Metamend Speakers at SMX Advanced and SES Toronto

Recognition of one’s talents is pretty cool. Recognition of the talents of a team is even cooler. Over the coming weeks, the folks here at Metamend are going to be feeling pretty cool as we are sending speakers to two of the premier search marketing conferences, Search Marketing Expo (SMX Advanced) in Seattle and Search Engine Strategies Toronto.

Colin Cochrane is quite possibly one of the most talented technical SEOs in the business. On June 4 at 10:45am, Colin will be part of the SMX Advanced Developer Day session:

Platform Considerations for the Microsoft Stack and LAMP Stack – Practical tips, tricks and workarounds for search-friendly architecture.

• Microsoft Stack
  - Including IIS, ASP.Net, Silverlight, Microsoft SQL Server
• LAMP Stack
  - Including Apache, PHP, Ruby, Flash/Flex, mySQL
• CMS Considerations (such as .NET Blog Engine, AxCMS, Wordpress, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla)

This is the stuff extremely technical SEOs think about. The conversation isn’t really that difficult to understand once one gets past the techno-jargon acronyms. The panel will be discussing the optimal ways to set up servers and unique applications, add-ons and enablers (e.g.: various blog platforms, online content management applications, server-side includes, etc…).

Though one can follow the conversation, comprehing of the complexities of it all is why the industry has extremely technical SEOs working alongside brilliant Internet engineers. We’re extremely proud of Colin.
Moderated by Vanessa Fox, the session will also feature:

• Nikhil Kothari, Principal Architect, Microsoft
• Duane Nickull, Senior Standards Strategist, Adobe Systems, and,
• Jeff Pollard, CTO, SEOmoz

SMX Advanced is now virtually sold out. The registration page says they are taking a waitlist for All Access Passes however there are still a few ways to get there. Networking Passes and passes for the Developer Day are still available, as are trade-show floor only passes. It is worth getting in somehow. Beg, borrow, or buy admittance. Pull a Fred-Works (but for goodness sakes, do it gracefully). If you’re a seriously curious SEO, SEM, SMM, or other such acronym, you seriously want to be at SMX Advanced. Last year’s inaugural SMX Advanced was arguably the best search marketing conference, ever.

A few weeks later,the largest search marketing event in Canada happens in Toronto when the Search Engine Strategies Conference rolls into TO, June 16 – 18. The smallest and most intimate of the 5 flagship SES shows, SES Toronto tends to be a testing ground for speakers and sessions preceding August’s super-sized show in San Jose. I am sitting on two panel sessions at SES Toronto. Fortunately, both are late in the afternoon on both days of the conference.

The first is going to be interesting. It’s a new session topic titled,

Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions
Link building is crucial, but linkbait tactics that worked this year may not be as effective next year. This session focuses on the underlying quality as well as ingenuity needed to get other websites to link to you early and often. It will also explain how you should approach journalists, bloggers, and other authoritative sources to enhance your company’s online reputation — whether or not you get links.

Moderated by SES Toronto Co-Chair Andrew Goodman, the panel features

• myself (Jim Hedger),
• Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR, and,
• Joe Thornley Of Thornley Fallis Communications and 76design (no bio available)

The next day, I am sitting on the Site Clinic panel with Larry Bailin from Single Throw Internet Marketing. Moderated by the ever gracious Anne Kennedy, the site clinic, “… takes volunteers from the audience and examines their websites live to provide general feedback about improving them to gain more traffic from search engines.”

Site clinics are among the most fun sessions to participate in because ANYTHING can happen. There is no way to prepare for a site clinic because one has no idea what is going to be thrown at them.

Tickets for SES Toronto are still available. SES Toronto is one of the most interesting shows of the year because it is the smallest of the largest. There is a lot of room for interaction between speakers and attendees, especially given the relatively laid-back atmosphere in Canada’s largest city.

Hope to see ya in Seattle and/or Toronto.