2014 Meeting Archives – DFWSEM

November 2014

2014 State of Search Conference

Attend the 2014 State of Search Conference!

Join us November 17-18th for the 3nd annual State of Search Conference. Though only in its third year, DFWSEM’s State of Search Conference has become the premiere search marketing conference in the south, featuring speakers from all over the country. We’ve even expanded it to two days this year. Marty Weintraub – CEO of Aimclear – will give the opening keynote on Day 1, and Wil Reynolds – Founder of Seer Interactive – will give the opening keynote on Day 2. The closing keynote will feature Duane Forrester, Manager of Bing Webmaster Tools.

Five tracks – SEO, PPC, Social Media, Local SEO, and a Miscellaneous track – will cover tactics and tips, perfect for all levels of expertise, from beginner to advanced.

Reasons to Attend the State of Search Conference:

• Learn from the experts
• Enhance your skillsets
• Networking
• Low cost

Throughout the conference, you’ll learn tactics to improve your online marketing strategies, whether you work in-house, in an agency, or as a freelancer.

State Of Search Speakers

• Aaron Levy, Independent Consultant
• Adam Dorfman, SIM Partners
• Adam Reimer, Adam Reimer Marketing
• AJ Kohn, Blind Five-Year-Old
• Alan Morte, Three Ventures Technology
• Alex Houg, Portage
• Amanda McGowan, SEER Interactive
• Bill Hartzer, Globe Runner SEO
• Brad Besancon, Clariti
• Brandy Eddings, Southwest Media Group
• Brent Csutoras, Kairay Media
• Brett Snyder, Agora Inbound
• Brittan Bright, Marin Software
• Casey Markee, Media Wyse
• Christine Churchill, KeyRelevance
• Christi Olson, Point It
• Cindy Krum, Mobile Moxie
• Dan Leibson, Local SEO Guide
• Dan Sturdivant, Speakeasy
• Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point
• Darren Shaw, WhiteSpark
• David Minchala, Yodle
• Dennis Yu, Portage
• Derek Mabie, Evolve Digital Labs
• Duane Forrester, Bing
• Eli Schwartz, Survey Monkey
• Elizabeth Marsten, Portent
• Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting
• Giovanni Gallucci, Live Loud Texas
• Greg Allbright, NCR Retail
• Gyi Tsakalakis, Attorneysync
• Ian Lurie, Portent
• Jabez Labret, Get Noticed Get Found
• James Loomstein, Digital Space Consulting
• Jessica Nelson, Elev8 Social
• Jim Halligan, Location3 Media
• John Doherty, Hotpads
• John Gagnon, Bing
• John Lee, Clix Marketing
• Jon Cooper, Point Blank SEO
• Justin Briggs, Getty Images
• Kane Jamison, Content Harmony
• Kate Morris, Outspoken Media
• Kerry Dean, PMG
• Kevin Adams, Rankhammer
• Larry Kim, Wordstream
• Mark Traphagen, Stone Temple Consulting
• Marty Weintraub, AimClear
• Matt Siltala, Avalaunch Media
• Matt Van Wagner, Find Me Faster
• Michael Stancil, Buzzshift
• Michelle Wagner, Passion Fruit Creative Group
• Mike Arnesen, SwellPath
• Mike King, iPullRank
• Phil Rozek, Local Visibility System
• Purna Virji, Petplan
• Randall Turner, Advice Interactive Group
• Ruth Burr Reedy, Opubco Communications Group
• Scott Baradell, Ideagrove
• Sean Dolan, Pushfire
• Sean Jackson, Copyblogger
• Sha Menz, RMOOV
• Steve Floyd, AXZM
• Steve Hammer, RankHammer
• Susan Wenograd, At Home Stores
• Thomas Ballantyne, Bullwark Pest Control
• Tim Wagner, Wright IMC
• Tony Wright, Wright IMC
• Will Scott, Search Influence
• Wil Reynolds, SEER Interactive
• Zeph Snapp, Not Just SEO

October 2014

SEM Expert Roundtable

Roundtable and Q and A discussion with industry leading speakers, consultants, and digital agencies.

PANEL SPEAKERS

September 2014

How to Build an SEO Campaign That Outsmarts, Outperforms, and Outlasts Google

Every two days, we create as much information as we have since the dawn of time to 2003.

Therefore, building a web presence is essential in today’s times, but comes with ever-increasing challenges:

• Web users lack focus and are highly distractable.
• Everyone is fighting for attention.
• Google’s algorithms change hundreds of times per year, and their focus has heavily changed since their beginnings in 1998.

You need more than an ordinary website; you need an extraordinary website. Being extraordinary doesn’t mean finding and exploiting loopholes in Google’s search algorithm. It means creating a web presence that people love.

Stoney deGeyter, president of Pole Position Marketing, will discuss how to take your website from ordinary to extraordinary, how to provide value to your users, and how to create a Google-proof website.

About Stoney deGeyter

Stoney’s articles about how to navigate the web marketing landscape have been published on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Visibility Magazine, and his self-proclaimed “witty” responses have been quoted in WSJ.com and Chief Content Officer Magazine.

He also shares how to accelerate your web marketing efforts several e-books, including E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies For Building, Optimizing and Marketing Your Website Online; Keyword Research and Selection: The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Sorting and Organizing Your Keywords Into a High-Performance SEO Campaign; Destination Search Engine Marketing: SEO Without Compromise.

August 2014

2015 Search Marketing Vision

Brett Tabke and Joe Laratro of PUBCON will be back for their annual “tag-team” presentation of where the SEO and social media landscapes now stand in lieu of the latest changesand how we can leverage that knowledge to be ahead of the game in the near future.

Brett Tabke will discuss “what’s next”, including the hyper active virtual reality and augmented realty spaces.

Joe Laratro will be sharing an in-depth look into the future of SEO and the coming changes that could substantially change your entire search and social media strategy.

If you want to be ahead of the competition you will not want to miss this meeting.

What to expect:

• Analysis – what are the hot topics in search now?
• Review – brief overview of the industry
• Direction – we will look at an overview of where search and marketing is headed in the next 6-12 months. Specifically, a deeper look at the changes that have come about due Facebook giving the web personal “identity”.

ABOUT BRETT TABKE

Brett Tabke has worked in the computer industry for three decades. Tabke is currently the CEO and founder of Pubcon, Inc. He was also the founder of WebmasterWorld, Inc., and PHD Software Systems, a specialty software manufacture that produced a line of software for Commodore computers in the 80’s and 90’s.

Tabke authored several books on assembly language programming for Western Design on the 65816 micro processor. Tabke was the noted author of Karma 128, a leading edge assembler for the 65816 processor.

Tabke has run community networking sites continuously since 1984. The evolution from stand-alone BBS’s to forums on the web and his commitment to community building is a logical extension for Brett. His fascination with the web spurred him to start building web sites and learning as much as possible about online traffic. He quickly became an expert on the subject of Internet traffic, and was a source of information for many of his business contacts and associates who were looking to get better traffic from the search engines.

Tabke coined several SEO staples as “Link Farm”, “SEO Themes”, and the classic “SERP” (Search Engine Results Page). He was also featured in the Biography Channel special on the Google founders. Tabke was also a founding board member of SEMPO. He also wrote a chapter for the best selling “Google Hacks” book. He is also the first known person to have fully decoded the Excite and most of the Altavista search engine algos. Tabke’s “26 Steps to 15k a Day” is one of the most widely read documents in SEO history.

About Joe Laratro

Joe Laratro joined the Search Engine Optimization world in 1999. He has deep internet roots from running his own BBS in the late 80s. He served as CTO for one of the TOP SEO companies in the USA for 7 years. During his tenure he serviced over 4,000 Web sites ranging from Mom and Pops to Fortune 100 companies.

Joe started Tandem Interactive in April 2006 to focus on the under serviced areas of Online Marketing. One of Tandem’s main areas of focus is Training and Education. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), Joe brings the technical aspect of SEM to the public. Several intensive SEM training sessions have been taught in conjunction with the South Florida Internet Marketing Association (SFIMA). He was also a major contributor to the DMA’s search engine marketing certification. Joe Laratro has been very involved with the conference side of the Interactive Marketing Industry; he is the Lead Moderator and on the Advisory Board of Pubcon, and also speaks at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) and Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences.

Outside of conference and Tandem Interactive, Joe continues to shape the Search Marketing Industry by developing and teaching Search Marketing Training for SEOClass, Network Solutions, Pubcon Masters, and the University of San Francisco. Mr. Laratro has been quoted in numerous articles including Internet Retailer, eMarketer, DMNews, eWeek, MediaPost, and Target Marketing. Mr. Laratro will also be releasing the “SEO Diet: Fit to be Found” book in the near future.

ABOUT PUBCON

Pubcon is a multi-track educational conference supported by the industry’s leading businesses, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors involved in social media, Internet marketing, search engines, and online advertising, and offers an in-depth look at the future of technology presented by the world’s top speakers in provocative cutting-edge sessions.

Over the past 15 years Pubcon has shifted the meaning of its name to place less emphasis on the celebratory pub gathering experience and instead focusing more on the professional Web “publishing conference” it quickly became.

Despite the subtle change in the meaning of its name, Pubcon has maintained the pub gathering tradition for more than 15 years as a part of what are now some of the world’s largest and most important new media conferences.

July 2014

Google Algorithm Update: Pandas, Penguins, and Recovering from Penalties

Sponsor

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Dallas Search Engine Academy

In the past few years, there have been several Google organic search algorithm updates. Manual actions, also referred to as manual penalties, from Google, can have a devastating effect on your site’s traffic and revenue. If your site has a manual action because of unnatural links to your website, filing a reconsideration request with Google isn’t just a matter of filling out a form: you must prove to them that you’ve removed the links, cleaned up your act, and disavowed the links you couldn’t get removed.

In this meeting, Bill Hartzer, co-founder of DFWSEM, and Senior SEO Strategist at Globerunner SEO, will discuss the differences between Google Panda and Google Penguin. We’ll review each of these algorithm and figure out if your site has been penalized or not. Then, we’ll go through specific steps in order to recover traffic and rankings due to a Panda or Penguin algorithmic penalty. We’ll discuss the process of getting a Google manual penalty revoked, and even timelines for recovery of the lost traffic and sales.

Takeaways:

• Understand the differences between Google Panda and Google Penguin algorithm updates.
• Tell whether or not your website has been hit by Google Panda or Google Penguin updates.
• Understand Google Manual Actions and what you need to do in order to get a manual action or penalty revoked by Google.

ABOUT BILL HARTZER

Bill Hartzer is the Senior SEO Strategist at Globe Runner. Bill is a frequent speaker and expert discussion panel participant at various search engine marketing and internet marketing conferences and events such as the Search Engine Strategies and the PubCon conferences. Bill writes frequently for Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, and is regularly published in many online publications. He maintains a blog on his website, www.BillHartzer.com, and is one of the original founders of the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association. He has over 18 years of search engine marketing, SEO, and social media marketing experience.

June 2014

Content Sharing and Social Profile Optimization for Prospect Attraction

Sharing great resources shows prospects that you will do more for them than just clog up their feed with sales and job spam. It shows that you are helpful, smart, and worth working with. It can also give your target audience a great glimpse of what it’s like to work with your organization. First impressions can make the all the difference. Look legit when prospects check you out!! And earn valuable SEO points in the process.

In this presentation, Craig Fisher, CEO of TalentNet, a social business strategy firm, shows you great tips for building targeted prospect pools on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.

He’ll show you how to look legitimate and attractive to prospects online, and optimize yourself and your company for organic search at the same time. He’ll give you a program to get everyone in your organization to use the right keywords in the right places on their Linkedin and other social profiles, tell better stories online, and generate more page views by sharing valuable content with your target audience.

In this presentation, you’ll learn:

• Social profile keyword optimization
• Better story telling with web ready messaging
• Learn the proper content mix for each platform
• The importance and balance of sharing personal and professional content
• What to share
• When to share
• How to not spend all day on social media
• How to automate content feeds to your social places

ABOUT CRAIG FISHER

Craig’s digital branding methods have been adopted as best practices by companies like Linkedin, Zappos, YUM! Brands, Hootsuite, and many more.

Craig created the first Twitter chat for recruiters, partnered in the first Linkedin-certified training company in North America, and is a partner in Globaltru, largest social recruiting events series in the world.

He’s been detailed in the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, and The Huffington Post; and was recently listed among the 25 most engaging speakers at HR conferences by Bizzabo.

Craig co-hosts the Cool Tools Show on Soundcloud with Lars Schmidt, and tweets @fishdogs.

Most recently Craig and Lars have launched Evolver, a social business strategy consultancy.

Connect with Craig on his blog at fishdogs.com

May 2014

Using Real-Time Content Marketing To Amplify Your Content

For many brands, content marketing has become a “set it and forget it” affair: They create content, set it free, and then wonder why it refuses to “fly” away. One of the biggest problems is amplification, or lack thereof. If content is worth creating, it’s worth being shared smartly and widely.

How do you make that happen? Simple.

You create content with shareability already baked into it. At the next DFWSEM meeting, you will learn why content amplification is a must, then you’ll walk through the steps of how you can use the process effectively in your businesses. A key benefit is that few businesses are using such a model, and many of those lack the insight to use it effectively.

Ronell Smith, from Advice Interactive, and Kendall Shiffler, from United Commercial Realty (UCR) are the speakers.

After this meeting, you’ll be able to:

• Create and share the content your audience wants to consume
• Mobilize the “community” to read, share and engage your content
• Use paid, earned and owned media to amplify your content, in addition to recognizing how these efforts grease the skids for future content promotion efforts

About Ronell Smith

Ronell Smith is the director of content strategy for Advice Interactive.
He’s spent most of his career as a business writer, researcher and editor. His most recent work was as a B2B editor for ESPN, but he has broad experience in overall business strategy, having spent nearly a decade helping small-to-midsize businesses in the areas of product design and marketing, PR, branding, content and communications.

Currently, however, he’s taken up the good fight of advocating for web users, many of whom are actively trying to manage the content marketing fusillade.

About Kendall Shiffler

Kendall is a digital marketing professional with 6 years experience in traditional and digital marketing, public relations, social media, web and email marketing. She is currently the Director of Corporate Marketing at United Commercial Realty. Additionally Kendall is past president of the DFW Social Media Club and speaks regularly at regional and national conferences.

Advice Interactive will also have some special prizes to give away: One $100 gift card and four $25 gift cards to Bass Pro Shops! Advice will also have some Bass Pro and Columbia Sportswear items that will be in a drawing. So LOTS of opportunities to win something this month!!

Advice Interactive will have a fish theme for our sponsor table that night with some fun social photo opportunities for meeting attendees.

April 2014

Personas: Understanding the User Behind the Visit

Effective measurement of users and their activities is a must in the modern era of digital marketing. Understanding those users allows marketers to plan campaigns and distribute marketing dollars efficiently. However, the question is how do we do we understand these users and collect the right data at scale. Mike King, Executive Director of Owned Media at Acronym, will give a detailed discussion of how to perform ethnographic research using social media and leverage a variety of free and paid data sets to truly understand the user behind the visit.

After this meeting, you will be able to:

1. How to Account for Audience & Buyer Personas
2. How to Build and Effectively Leverage User Journeys
3. Using Personas to Thwart (not provided)

ABOUT MICHAEL KING

Michael King is an SEO Engineer by trade and Inbound Marketer by evolution. He is currently an independent Digital Marketing Consultant at iPullRank.

Michael King (better known as @iPullRank on Twitter) has an extensive background in software, web development and a proclivity for creative solutions. That experience has afforded him a track record of successfully coordinating the efforts of Creative, Strategy, Technical and Paid Media Teams to achieve synergistic solutions in harmony with long-term client campaign goals for several Fortune 500 brands. Previously, Mr. King was responsible for the SEO campaigns of LG, Citi, Sanofi Pasteur, Cartier, and General Mills as the SEO lead at Publicis Modem. Before that, he was member of the SEO team at Razorfish where he contributed to many wins for Ralph Lauren, ABC, ADT, State Farm, and several Johnson & Johnson and Genentech brands.

March 2014

Achieving Results with a 360 View of Customers/Prospects Using Analytics

Many people know what analytics are, have analytics software installed, and how to access it. But for many it stops there – making sense of the data and knowing how to act upon it are the difficult parts.

Feras Alhlou and Patricia Jordan-Hinojos of eNor, will teach you how to interpret your analytics data and turn those insights into action. During the meeting, you’ll learn:

• Creative ways to measure, report and analyze data in a way that truly impacts the business. Often, this has to be done by integrating all types of data from various sources.
• How the power of Google Analytics can be integrated with other data sources such as SEM campaign data, email, CRM/SalesForce and others to provide full visibility of your prospects and customers.
• About a case study that examines the challenges and finds solutions for analysis across multiple channels, as well as ways to understand user behavior and ROI analysis.

After this meeting, you’ll be able to:

1. Make data more actionable using the measurement approach
2. Create sample dashboards for ecommerce, b2b and content sites and apps
3. Utilize Google Analytics for integrated reporting and insights to gain a 360-degree view of data

ABOUT FERAS ALHLOU

Feras Alhlou is the Principal Consultant/Co-Founder of E-Nor (serving Fortune 500-25). He is a frequent national/international speaker at industry conferences including SMX, eMetrics and Google Analytics User Events (GAUGE). Under his leadership, E-Nor achieved multiple Google qualifications including Google Analytics Certified Partner and Google Analytics Premium Authorized Reseller.

Feras is passionate about improving his client’s ROI and led his organization to implement and launch successful analytics and marketing optimization strategies for E-Nor’s diversified client base. He has traveled the globe educating businesses and Internet consultants on the subjects of web analytics and digital marketing optimization.

Feras is a co-chair the Digital Analytics Association, serves on the examination sub-committee and is a Certified Web Analyst.

February 2014

SEO 101/201

A solid understanding of SEO is key to any digital marketing campaign. From title tags, to linkbuilding, to best practices and how it all works together, our focus is to help you, your client, and your websites deliver a search-engine-friendly online presence.

Beth Kahlich, from the Dallas Search Engine Academy, and Michael Marshall, from the North Carolina Search Engine Academy, will be speaking on tactical execution and other basics of SEO, as well as diving into more advanced topics.

After this meeting, you will:

• Understand the basic components to a solid SEO-optimized website
• Know the right questions to ask of an SEO provider – and what to watch out for
• Learn about key advanced SEO topics to succeed in 2014 and beyond

About Beth Kahlich

A frequent speaker at local and national events, and a board member of the DFW Search Engine Marketing Association, Beth has over 25 years of experience in technology and marketing. Beth created her first commercial website in 1993 and was an early user of YouTube, opening her first account in 2006, just 9 months after the site opened. Previously, Beth served for eight years as in-house advertising for one of nation’s largest IBM Business Partners.

Since 2008, her company has managed the online marketing strategy, social media and web presence of a variety of clients, both locally and nationwide. Since 2012, she has been teaching SEO training classes in the Dallas, Texas area.
Twitter Handle: @BethKahlich

About Michael Marshall

Michael has over 20 years experience in information technology covering a wide range of specialties, including web design, software engineering, e-commerce solutions, artificial intelligence, and Internet marketing. He has degrees in Linguistics, Philosophy and Theology. Michael also developed and taught a required course on search engine technologies for the U.S. Patent Office.

Michael’s been published in Forbes, and a variety of SEO and business publications and has been a speaker at Dallas Digital Summit for the past 3 years.
Twitter Handle: @MichaelMarshall

Event Sponsor

E-Nor is a leading web analytics and digital marketing optimization consulting firm headquartered in the heart of the Silicon Valley and offices throughout US and in Europe. Our clients include Fortune 500, as well as organizations with advanced analytics needs and those aspiring to establish a data-driven culture. E-Nor leverages it’s time-tested digital analytics optimization framework to bring actionable insights to some of the world’s most recognized brands including Sony, Intuit, ADP, VMware, MIT, SanDisk among others.

We have achieved multiple Google certifications including Google Analytics Premium Authorized Reseller, Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP), Google AdWords Certified Partner, Urchin Software Certified Partner and Website Optimizer Certified Partner.
E-Nor is a Premier Corporate Sponsor of the Digital Analytics Association (DAA), and E-Nor’s consultants are frequent speakers at leading industry conferences world wide.

January 2014

Local Search Marketing in 2014

Some of the nations’s leading online marketing experts are coming to Dallas on January 23rd for Local U, a four-hour crash course in Local Search Marketing (register here.) And the night before, two of those experts, Mike Blumenthal and Ed Reese, will be giving a preview of Local U at the monthly DFWSEM meeting.

About Mike Blumenthal

Like all small business owners attempting to market to an ever-increasing fragmented clientele, Mike was continually frustrated by the barriers and costs of current advertising options. His career spans over 30 years, from family-owned retail businesses, to offering web services in 1995, to specializing in web design and search consulting in 2001. But when Google Maps was released in 2004, Mike threw out his Yellow Page books and started focusing on Local Search.

Besides serving on the Local University Faculty, Mike presents nationally at search conferences & contributes columns to Search Engine Land. You can also find him at his blog, Understanding Google Maps and Local Search, where he writes about local search and its impact on the business community.

About Ed Reese

Ed has 15 years of experience consulting a range of businesses, including universities, non-profits, and tech firms, on how to grow and maintain their marketing presence. His wide background is wide, but he specializes in organic SEO, local search, and analytics. However, since his move to Spokane in 2008, he’s worked primarily with local businesses, focusing on local search. He recently presented for the Spokane Club and the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau, and frequently speaks at other marketing events in Spokane. Besides being a Local University Faculty member, he is a Search Engine Journal contributor and blogs at Sixth Man Marketing.