I was fortunate enough to attend the TechTarget Online ROI summit in San Francisco recently. I can definitely recommend this event as one of the best places to meet like-minded individuals if you happen to work in tech marketing.

ROMO: your flexible friend
In the opening presentation, TechTarget’s Marilou Barsam, SVP of Client Consulting and Corporate Marketing highlighted what she sees as the big changes in online marketing to IT professionals. She brought up the interesting…

Google engineers talking openly about the latest challenges in indexing web content. Search marketers getting their heads around building promotions on Twitter.  Lunch networking sessions exploring obscure tips and tricks. This year’s San Jose SES had it all, with a glow-in-the-dark Google Dance to boot.

Although SES hosts events around the globe, the San Jose event has traditionally attracted considerable attention due to its proximity to the campuses of the major search engines. This year…

There were many sessions at SES San Jose 2008 on getting more value from SEM traffic and improving the usability of SEM landing pages. Although not so well attended (being the last day of the conference), this session did contain many useful tips and tricks for landing page optimization.

Moderator:
Anna Maria Virzi, Executive Editor, ClickZ

Speakers:
Carrie Hill, Search Engine Watch Expert & Certified Search Engine Marketing & Promotion Account Manager, Blizzard Internet Marketing…

If you have ever grappled with trying to create SEM strategies for companies with more than one business unit or how to sell in the value of SEM to upper management, then this session was for you!

David Roth did a particularly good job of explaining how he created the current SEM strategy for Yahoo (to be clear, these are campaigns to increase Yahoo’s visibility through search - he is a marketer working for Yahoo,…

I didn’t get to cover this one, but Lisa Barone for Bruce Clay, Inc. did a great job:

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2008/08/semantic_search.html

What is semantic search? A way of finding meaning in those 2-3 words you type in the search bar. Search for ‘Definitely, Maybe’, you get music-related results  for Oasis. Search for ‘Marriott San Francisco’ and you get a hotel listing with a map. You’ve probably seen a lot of this in place already. The idea is to…

This session looked primarily at how paid search marketers can get the most out of contextual search (what Google calls the Content Network). There was also some information for publishers delivering ads and those who manage contextual campaigns.

Moderator:
Gregg Stewart, SVP, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing

Speakers:
David Szetela, CEO, Clix Marketing
Cynthia Tillo, Senior Product Manager of Advertising Services, Adobe Systems
Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com

David:

Recommends using a scraping tool to find keyword…

It seems like no online marketing seminar is complete nowadays without at least one session on social media. SES San Jose was no exception - social media optimization is definitely creating a buzz in the industry (as it has been for at least the last year).

Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, VP, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies & Search Engine Watch

Speakers:
Andy Beal, Consultant, Blogger & Author, Marketing Pilgrim LLC
David Snyder, Search Specialist, JRDunn.com
Neil…

So, it appears that I’m not the only one grappling with how to cope with duplicate content issues and content replicated in different places.

The session on this issue at SES attracted a sizeable crowd and a whole clutch of questions at the end.

Mark Jackson (of Vizion Interactive) gave a lively presentation with useful tips. If you are worried about duplicate content, check how many pages you have listed in Google and compare this…