SEO and SEM at NSW.NET

I’m excited to be presenting with Mark Vozzo (<- SEO guru) at this month’s NSW.NET meeting.
It’s on this coming Thursday morning, June 24. You can register here.

The event is in two parts. Mark will be covering Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for 30 minutes, and then after breakfast I’ll cover Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

To give you a quick introduction to the event, consider the following screenshots* from Google and Bing. In the green you’ll see organic search engine results, in the red you’ll see the paid ads (eg via Google AdWords)

 

Here’s how it looks in Bing:

In our sessions Mark will be covering how to search engine optimise your site to get in the green parts and I’ll be covering how to advertise in the red part.

As well as covering Google AdWords and Bing/Yahoo advertising I’ll also be briefly covering the opportunities on Facebook with regard to advertising.

What is SEM?

I’ll also clarify what SEM is – originally Search Engine Marketing was an umbrella term including SEO, paid search, conversion optimisation and more. These days the definition seems to focussing more on just the paid side of things – which is how I’ll be referring to it.

What is a Search Engine These Days?

Plus I’ll briefly explore what constitutes a ‘search engine’ when it comes to marketing (eg Facebook and Twitter are types of search engines).

Tips and Advice

The main focus though will be on providing advice and tips for businesses using paid search. I’ll be covering strategies for improving the return you get on AdWords using tighter campaigns, ad positioning and big stacking, plus how to use AdWords as a testing input into your organic search engine optimisation activities. Many businesses jump into using AdWords (that’s the easy part) but don’t know how minimise their bid costs, or how to measure what’s working and what’s not. I’ll be highlighting how to do these.

I’ll also outline how to get started using Bing (via Yahoo Search Marketing) in Australia, as well how to setup ads on Facebook with a few key tips (eg the types of pictures to use – Facebook success is largely about the images you use!).

Anything Else?

We’ll also have plenty of times for questions, so feel free to bring along your main pain points with SEO and SEM and we’ll start solving them. (Feel free to leave a question in the comments too)

I hope to see you there.

When: Thursday morning 24 June 2010 – starts at 7:30am
Where: The Grace Hotel, Level 2, 77 York Street, Sydney
How: Register here on the NSW.NET site

* Hat tip to Aaron Wall for the image ideas.