Portland’s Searchfest takes place next week @ the Governor Hotel. It is the ultimate conference in Portland for the search engine marketing & internet strategy. PDX Pipeline readers can save $30 on their SearchFest ticket with the coupon code BRD-SEMPDXSF1020.
I sent Portland SEO expert & SEMPDX board Member Todd Mintz some questions about the conference and his responses are below:
PDXP: Why should people attend SearchFest?
Julian, I think most people who read PDX Pipeline are interested and involved in social media in one form or another. We’re dedicating a whole track of our agenda to social media where we’ve invited top experts to speak on relevant topics like Twitter, Facebook & Social Media strategy. Social media isn’t just for fun…it’s a business that if done properly can be lucrative for all involved.
If you’re interested in Search Engine Optimization or Paid Search, we have full agenda tracks for those topics too.
PDXP: How big of a role does social media play in search/internet marketing now?
Huge. Massive. Ginormous. The rise of social media meant that people / businesses could disseminate their message to the masses without needing a top search engine ranking. However, social media and search marketing frequently work together to help a business achieve their aims. Our SearchFest session on social media tactics will delve more deeply into that.
PDXP: How has Searchfest evolved since the beginning?
This is our 4th SearchFest Conference and we started doing these because we wanted to put on a search marketing conference in Portland that offered comparable quality to the bigger conferences we all had to travel to attend (e.g. Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, Pubcon). The first conference was somewhat of an unknown for us but we were pleasantly surprised when we packed the World Forestry Conference center and both attendees and speakers felt that we put on a wonderful event. From there, each successive conference has gotten bigger and better.
PDXP: Let’s hear about SEMPDX (How it came about, how to be involved).
SEMpdx came about as a discussion between Kent Lewis, Scott Orth & Blu Drobushevich that took place at a Seattle search conference. We can do this bigger and better, they thought. So, they reached out to people that they knew like Ben Lloyd, Scott Hendison and myself and we help form the initial Board of Directors. We started putting on monthly meetings where we’d educate the public about search marketing in 2006 and our first SearchFest event took place in 2007.
PDXP: Are there any search/internet marketing trends you see growing in the next year?
The hottest trends would have to be the evolution of social media (Facebook, Twitter, new players…where are they headed?); mobile search (making those little portable devices more useful for users); and local search (the results shown at the top of Google have become pretty important for businesses and will only grow more important).
Also, the agreement between Yahoo & Bing gives Google a clear #2 competitor. How will this shake out? Our SearchFest keynote features Bing product manager Stefan Weitz and I’m sure he’ll be talking in depth about this point. Stay tuned.
SearchFest 2010
Tuesday, March 09, 2010 from 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM (PT)
Governor, Hotel, Portland, OR
http://www.sempdx.org/sempdx-events/searchfest-2010/
