Alright folks... I originally planned on posting a really long, well-drawn-out, and detailed review of the recent SMX Advanced conference that took place 2 weeks ago in Seattle, but seeing how I've been uber-busy since my return (bossman's been cracking the whip a little heavily as of late) I've decided to keep this particular recap nice and short. Besides, I have already published 2 different recaps already... one for the Search Marketing Gurus blog and the other for the Yahoo! Store blog. You can check-out both here (respectively):

• SMX Advanced: Was it Advanced Enough?
  Search Marketing Gurus | June 09, 2007
  Li asked me to share my thoughts on the conference and disclose some of the differences (if any) between SMX and some of the other search conferences I've attended. I wrote this post with the veteran search marketer in mind, and have explained, in detail, how SMX was positively better than most search conference circuits running today.



• Karl Ribas Recaps SMX-Search Marketing Expo
  Yahoo! Store Blog | June 19, 2007
  My man Paul B. asked me to share some of the sights and sounds of the SMX Advanced conference, as he and his team would ultimately have their hands full with the Internet Retailer conference (also going on that same week in San Jose). I wrote this post with Yahoo! Store merchants in mind, and I've "ponied up" several tips geared towards improving one's search marketing efforts.

All in all, I'm thinking that the very first-ever SMX Advanced Conference was a success. The conference provided an atmosphere where veteran search marketers could learn, share ideas, and even interact with others as proficient in the industry as they are. I was very pleased with how the conference was scheduled (location, time of year, times of sessions and breaks, etc.), and I very much enjoyed the smaller, close-knit atmosphere that was emitted.

For even more SMX Advanced conference coverage, be sure to check out my earlier conference posts:

• SMX Advanced: Day 2 Notes
• SMX Advanced: Day 1 Notes
• SMX Seattle: MSN adCenter Party
• SMX Pre-Conference Weekend
• Attending SMX Next Week

Also, I've finally gotten around to publishing all of my SMX Advanced conference photos. You can view them here on my website:

http://www.karlribas.com/pictures-smx-07.htm

Or here on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/karlribas/

Thanks for reading. Please let me know of any thoughts you may have regarding the SMX conference or of my reviews.

Did you know that Google has offices here in the Windy City? I sure as hell didn't. This past Thursday, Jessica and I were invited to Google's Chicago offices to meet up with our Adwords reps, whom just so happen to be based in California but were in town on business this whole week.

Google's Chicago office is nothing like the Googleplex that resides in Mountain View. It's a small, 1 floor office in the middle of downtown Chicago, and it houses a small Adwords sales team as well as a few Chicago based engineers. It did, however, seem to maintain the very same fun and colorful atmosphere that you've come to expect from Google.

Here's a shot of the front-desk / lobby area:

Here's a shot of the late, but great Harry Carry's Restaurant... which just happen to be right next to the Google office building:

The meeting itself wasn't anything too formal, as the agenda was pretty much a review of our accounts, discussion on account management and optimization strategies, and a brief introduction to the many new tools and products recently released by the Adwords division... as well as a few to come a little later.

Day 2 (the final day) of SMX Advanced has come and gone and just like the first day, I have some thoughts and pictures to share with you all.

The first session out of the gate was the "Is Bid Management Dead" debate which was held in a very interesting format. Basically there were 2 sides, one for bid management and one not, and each had to pitch their case to the audience. Each side also had chance to make a rebuttal argument on what the other side had mentioned. For me personally, I went into the session with the opinion that bid management was dead. I ended up leaving with that same idea. Pay Per Click is much, much, MUCH, more than adjusting bids and so forth. With quality score and the mystic black box taken into consideration, managing paid campaigns is no longer a process any more... it's an art form. And therefore the days of bid management are over.

My thinking was later validated in the next session, "Pump Up Your Paid Search". This was a pretty decent run-down on "advanced" PPC management, and included talks of day-parting, bidding on trademark terms, and a break-down on each of the engine's Keyword Insertion tools (KWI). I have a few take-a-ways from it, but instead of just throwing them down in this post I will address them in a couple of future posts... they do merit their own posts.

Lunch, again, was tremendous. If you didn't read my day 1 notes, we were served a superb hot plate buffet-style lunch. I only make a big deal about this because the past conferences I've attended distributed boxed lunches... crappy ones at that.

My last two sessions, "Better Ways" and "Give It Up" were both organic related sessions and featured all-star line-ups of our industry's best.

"Better Ways" was a non-slideshow session that featured 75 minutes of Q&A. A couple of take-a-ways included:

Use Microsoft's adLabs as a much-better keyword research alternative.

Ideal linking partners are those that can offer links on pages with a bunch of quality links pointing to them. For instance, its best to have a link coming from a page that has 1,000 or so links pointing to it as opposed to a link from that person's link page... which ultimately would have no-one pointing to it.

The "Give It Up" session, as described in the conference guide, is a session where a panel of noted SEOs would all share some of their favorite and largely overlooked SEO tips. That's exactly what it was. Even Google's Quality Control Engineer Matt Cutts stood up and shared an interesting story that highlighted one spammy way to get a large amount of inbound links. It was freakin' awesome! Unfortunately, I and the others in the audience took a vow of silence and promised that we would not publish any of these goodies... and I for one plan to stick to that promise. Sorry.

And that's that. I'm planning on doing a small overview of the conference a little later in the week (with my final thoughts on the show), but for now I'm going to relax and enjoy the rest of my trip.

I am so dragging ass today... it's not even close to being funny. I guess my weekend as well as the events from yesterday's (day 1) SMX Conference is finally starting to catch up with me. In any event, my day yesterday kicked off with a quick visit to the registration booth (I would have registered on Sunday as most people did, but for some reason when trying to I found that my badge was not printed - no biggie), followed by a continental-style breakfast on the conference floor.

My first session of the day was "You&A (Q&A) with Matt Cutts" in which the audience fired many algorithmic search-related questions spanning multiple areas at Matt, and he would address each specifically. I was actually impressed by this session. Going in, I thought Matt would be pleading the 5th on almost half of everything that was asked, but he didn't. He did a tremendous job of addressing near every question.

A couple of take-away from this session include:

Matt would not confirm nor deny the use of click-throughs (from the SERPS) as being apart of the metrics used in their ranking formula. I, for the longest time, have always thought that Google not only takes in consideration the user's click-through when deciding relevance, but also whether or not that user returns to the SERPS immediately following that click-through... essentially meaning that the user did not deem the website as being helpful and has moved on to find a better one.

Another interesting piece of info that was shared (but again was neither confirmed nor denied by Matt) is that Google's SPAM technology checks to see what other websites a specific webmaster owns (and ultimately whether or not those sites have been flagged for SPAM) when reviewing over a site. The example used at the session was if a site was questionable and a quick check-up showed that the same owner owned 200 flagged websites that probably this 201st website should be flagged as well. Which in my mind makes a lot of sense.

My second session of the day was the "Duplicate Content Summit". This session was paneled by representatives from each of the major search engines... Ask, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and of course Google. Personally speaking... I thought that this session could have been a little more advanced than it was, but overall it wasn't a bad session.

One take-away was the mention of using a "Robots No Content" tag to mark low value content such as copyright information and other repeated (non-value) pieces of content. This tag is currently supported only by Yahoo! and is a great way to help the search engine determine what your primary content is for each page.

Another blurb worth sharing is that Ask, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google all support the sitemap attribute in the robots.txt file. I originally thought it was just Google that supported this feature, but that isn't the case. Simply list the URL of your Google Sitemap in the robot.txt file (using proper protocol of course) and all engines will crawl and take note of it.

My next two sessions were those in the Advertising track (paid search) and included the "Paid Search & Tricky Issues" and "Inside the Auction Black Box" session. Honestly, I didn't get too much out of either session with the exception of a re-rundown on many of the same old theories as to what Google's (and other search engines respectively) black box algorithm includes. Actually, at one time the topic was side-tracked a little when the panel and audience began discussing their own conspiracy theories as to the amount of data Google collects from multiple locations on a daily basis. That was a pretty interesting and humorous conversation.

The exhibit hall is very small compared to that of several of the past SES exhibits I've attended. I guess that's about right though, a small conference equals a small exhibit sesstion. I took a quick tour through it, and will no doubt make a second trip later on today.

Lunch was absolutely fabulous. I was so expecting the traditional boxed sandwich lunch that SES provides, and was very much happy to see a hot-plate buffet.

The last part of the day featured a Keynote conversation between Danny and Satya Nadella, the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's newly-created Search & Advertising Platform Group. I thought this went over really well. In the past Microsoft has been pretty much non-existant at search conferences, and so I, for one, am glad to see that they made an effort to be well represented at this conference (and why shouldn't they... Seattle is their backyard). The keynote conversation addressed many of the Microsoft's past and more importantly future goals as a major player in the search industry.

Here is a video I took of one of the questions addressed during the keynote:

The night ended with a Yahoo Search Marketing Networking Session and an SMX After Dark: Google Dance NW where I ran into such celebs and Jim Boykin and Chris Hooley. It was great meeting you guys. All in all, both parties were fairly decent... however they were nowhere near their SES San Jose counter parts. They got the job done though and that's all that matters.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, tonight Microsoft adCenter threw a little gathering at the Bell Harbor convention center as a way to help kick-off the SMX conference. The party featured free drinks and finger-foods, live Jazz music, videogame sessions (I totally destroyed all on Guitar Hero 2... you don't want any of this McGee), and give-a-ways in the form of a Microsoft Zune, Vista OS, and an Xbox 360. Needless to say, I didn't win any of them.

Overall I had a stellar good time. I was able to catch up with a few of my conference buds before the show tomorrow (that's always good), and at the same time I ran into a few others that I've become acquainted with online but have never gotten the chance to meet in person, such Matt McGee, Rhea Drysdale, Jessica Bowman and Dustin Woodard. It was great meeting you all and I certainly look forward to chatting with you more throughout the conference.

Now, as promised, here are a couple snapshots from the event:

Hey all... just thought I would take a few moments to check in from Seattle and share some of the sights and sounds of my trip thus far. As most of you know, I'll be attending the first ever SMX conference this upcoming week and so my girlfriend and I decided to fly out a few days early and take in a much needed vacation.

Seattle is a great city, and I'm having a killer time. Aside from having a very early flight out of Chicago and staying at a... let's just say not-so appealing hotel, my time here has been great! A lot of the amenities that were said to be included with the hotel aren't and probably the most disappointing one being no in-room internet connection. It's been hard, but so far I've been able to survive just fine without it.

Jackie and I caught the Mariners vs. Rangers game at Seattle's Safeco Field on Friday... and what a great game it was. We had tremendous seats (only a few rows up from the backstop behind home plate), and were able to partake in the normal ballpark activities... hotdogs, peanuts, brews, and the 7th inning stretch. Even though the Rangers ended up winning 9-8, it was very cool to see such MLB stars as Inchiro Suzuki, Richie Sexson, and slugger Sammy Sosa.

On Saturday, we started our day early and headed on over to the city's most recognizable attraction... the Space Needle. There we rode a 41 second elevator to the observation deck (that space ship looking deal) and viewed the buildings, harbors, and mountain tops that is Seattle. A very beautiful sight.

Afterwards, we made our rounds through the city visiting several tourist attractions. We visited the Pacific Science Museum, Pike Place Market, Seattle Aquarium, and took an Argosy harbor cruise. All in all, we both had a very enjoyable time.

A little later, I'll heading up to the Bell Harbor convention center for a pre-conference SMX bash. The party is said to be sponsored by Microsoft, and so I'll be sure to snap a few pictures here and there and jot down a few comments a little later tonight or sometime tomorrow.