The abundance of Online Marketing Blog coverage of SES New York slowed significantly by Wed afternoon but there was nothing slowing down the SES NY conference, which had record breaking attendance numbers. Despite my TopRank blogging compatriot Jolina having Thursday off and myself moderating and speaking that day, there was plenty of action documented during the sessions day 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 , at the Microsoft party and the WebmasterRadio.FM SearchBash .

Social Media is an important, growing channel in the world of online marketing. Certainly indicated by the number of attendees crammed into this afternoon's session at SES New York. The panel for the session included moderation duties handled by Erik Qualman from EF Education and the following speakers: Jennifer Laycock, Liana Evans, Tamera Kremer and William Flaiz. From the impromptu polling during the session,

The New Face o In-House Search included Ron Belanger as the moderator and Bill Hunt from Global Strategies International, Olivier Lemaignen from Intuit, Marshall D. Simmonds from New York Times, Bill Macaitis from Fox Interactive Media and Brendan Hart from National Geographic Digital Media. First up is Bill Hunt to talk about what perspective companies should take when considering bringing search marketing in-house. What are the best options?

B2B Search sessions )both organic and paid( can be few and far between, so any time it exists I'm sure to plant myself in the front row. The B2B Tactics session was moderated by Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget Speakers included: Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc. Adam Goldberg, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, ClearSaleing Karen Breen Vogel, President and CEO,

On Thursday I'll be presenting on a panel, " Beyond Linkbat: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online " with Chris Boggs and Sally Falkow. Sage Lewis will be moderating. I think this type of session is very timely as search engines begin to put more and more emphasis on higher quality and editorial link sources and less on sources that are easier to manipulate. Increasing competition online also means online branding and influence increase in their importance.

After gathering around the caffeine this morning for Day 3 of SES New York, attendees gathered to listen to a keynote from Gordon McLeod, President, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Gordon led the audience through the evolution of SEO within the Wall Street Journal organization, noting that they didn't necessarily do things right the first or second time. Since 1996, The Wall Street Journal has grown to incorporate SEO as a strategic business decision,

Day two rolled right along here at SES New York with great sessions well documented by an array of blog coverage . This includes our own Jolina Pettice who filed an SES inspired post on " Tips for Overcoming Client-Created Roadblocks " as well as session coverage of " Converting Visitors into Buyers " and the Orion panel on Universal Search . We also posted a video interview with Sara Holoubeck on current SEMPO news.

Today's Orion panel at SES NY really took a different spin on the topic of universal search. I went in expecting to hear the same info about what it is, how info is gathered and how to optimize for universal search. Which, if you are interested, can be read about in a previous SES Chicago post regarding universal search . This session was moderated by Kevin Ryan and Mike Grehan. The session was lively and engaging. Panelists included: John Battelle from Federated Media,

The conversions track at SES New York continues to be packed with those wanting to increase the performance of their search marketing campaigns. The "Converting Visitors into Buyers" panel was moderated by Aaron Shear from Boost Search Marketing and the speakers included: Mike Moran from IBM, Nigel Ravenhill from McAfee, Michael Sack from Idearc Media Corp. and Howard Kaplanfrom Future Now Inc.

On day two of the Search Engine Strategies conference the expo hall has opened and I found my way past two floors of exhibitors to find the SEMPO booth staffed by the famous "free agent" and SEMPO board member, Sara Holoubek. In this video interview, Sara talks about the local SEMPO groups that are forming as well as her insight on the new SEMPO Institute Agency Certification. http://video.google.com/videoplay?

While sitting in sessions at any Search Marketing Conference, you will hear agency-side search marketers asking the panel for advice on how to keep clients from standing in their own way. Questions like: What if my client ignores our optimization recommendations? What if a client doesn't see any value in social media? Some search marketers might think working with clients who won't implement recommendations is a waste of time.

Yesterday proved to be an interesting kickoff to this year's Search Engine Strategies conference here in New York. The Organic Listings panel was entertaining and informative as always and the Build Investment Interest in your SEO/SEM firm was an early indulgence for myself that offered great tips for those looking at the future liquidity and monetization for their agency. Jolina weighed in with her posts on excellent sessions,

Closing out day 1 at SES New York was a panel discussion on vertical search moderated by Incisive Media's Kevin Ryan and Rebecca Lieb and featuring panelists Bill Tancer GM Global Research at Hitwise, Jason R. Finger CEO Seamless Web, Paul Forster CEO Indeed, Steven Krein CEO Organized Wisdom.com and Joshua Stylman Managing Partner Reprise Media. While very important and certainly a hot topic,

A full house was in attendance for this SES NY session in which panelists discussed how to squeeze the most out of analytics and turn data into action. Specifically, Avinash Kaushik, Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist from Google shared the following. 3 Tips to Getting More out of Analytics 1. Measure bounce rate As Avinash described this is essentially when someone comes to your website, vomits and leaves.

At SES San Jose in 2006, I took a 21 second video of Mike McDonald from WebProNews while we were standing in line for the bus to the Google Dance. That short video was followed by many other videos interviews with interesting people in the search marketing business which you can find on TopRank's YouTube channel , and on our Videos category. http://video.google.com/videoplay?

Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg kicked off the morning with a discussion about how consumers have changed. Specifically, moving from a push marketing model to a pull in which the audience is engaged in a different way. The audience, which is has historically been bombarded with TV ads, that they either listen to or not, is now interacting with marketing messages in a completely different way.

How to Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM with an introduction by Anne Kennedy and a presentation by Patricia Hall, Investment Banker, Hallmark Capital. If you own and/or are running a fast growing search marketing agency and want to gain more insight into making your firm more valuable for acquisition/investment, then this session is for you. What Wall Street looks at. Client list is important. Keep in mind, if you have big name clients now,

Organic Listings Forum with Mike Grehan moderating and Jill Whalen, Dave Naylor and Greg Boser on the panel. Here we have an all star SEO cast available to answer questions about organic SEO. Mike starts out with a nod to St Patrick's day. During introductions Greg says he's a reformed black hat spammer. Audience: To what extent does Google use user data and behavior and how relevant is PageRank? Greg: PageRank is irrelevant. It's not important the way it used to be.

After a seemingly quicker than normal flight from Minneapolis into LaGuardia, Jolina and I then made it to the Sheraton in near record time. Monday begins what is the biggest SES show of the year: Search Engine Strategies New York. We're both looking forward to this SES with great anticipation. Jolina blogged SMX West recently and will also be blogging the SES show. We'll be doing a mix of blogging sessions,

This week we did a bit of house cleaning and removed 37 blogs from the BIGLIST of SEO blogs - some of them from well known SEOs. One of the quality measures we use for inclusion on the BIGLIST is frequency of posting. If a blog gets stale, we say bye bye for now. Get your BIGLIST updates via Twitter. This week's update includes several SEO blogs new to our list and a few re-inclusions. Enjoy! John W. Ellis SEM Blog - John writes mostly about PPC, analytics,