websense

We (The Karcher Group) do 2 or 3 seminars on search engine marketing a year. Our next one is coming up in Columbus, Ohio on October 23rd at a great facility called the Platform Lab. It’s an IT testing and training facility near downtown Columbus. A very cool place.

So, if you’ve just gotten into the search marketing industry, or have been charged with optimizing and promoting either your own site, or your company’s site; this is a great way to start learning about SEO and PPC.

We’ve been doing these seminars for several years now and have had great response to them. The attendees regularly comment that it’s more than worth the money, and more importantly their time. We’ve made it very affordable, because our primary goal is to educate the market on Search. There are too many companies spending time and money in all the wrong places trying to optimize their sites.

Anita Campbell will be joining us from Small Business Trends, to discuss Blogging and Social Media, which was one of the favorite sessions at our last seminar.

So, if you’re interested in learning about SEO or PPC, or just want to come meet some great people, come see us at Search Engine Marketing Made Simple Columbus in October.

Heading out for SES San Jose Monday morning.

SES is usually a great show for us. Lots of traffic, of course, and the networking and parties are always a good time.

The search industry is going through a lot of changes, acquisitions and companies changing hands, so there should be lots of news coming out of this show.

Of course, we’re looking forward to catching up with John Marshall to learn more about Market Motive and what they’ll be up to.

As we did with SMX Advanced, we’ll post a bit about the show, the sessions and what’s happening while we’re there.

As the show floor draws to a close, we pulled Matt Clark from Yahoo! into our booth to get his thoughts on the initial SMX show. He thought that the show went well for the most part. He also mentioned that it was a great opportunity to discuss Yahoo’s! new commercial API with the individuals attending the show. As a side note, he was amused that as usual attendees were making statements framed as questions. Overall it was a great show for Matt and everyone at Yahoo!

Day 2 is under way (it’s about 1:00 here). The show and conference ends in about 2 and a half hours.

People are looking tired, but we’re still hearing good things about the sessions.

It still seems to be holding true that just about everyone here is in the search marketing industry and has been for some time now. There aren’t a lot of SEO beginners, which seems to be what people like most. They’re finally getting some detailed ideas and optimization techniques they can use to make themselves better at what they do.

We’ll be packing up the booth and heading out to see a bit of Seattle in a few hours.

We’re doing our Search Engine Marketing Made Simple seminar in Akron this week. It’s been one of the best groups we’ve had yet both in attendees and speakers. Speakers have been great, and the group has been very involved and interactive.

One of our guest speakers, Anita Campbell spoke this afternoon on blogging for business. She’s actually got a great blog for entrepreneurs, called Small Business Trends

Being in the business, you think you’ve heard it all about blogs and how great they are, but Anita has some great, very practical tactics business owners and marketers can use. She makes the point that blogging will take time and commitment (I’m learning that now), but sticking with it and adding meaningful information will make a difference.

If you run or market a small business, I’d highly recommend you spend some time in her blog.