Online Marketing Blog published a record breaking 14 blog posts on the first day of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. Congratulations to Thomas, Ashley, Dana and Jessica on a great job on what was a very busy day.

We're really picking up steam with our tips on Iternet Marketing Conferences , appropriately enough, during SES San Jose. Our next tip comes from Robert Scoble , Managing Director of FastCompany.TV and blogger extraordinaire. I caught up with Robert at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and he agreed to play along and answer a few conference tip questions. The insights below are transcribed from the video interview I did with him during the event.

We're on a roll this week during SES San Jose 2008 with our next tip in a series of how to " Get the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences ". Previously a Vice President and Editor in Chief at ClickZ for 7 years, Rebecca Lieb serves as an Editorial Consultant to the ClickZ network as well as a public speaker on interactive marketing and advertising . She'll be keynoting the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association )MIMA( Summit this October.

Our third set of internet marketing conference tips come on day one of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose and are appropriately from Kevin M. Ryan , Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch . Kevin Ryan has been involved with numerous conferences over the years working for various interactive and internet marketing agencies before starting his own and now as head of the SES conferences in the U.S.

Here's our second tip in a series of posts during the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose on " Getting the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences ". This one is from Brad Berens , Global Content Director for the esteemed ad:tech conferences and iMedia Connection . Brad also blogs about culture, new media, marketing and community over at Mediavorous . First, accept that you can't do everything- believe me I've tried!

With Search Engine Strategies San Jose just around the corner, I thought it timely and appropriate to share insights on how you can get the most out of marketing conferences. TopRank is very active attending, speaking and blogging a variety of internet marketing events, conferences and workshops.

I promised myself I'd slow down on conference speaking last year and while I've turned down more offers this year than ever before, )and been turned down myself the one time I formally pitched( some really great opportunities have popped up. Here are the upcoming conferences I'll be speaking at for pretty much the rest of this year not including private company engagements: Aug 20, 2008 - Search Engine Strategies,

Lists and ranking resources can be tough and controversial. A while back we ranked top blogs on the topic of search engine marketing )SEO and PPC( that publish their RSS subscriber counts via Google's Feedburner. With changes in the search marketing industry, one can logically wonder, "How many SEM blogs really still post about search marketing?" To help answer that question,

The initial submissions of session suggestions for the Interactive portion of SXSW that made the first cut have been published. Now it's up to the voting public to decide which sessions make it next. I've heard a bit of feedback from last year's attendees on the quality of content in the search engine optimization sessions, so it will be nice to see what makes it this year. Tony Adam from Yahoo submitted a proposal, " SEO for Startups " and now it's up for votes.

Welcome to the newest update of TopRank's BIGLIST of SEO/SEM blogs , chock full of SEO, SEM and Social Media goodness. This week's crop will help you stay up to date with industry news and the latest how-to's on social media marketing, search engine optimization and agency online marketing best practices.

Last week I posted about situations where search engine optimization isn't for sales and it sparked some interesting discussions. Most SEO efforts are directed towards lead generation and sales, but prospects and customers are not the only audiences for web content. Fundamentally, SEO is about making the search engines' job and finding, indexing and ranking content easier, more useful to searchers. Companies publish many types of content to many different audiences.

When marketing web sites on the internet 10 years ago, people "surfed" the web, clicking on links between sites they already knew about, links from directories and review sites. Search engines like AltaVista, Lycos, Hotbot, Excite, etc were around as well. Remember those? People like Eric Ward pioneerd the practice of promoting web sites editorially resulting in links from these sorts of resources.

Social media monitoring and social media measurement are two very different things, but I think many of the searchers and social media taggers using those phrases don't always make the distinction. For some quick insight from a qualified audience, I turned to Twitter and within an hour had about 40 replies. It started off with this Tweet: Twitpoll: What's a better term: "social media monitoring" or "social media measurement"?

Networking has been a core tactic for building and marketing businesses long before the internet came of age and certainly even more so with the explosion of services such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Ning. Web technology and the mass appeal of making connections online makes social networking an attractive channel for businesses that want to extend their word of mouth reach, credibility and influence. While there's plenty of buzz about social networks )socnets(,

The BIGLIST update of SEO blogs comes to you this week on a Monday because, hey, that's the way we like to change things up here at Online Marketing Blog. This edition of the BIGLIST Update is chock full of blogs that offer SEO how to's and practical insights as well as a good showing of social media topics. Enjoy!

For the 5th year in a row, MarketingSherpa has published their Search Marketing Benchmark Guide which has been completely re-written and edited including results from the Marketing Sherpa members search marketing survey, other studies performed over the last 12 months and "best of" research provided by over 50 respected sources. The SEM Benchmark Guide is helpful for marketers looking to get a handle on the state of the SEM industry, trends, strategies and tactics.

TopRank's SEO Team in Paintball Gear As much as companies find the need to outsource part or all of their SEO efforts, many do not have a clear picture of the value that comes from hiring an agency versus a full time, in-house SEO. While many consultants and some agencies offer "value meal" pricing and packages, the cost for a search engine optimization effort will vary based on the scope of the project, hours allocated, client side resources,

For Bay Area folks and social media enthusiasts the world over, " Social Media Club " is well known as an upstart organization looking to promote the goodness of social media as well as advance the knowledge of businesses trying to figure out where social media might fit into their digital marketing plans. Today SMC co-founders Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells announced a new interim Board of Directors to take SMC to the next level.

SEO is a hot topic for Online Marketing blog with the most recent posts, " Rushing Your SEO Doesn't Mean Quicker Results " and " Should Companies Hire Multiple Search Marketing Firms ?". The next in what is becoming a series of insights into SEO is all about optimizing content for situations that really have little to do with why most SEO firms are hired.

On occasion TopRank will get calls from prospective clients that ask about hiring multiple SEO agencies in an effort to get the "best of both worlds" in terms of best practices and performance through competition. On the surface, I suppose I could see how someone might think this might make sense but in practice, it really doesn't. The "two is better than one" philosophy might work when it comes to getting a second opinion from a doctor or a mechanic but with SEO,