dance! Perhaps more rave than ever, with the theme being “Glow in the Dark!”. Should be fun.
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