Search Engine Strategies – The longest-running search marketing conference, SES is held in New York, San Jose and Chicago in the US and in various international cities the world. Each conference lasts two to four days and features sessions for both novice and expert search marketers. The rate varies by location and duration of the conference.
Search Marketing Expo – SMX is the newest of the series but is run by the guys who developed SES. Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman have their finger on the pulse of the search community and produce a variety of events to match the experience and interests of the community. You?ll find numerous events each year at a city near you, aimed at newbies and veterans alike. The SMX advanced event annually in Seattle is one of the more technical events of the circuit.
PubCon – This is one of my favorite conferences. Born out of the idea of cutting to the chase ? getting to the pub where the real information is exchanged. This event has 2 to 3 days of proper conference sessions followed by the ultimate networking session at a real pub. This tends to be a diverse event catering to Search Experts, Webmasters, Affiliate Marketers and now with a extended focus on Social Media and how to really integrate all of these aspects for profit. Brett Tabke who puts it on also goes out of his way to make it affordable so that anyone can attend.
ad:tech – A very large event devoted to online advertising, ad:tech has added search engine marketing segments in recent years. These introductory sessions are targeted at marketing managers and advertising agencies that want to start learning search marketing. ad:tech is held for three days several times each year in cities around the globe.
eMetrics Summit – Jim Sterne holds the definitive conference on Web metrics and analytics in several locations around the world throughout the year. This conference is broader than just search marketing, but all search marketers must understand metrics to be successful. If you want to learn how to measure your effectiveness this is the event. IN the past few months Jim has been aligning his events with SMX outside the US to make a richer event with the cross access to both events.