The real reasons for why you should attend the April Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York City.

The Pandia editors are busy people, having both full jobs besides running Pandia.

Unfortunately this means that it has been some time since we attended a search engine conference. And that’s bad, because search engine conferences are definitely great places for search engine intelligence gathering. This year we have bought plane tickets to New York.

Some friends have asked us whether there is any point at all in attending such conferences, as you may find most of the information needed online anyway. That is not what we call a good question.

Two types of search engine learning

There is learning and there is learning. One type of learning is based on codified knowledge found on websites and in books. Unfortunately this type of learning requires that you already know something about your subject. If not, it will take you a lot of time to get to grips with the problem at hand.

However, you may help this learning process tremendously by making use of the other type of learning, the one based on human interaction. It is this other, dialog based, type of knowledge that is the most valuable.

So, the main reason for going to search engine conferences is not the fine speeches and the exhibitions per se, but the fact that you may use this opportunity to talk to the speakers and company representatives present.

And what’s even more important, you get a chance to learn to know colleagues and competitors, forge alliances and access all that “tacit” information that only many years worth of work experience may give you.

Make yourself and your site known

Here’s another reason: if you work in the field of search engine marketing, you probably have an SEO web site or blog that needs some promotion. By drinking some beer (or coffee) with other SEO experts and bloggers, your site gets a human face.

We would guess that Matt Cutts, Graywolf, Stuntdubl, Dave Naylor, Andy Beal, Danny Sullivan or any of the other famous search engine bloggers are more likely to link to someone they have met and trust.

New York in April

What type of venue you should choose is a matter of taste and opportunity. Both the Webmaster World “Pub” conferences and the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conferences definitely do the trick.

The Search Engine Strategies April 10 to 13 2007 conference in New York offers sessions on all relevant search engine marketing related topics, and presents some of the best speakers available. It takes place at the New York Hilton.

Here are some of the topics we find particularly interesting:

• Video search optimization
• In house SEO
• Search term research and targeting
• Pay per click advertising
• Social media optimization
• Search engine friendly design
• Web analytics
• Writing for search engines
• Duplicate content and multiple site issues
• Searcher behavior research
• Local search marketing tactics
• Shopping search tactics

We will report from selected sessions, but will also spend much time with search engine representatives and search engine marketers. Our aim is to make several interviews that will be of benefit to those of our readers that cannot attend this conference.

Danny Sullivan leaving SES

It should be noted that the New York conference is the last SES conference where Danny Sullivan is the host.

As reported by Pandia in December, Danny has now left both SES and Search Engine Watch to focus on a new site and a new conference series.

Other search engine conferences.