Interviews from SMX East 2009

October 7, 2009
 

At SMX East 2009, Bruce Clay and Virginia Nussey report on the highlights of the conference. From individual sessions like Ask the SEOs to the vibe in the exhibit hall to what was for lunch, they describe the multi-faceted event in detail. They also noticed some innovative new features of the show, such as the one-session-free passes given to attendees with an expo-only pass. If the number of paid attendees at the conference was lower than in years past, a ticket to attend one session for free may have given these attendees a taste for the high-quality information that left them wanting more. Full liveblog coverage of the sessions Virginia attended can be found on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog.

Then Craig Danuloff, president of paid search management firm and platform ClickEquations, talks to Virginia about a query-centric approach to pay per click marketing. Thinking in terms of keywords for SEO makes sense because the query is often focused around keywords, but with PPC, focusing on keywords can be ineffective because it’s the search engine, not the searcher or the advertiser, that decides what ads to display for the query — and the latitude search engines have taken often proves to be quite broad. Instead, the data is more actionable and the view is higher resolution when a PPC marketer looks at the query and not the keywords.

Later in the show, Mike McDonald of e-commerce news site WebProNews talks to Virginia about how to maximize interviews and make connections at conferences like SMX East. Mike has been interviewing speakers at conferences since 2002, so he has some useful tips on how to optimize an interview — including when to interview and whom to interview. This interview was also recorded as a video by WebProNews, so if that video becomes available, we will include a link to it here.