November 16, 2009

Go to SES Berlin or Chicago for (Over) Ten Authors Speaking

During the past nine weeks, I've shared nine significant reasons for going to either Search Engine Strategies Berlin or SES Chicago 2009. For those of you who want to join in the chorus, they are: "nine trainers training, eight days a-learning, seven tracks amazing, six booths astounding, five brand new things, four keynote themes, three key trends, two early birds, and a ranking in the top three."

This week, I'll share a tenth important reason -- and it isn't to see "ten lords a-leaping." You should attend these events to hear well over ten authors speaking.

Actually, there will be at least 22 authors speaking at SES Berlin (November 23-25) or Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 (December 7-11), but I was already having difficulty fitting the facts into my version of the popular English Christmas carol.

Now, there will be 65 speakers at Search Engine Strategies Berlin and 172 speakers at SES Chicago 2009. So, why is hearing 22 authors speak an important reason to go to one of these must-attend events?

Well, if you've read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, then you probably share his great love for books. And you probably also share his distain for a distopian society where "firemen" burn books "for the good of humanity."

When Bradbury became the first science fiction writer to win the Pulitzer Prize in May 2007, he told LA Weekly that his novel was not about government censorship. Instead, he said Fahrenheit 451 was a story about how people's interest in books had been destroyed by television, replacing critical thought with useless "factoids."

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should all be like Granger, the leader a group of wandering intellectual exiles in Fahrenheit 451 who memorize books in order to preserve their contents. Nor, should we act like Clarisse McClellan, the character in the novel who is unpopular among her peers and disliked by her teachers for asking why instead of how and focusing on nature instead of technology.

But, in an era when most YouTube videos are 2-3 minutes long, wouldn't you like to hear from someone who "wrote the book" on search engine optimization, search engine marketing, or social media? And, in an era where tweets are 140-characters or less, wouldn't you like to meet up with an author who has written 200-500 pages about Google, YouTube, or blogs?

This isn't a knock on YouTube or Twitter. Back in June 2009, the contested election in Iran between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi led to massive demonstrations, with many Iranians going to social networks like YouTube and Twitter to share the upheaval in their country with the world.

Still, wouldn't you like to get an in-depth understanding of how your organization can use social media or search by talking with a person who has written a detailed account of this or another related topic?

So, who will you meet? Here are the 21 authors that I was able to identify:

Tim Ash, author of Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions.

Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online.

Bruce Clay, author of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies.

Bryan Eisenberg, co-author of Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer; Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing; and Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results.

Mona Elesseily, author of Mastering Panama.

Eric Enge, co-author of The Art of SEO.

Jennifer Evans Laycock, author of The Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing and of the Zero Dollars, a Little Bit of Talent and 30 Days series.

Liana Evans, author of Social Media Marketing: Publicity Through Viral Marketing.

Rand Fishkin, co-author of The Art of SEO.

Andrew Goodman, author of Winning Results with Google AdWords.

Mike Grehan, author of Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide.

Bill Hunt, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site.

Greg Jarboe, author of YouTube and Video Marketing: an Hour a Day.

Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?

Kevin Lee, author of The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising and co-author of The Eyes Have It: How to Market in an Age of Divergent Consumers, Media Chaos and Advertising Anarchy and Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales.

Rebecca Lieb, author of The Truth About Search Engine Optimization.

Peter Morville, author of Ambient Findability and Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.

Ayat Shukairy, co-author of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide.

Jim Sterne, author of Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success; Customer Service on the Internet: Building Relationships, Increasing Loyalty, and Staying Competitive; Advertising on The Web; and World Wide Web Marketing: Integrating the Web into Your Marketing Strategy.

David Szetela, author of Customers Now: Profiting From the New Frontier of Content-Based Internet Advertising.

Shari Thurow, author of Search Engine Visibility and When Search Meets Web Usability.

Amanda Watlington, co-author of Business Blogs: A Practical Guide.

I know a couple of other people who are working on books, but haven't finalized their titles yet. And I'm sure I'm missing a few authors. Any oversights are unintentional.

Next week, Search Engine Strategies Berlin gets underway. But, we'll continue looking at more reasons for going to SES Chicago 2009.

By the way, if you register for SES Chicago 2009 by Friday, November 20, you can save up to $200 with the Advance Rate. That's enough to buy half a dozen of the books mentioned above.

In the meantime, just keep singing "ten authors speaking, nine trainers training, eight days a-learning, seven tracks amazing, six booths astounding, five brand new things, four keynote themes, three key trends, two early birds, and a ranking in the top three."

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 2:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

July 29, 2009

20 Authors of Business, Marketing, PPC and SEO Books Speaking at SES San Jose

Bring a couple of book bags to Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2009 because there will be more than 20 authors of business, marketing, PPC and SEO books and speaking at the conference. I should disclose that I'm one of them.

Now, there are a lot of great conference speakers who haven't written a book -- yet. I should know. I've been speaking at SES conferences since 2003, six years before I wrote a book. And writing a book isn't like Doc Ostrow getting a Krell brain boost in the movie Forbidden Planet (1956).

Nevertheless, getting a book published does indicate that you've got more than 12 minutes of PowerPoint slides to share with attendees. And, it's "something that never looks bad on your permanent record," according to Greg Marmalard in the movie Animal House (1978).

As a new author, I'm also beginning to learn that tracking where you rank on Amazon.com is almost as addictive as tracking where you rank in Google. Now, Google guidelines do not recommend the use of products to check rankings. However, Amazon.com welcomes them. For example, Rankforest provides sales rank tracking for authors and publishers. They can view historical charts, export rankings, compare items, create alerts, and more.

So, as you look over the agendas for SES San Jose, the Social Media & Video Strategies Forum, and the Local Search Summit, you might want to know about the subjects that the conference speakers have written about as well as the topics that they are going to address. Here are the 20 authors that I know will be speaking at one or more of these events:

Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

Tim Ash, author of Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions.

Optimizing Landing Pages -- Tim Ash's Tips and... Footwork

James Colborn, author of Search Marketing Strategies: A Marketers' Guide to Objective Driven Success from Search.

Bryan Eisenberg, co-author of Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing, and Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer.

Bryan Eisenberg Always be Testing: Google Website Optimizer

Mona Elesseily, author of Mastering Panama.

Eric Enge and Stephan Spencer, co-authors of The Art of SEO.

Dave Evans, author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Andrew Goodman, author of Winning Results with Google AdWords.

Andrew Goodman- Winning Results with Google AdWords

Mike Grehan, author of Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide.

Bill Hunt, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site.

Greg Jarboe interviews Bill Hunt about his new book

Greg Jarboe, author of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day. http://www.amazon.com/YouTube-Video-Marketing-Hour-Day/dp/0470459697

Greg Jarboe - Mysteries of Online Video

Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.

Rebecca Lieb, author of The Truth About Search Engine Optimization.

Rebecca Lieb, eConsultancy, on her new book about search engine optimization at SES NY 2009

Lance Loveday, co-author of Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads.

Robert Scoble, co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.

Ayat Shukairy, co-author of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide.

Shari Thurow, author of Search Engine Visibility and When Search Meets Web Usability.

Amanda Watlington, co-author of Business Blogs: A Practical Guide.

Now, I'm probably missing a few authors -- especially a couple of conference speakers who are still writing books that haven't been announced yet. Still, if you review the list above, you could fill a bookshelf with all the titles that have already been written by speakers at SES San Jose, the Social Media & Video Strategies Forum, and the Local Search Summit.

So, if you will be attending Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2009 for the first time, then imagine entering Flourish and Blotts for the first time. It's the popular bookstore in Diagon Alley where most Hogwarts students purchase their schoolbooks.

Who knows. Maybe famous wizard author Gilderoy Lockhart will be holding a book signing at the store.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

October 17, 2006

Teaching Others to Search with Power

For those of us who spend most of our time using search engines, searching comes almost as second nature. For most people, however, getting good results from a search engine can be a daunting task. In today's SearchDay article, Teaching People to Search Like Pros, I've reviewed a new book by super searcher Greg Notess that offers one of the best guides I've read to helping others learn how to master web search engines.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:07 AM | Permalink

December 21, 2005

Power Searching with the Pros

The final installment of my compilation of SearchDay book reviews, A Compilation How-To Search Book Reviews, is online as today's SearchDay.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:53 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2005

SearchDay Book Reviews: The Big List

A frequent question we get here at Search Engine Watch is "do you know any good books about... [search engines, search marketing, how to build your own search engine, etc]." We certainly do. Over the past years I've reviewed dozens of good search-related books, and I'm now pulling them all together in a Big List, which I'll keep updated going forward.

The first installment of the list covers books about general-purpose web searching. Check it out in today's SearchDay article, Searching for a Good Searching Book?. Later installments will cover reviews of books on search marketing, specialized search tactics, search technologies, and more.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:22 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2005

Extreme Yahoo

All too often, we use our favorite search sites in a cursory fashion, not taking the time to fully explore the full range of services and tools available. And that's too bad, because all of the major search engines offer a variety of capabilities that can be useful—and in some cases incredibly valuable.

Today's SearchDay article, Yahoo to the Max, reviews a new book by noted search guru Ran Hock, a detailed guide to virtually everything offered by Yahoo. It's an excellent book that goes beyond explaining mechanics, offering dozens of strategies, tips and techniques for getting the most out of a longtime familiar search service.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:22 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2005

Even More Firefox Search Hacks

I've ranted several times about Mozilla Firefox, which I consider the quintessential searcher's browser. Firefox comes with lots of great search tools built-in, and it's a snap to add literally hundreds of other search tools from free sources throughout the web.

You can do lots of other really useful things with Firefox in addition to beefing up its search capabilities. in today's SearchDay article, Supercharging Firefox, I review Firefox Hacks, a new book from O'Reilly that shows you how to supercharge the browser to get the most out of your web experience.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:39 AM | Permalink

March 15, 2005

A Glimpse of the Soul of the Machine

Lucene is a popular, open-source search engine that's freely available for anyone to download and use. Lucene is a basic platform, and because it's written in Java it's highly extensible and can be adapted to many purposes.

If you're a proficient programmer, or simply are curious about what the code looks like for a world-class search engine, check out today's SearchDay article, How to Hack Your Own Search Engine, which is a review of a new book, Lucene in Action. The book offers detailed instructions for downloading and customizing Lucene yourself, and the companion site also makes all of the source code examples available for your perusal.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:27 AM | Permalink

March 2, 2005

Google Hacks, Reloaded

Two years ago, Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest broke into the New York Times list of top ten business paperbacks with Google Hacks, a remarkable feat for a book dedicated to the geekier aspects of writing programs to exploit Google's open-access architecture.

They've now released a second edition of the book, and it's well worth a read. Today's SearchDay article, Newer, Fresher Google Hacks, reviews the new edition and lays out the reasons why the book is an essential addition to the library of searchers, marketers or programmers who are frequent users of the search engine.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:18 PM | Permalink

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