What problems have you encountered and how have you resolved the conflict?

Lennart, how about a summary of past events and some info on Las Vegas and other pending events?

I think you raise a very interesting topic. And I agree a thousand percent with you. It's ALL about balance. As a moonlighting SEO I've learned to qualify clients up front.
Clients need to understand that they can't keep doing the same old things that they've been doing and get excellent SEO results. The SEO on the other hand must be sensitive to a company's brand and image (if they already have one established in the market).

IMHO, a great SEO, has a good understanding of business and anticipate how he can help a company as well as the damage he can inflict.

I hope this string gets going here because I'm very interested in this topic. The way I've dealt with it is to not accept clients that I don't think are flexible.

Best Regards,
Keen

This forum is open in Jim's spirit to let anyone serious post their thoughts so you can influence anything planned for the conference and hopefully you can also join us in Vegas.

To attend this conference cost money, for some it is a lot of money and for some it is not as much. We are used to getting everything for free in SEF so this is maybe a conflict for some. But the cost for attending IMS is nothing compared to learn from these persons one by one. A quick calculation got me to the figure US$50,000 for having our speakers as consultants. Your cost is US$1095 for three days with the worlds best teachers on search engine and domain name strategies, content building and much, more.

I understand that for many students, young people, unemployed or early in the career still US$1095 is a lot of money. So for those of you who cannot attend for any reason you can always check into this forum and me or someone else of the experts can help you out.

Our dear friend Danny Sullivan hosted the first conference about Searchengines in November 1999 which I and 450 others attended. It was a great event and it made me extatic about some day arranging a conference on my own. To my great excitement I found two more, one in Sweden - Henki - and one in Denmark - Mikkel, who was just as crazy as me and wanted to do a conference.

In May 2000, in Copenhagen, we made our first conference. We had the pleasure of having some of the worlds foremost speakers and an international audience. Jim Wilson "our king" and Daron Babin from searchenginediscussion was invited from the US as speaker, Rod came from South Africa and we had a fantastic event which made us extatic.

I am a domain fanatic myself and to our next event in Stockholm we had also Jonathan C. Cohen from ICANN, The domain regulating body, and we extended the conference to two days including a full day of workshop. The response was extatic, no time before had people being able to sit around in small groups working with the world absolut top expertis on marketing.

Jim Wilson, our guru, said - let's do this in Vegas, and of course here we are now, only two months away. The program has been extended to three days and people are signing up from the Philippines, Tanzania besides "the usual" western countries. We can make our event in Las Vegas the most memorable ever.

If you take a closer look at the speakers and the first draft of the program you can see that we cover a broad spectrum of issues. Our competitor, Internet.Com, are splitting their events but we think that everything is connected so we give you information both about search engines, affiliate programs, community building, domains, traffic analyzis, banners, linkbuilding, newsletters, trademark and intellectual property plus much much more.

We are also having the first meeting with WAIM and everyone who shows up and are accepted as members will be "Founding Members" which of course is an extra trophy in your collection.

Jim is putting an enormous effort into this event so let's help him out. Even if you cannot attend maybe you know someone else that can so tip about the conference to your friend and he/she will be you forever grateful.

We are also very anxious to get as many people as possible to our events and when we start to get a profit from IMS we will make scholarships funds so students can apply for money and be flown in. So everything you'll do in this forum will help you back in the end.

If Las Vegas goes well we are planning to do Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Berlin also this year. In the years to come we want to put Searchengineforums on the map in every major country around the world.

So now itīs up to you, do you have anything to say?

This is part of the main issue with what we do. In essence (and assuming that you are not designing for a company which will employ spamming techniques and switch domain names with every search engine banning), effective web design (or development) must include:

(1) a design layout that looks professional, and is logical with respect to the topic matter.
(2) a GUI (user interface) that is inviting, compelling ... and everything else that does not say "confusing, hard to find", etc. ... this is harder to do than one would think, but where it is well done, it is an inestimable aid to the website.
(3) excellent ad copy/images -- information aimed towards the target market ... also tough to do; one can learn HTML and graphics programs, but what to say is all about marketing and sales.
(4) and, of course, all the above must be balanced against the SEO needed to achieve reasonable rankings for the pages.

Good luck! (LOL.)

As to how to balance all this: to me, it is a question of what the client is expecting to do in terms of promotion over and above what we do. Where the client will do little to nothing, the SEO is extremely important. Where the client wishes to adhere more closely to a "look and feel" and has a promotional budget, it may be less so ... but it is vitally important to take into consideration the client's intentions and plans.

Of course, it goes without saying that those who cloak apparently do not encounter these problems ... they can design as they wish without having to cover the SEO in their surfer-viewable pages. However, as I understand it, cloaking brings with it another set of problems, expertise and cost and, without opening up the pro and con cloaking arguments, there is also the problem of potential penalization by search engines.

Nevertheless, it is important to be able to work the SEO into a site in an unobtrusive way (and no same color text/background types of tricks, please!).

I sometimes think it is a weird discipline to be able to design a good layout, decent GUI, ad copy, and work in the SEO unobtrusively, and have this all "gel" together ... but, there you have it.

We've all spent more than $1095 on secret reports, insider's tips, doorway blasters, mega meta taggers and cloaking spoof spamware. Why? To try to get an edge, to try to become better, to try to succeed. This is for real. This is the one way of getting the inside scoop, of seeing what it takes and of being able to become an influence in the future of our industry.

In spite of all the dotcom disaster news, the internet is going to produce some very successful and very powerful leaders in the next few years. Who do you think those people are going to be? People that might be seen at a conference such as this?

I want to be able to have a shot at being one of those people or at least knowing some of the people that are. I don't want to look back five years from now and say "shoot, I should have gone".

Now, the one suggestion I do have.

Someone needs to be doing press releases. This is big news and the media needs to know. They want to know. All we need to do is tell them and they will be there.

I need them there. You need them there. The whole industry needs them there!

And, if the media goes there, so will the search engines. Alta Vista needs press right now as much we do.

You have a wide spectrum of who's who in the world of internet marketing and this is a fantastic opportunity to legitamize this industry and establish an organization that can become the conerstone of global e-commerce. This is what I've been wanting for a long time now. An association that can lead the world into a better internet for generations to come. We can set the standard for honesty and professionalism and develop internet marketing into a viable profession every bit as important as TV to the generation before us.

When the world is looking for leaders, who is going to step up if not us?

Sorry to preach here, but I'm excited at the possibilities as so should we all be.

Ranking isn't everything.

As we've seen here in the forums, over the years nothing changes but the changes!

While cloaking is legit now, who wants to bet cash money that it will always be that way for all of the engines? If its use runs out of control with the engine spammers, you can bet that cloaking will fall into disfavor. Then what happens to the e-businesses who have put all of their eggs in that basket?

Life has taught us that we must not rely on just one "trick" upon which to build our businesses. The professionals that hang out here are well aware of the need to use many different tools and techniques to build traffic, even when something like cloaking looks like a gift of wonderful traffic.

With traditional (?) optmization we know that every page should start with an H1 headline using the keyphrase that is also in the TITLE and Meta Tags. Oddly enough, clients don't just love that look

And then there are the designers that just love great looking, bloated pages or better yet, an entire site built in Flash! Can't get more cool than that, right?

Page size doesn't matter since the site will never get any traffic with that approach.

That's the Balancing Act.

That's why SEO must be part of the design team.

If you could make a first draft and send it to lennartsvanberg@lennartsvanberg.com I would be very happy.

Jim suggested that we should do multiple pressreleases that I think is a great idea so if you do one until next week that I send out we can see how it works out and then we'll work from there.

Altavista hasn't signed up for the conference even though we have one who just quit there as an inside expert with us. Any contact anyone may have within the search engines is welcome, a founders discount can maybe be a reality

I like Web Traffic Controller...

Recently found these online:
Search Engine Optimization Director
Search Engine Optimizer
Search Engine Prioritization Engineer

Or how about
Search Traffic Methodology Processor
Search Engine System Processor
Web Traffic Engineer

One of my ongoing headaches however, has been those same programmers. I never had the luxury of promoting static html pages when I was learning the ropes of SEO. I got to cut my teeth on .cfml with query strings and session variables and programmers that didn't have the time or inclination to discuss and adopt a development methodology that went beyond getting it done fast and making it work. We used to butt heads a lot...

Making it work and making it work quickly was their top priority. Quick can be a good thing, but over time the real costs of decisions become more obvious. Being able to show those real costs has made a big difference. It's our company and we are still paying for some of our early decisions. Costs are very real.

For the first couple years I felt like I was pitching at windmills, but these days the programmers are out there with me, and since we usually contract out the design work, I have some influence on the design specs as well.

It's nice to know there are certain walls I won't have to smack again...

I feel half brain dead at the moment so forgive me if this makes no sense.

My guess is there is someone reading this right now that could do a much better job than I can. If no one else will do it, then I will and I will do the best I can, but I really think we need to find someone else.

If no one has sent you something by this coming Tuesday, let me know and I will do it. In the hopes of finding someone better, I'll post a little suggestion here and maybe that will stimulate a response.

INTERNET MARKETING STRATEGIES GROUP ANNOUNCES CONFERENCE THEME.

Turning dotcom disasters into dotcom dreams.

IMS will be sponsoring a three day conference on April the 10th, 11th and 12th, 2001 at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada.

Keynote speakers for the three day event include some of the most recognizable and highly respected names in the world of internet e-commerce.

The focus for this conference will be on several topics including, top search engine placement, domain name registration, affiliate programs and banner sales.

The goal of the conference is educating webmasters and internet marketers from all over the globe on how to be more effective through professional internet marketing techniques.

Several of the major search engines will be represented as well.

For more info
http:// you know the rest.com

Now, see how bad I am at it. Surely someone can do better.

One runs into this problem with clients, as well ... having to explain enough to get them to agree that, not only is SEO important, but that it also may interfere with how the site will look. The discussion then goes to how much and to what degree.

Of course, there are those who are happy with whatever you do.

See what you think of this, (I knew that sometime or another my writing skills might come in handy):
____________________________________________

AN EXCITING BEGINNING ON THE HEELS OF THE E-INDUSTRY SHAKEDOWN

On the heels of an unforgettable year where many dot com dreams bit the dot com dust there is a exciting ray of hope that is hard to stifle in a dynamic industry powered by exhilarating new ideas. As the internet population continues its exponential growth, a growing industry of talented professionals are finding their niche in Search Engine Optimization.

As a tribute to the budding industry the IMS will be sponsoring a three day conference on April the 10th, 11th, and 12th 2001 at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. The industry will be well represented by some of the most highly respected names in the world of e-commerce today. Exciting topics up for debate include search engine placement, domain name registration, affiliate programs and banner sales.

The conference also aims to educate webmasters and internet marketers from around the globe on how to be effective through professional internet marketing techniques. Unique to the conference will be the very first meeting of WAIM (World Association of Internet Marketers) and all attendees will have a chance to become founding members.

Interest has been piqued around the globe, with participants already registered from Tasmania and the Phillipines. Duly taking note, are several of the major search engines who will be represented at the conference. This is an exciting opportunity that you definitely don’t want to miss!

For all of the latest details,
http://www.internetmarketingconference.com

____________________________________________

Will this work? Yes/No? Do you want me to work on it some more? Is there anything else that you need some help with?

BTW, are you planning a conference like this in Toronto anytime soon?

Prime seeker on the upwards page

Imagine your in-house conflict expanded to include a client as part of the mix. A client with no understanding of the impact on success seemingly small decisions can cause.

A client that wants a Welcome page with nothing but a flashy Flash animation. And a site with mostly images. And a traditional database system with horrendously long URL's with a ? in the middle.

It's a wonder the Web works at all!