Event Summary

The Online Advertising Ecosystem

• What is an ad network? What is an ad exchange? Why do they exist? Who uses them?
• Types of ad networks – Representative, blind, targeted
• Ad exchanges, ad servers, demand-side platforms, publisher-side platforms, data providers
• Technologies/media – Display/banner, text, video, mobile, email, SMS, rich media, flash, etc.

For Publishers – Selling Inventory on Ad Networks and Exchanges

• How to profitably use ad networks and exchanges to sell your ad inventory
• Estimating revenues and comparing across various ad networks
• Ad networks vs. exchanges vs. direct sales – how to determine the most effective way to monetize
• Differentiating between/among ad networks – how to know which to use

For Advertisers – Buying Inventory through Ad Networks and Exchanges

• How to utilize ad networks and exchanges to efficiently get your message out and convert traffic
• Affordable and cost effective buying strategies for online businesses
• How to find the right ad network/exchange for your brand, message, and technology
• Case studies of innovative/successful use of targeted ad networks/exchanges by advertisers

Moderator:

• Graham Lawlor, Founder of Ultra Light Startups and CEO of BrightMap

Panelists (alphabetic order):

• Dean Harris, CMO of Kayak.com, Vonage, and HotJobs
• Jonathan Hsu, CEO of 24/7 Real Media
• Brian O’Kelley, CEO of AppNexus
• Anand Subramanian, Founder and Chairman of ContextWeb

Panel Video

Presentation Slides

Main Presentation – Ad Networks and Exchanges for Startups

Blog Posts About this Panel

Online Advertising Discussed by Ultra Light Panel (by NYConvergence)

Online Advertising Entering a “Golden Age” (by Ultra Light Startups)

Panelist and Moderator Bios

Jonathan Hsu
Jonathan is the CEO of 24/7 Real Media, a leading global digital marketing company acquired by WPP in 2007. 24/7 Real Media powers more than 45,000 web sites, delivers over 800 billion ads and reaches 200 million unique visitors. Previously, Jonathan was an M&A specialist at JP Morgan Chase Securities and served as a venture capitalist at American Lead Ventures, focused upon digital start-ups. Mr. Hsu is a member of the World Economic Forum Future of the Internet Council, the Paley Center for Media, and Vistage Global CEO Group.

Brian O’Kelley
Brian is the CEO and Co-founder of AppNexus, an advanced ad management platform specializing in real-time performance advertising. Brian created the first successful ad exchange as CTO of Right Media (acquired by Yahoo for $850MM in July 2007). Prior to Right Media, Brian was CEO of Netamorphosis, an early social networking and e-commerce site for events and venues. Brian is an active partner at Grape Arbor, an angel investor group with investments into more than a dozen technology companies.

Anand Subramanian
Anand is Founder and Chairman of ContextWeb, creators of ADSDAQ, an easy-to-use online advertising exchange that brings together advertisers and publishers to enable mutually beneficial advertising transactions. As CEO, Mr. Subramanian directed all aspects of ContextWeb’s business and operations including building and managing a team of technology innovators, sales, marketing, operations, product management and new product development. Today, the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange ranks among the top 15 ad-supported properties, according to comScore, reaching 143 million monthly unique visitors.

Event Summary

This event will cover:

SEO Basics

• Terms: SEO/SEM/PPC; keywords, pagerank; on-page vs. off-page; black hat vs. white hat; crawling, indexing & ranking
• Strategy: Defining objectives, ROI tracking/analytics, keyword and competitive research, research tools
• On-Site Tactics: Sitemaps, robots.txt files, page title/H1/H2/meta/URL, image alt tags, manual submission to search engines, internal linking
• Off-Site Tactics: Link building, social media, PR, backlinks via badges, widgets (html, iframes, javascript)
• Myths and Facts: Duplicate content, link sharing networks, indexing Javascript, AJAX and interactive content, speed as a ranking factor, keyword meta tags, the “Google sandbox”

SEO for New Websites

• Why is SEO for new websites different than for established websites?
• Thinking more like a consumer, and less like a marketer
• Strategies when using off-the-shelf platforms (e.g. WordPress, Drupal, etc)
• Strategies when building a site from scratch (e.g. php, Rails, .NET, etc)
• Top SEO must-do tips for new sites (see here, here, here, and here)
• Site launch – press releases, blog backlinks, social bookmarking

Advanced Topics in SEO

• Social Media and Real-time Search: How do social media and real-time content play into your SEO strategy?
• Content Types: Video, audio, images, products, locations, etc
• Innovations in Search Engines: Real-time/Twitter search, Bing, Google squared, Google social search, semantic search, mobile search, voice search

Moderator:

• Graham Lawlor, Founder of Ultra Light Startups and CEO of BrightMap

Panelists (alphabetic order):

• Seth Dotterer, Senior Director, Marketing at Conductor, Inc
• Christopher Hart, Director, Eastern Region Operations Bruce Clay Inc.
• Kevin Lee, CEO of Didit and Founder of SEMPO
• Dennis Yu, Founder and CEO of BlitzLocal

Panel Video

Presentation Slides

Main Presentation – SEO for New Websites

Panelists and Moderator Bios

Seth Dotterer

Seth is Senior Director of Marketing at Conductor, Inc. a leading provider of SEO measurement and optimization technology. Seth has helped companies from startups to the Fortune 100 on their marketing strategies and utilizing technology and metrics to increase sales and profitability. For over a decade, Dotterer has been obsessed with SEM/SEO and taking an analytical approach to online marketing for clients including Microsoft, Dell, and Circuit City. Before Google existed, Dotterer was running successful pay per click advertising on Goto.com (which later became Overture, which became Yahoo! Search Marketing).

Christopher Hart

Chris runs the New York office of Bruce Clay Inc., a leading global Internet marketing consulting firm that specializes in SEO and PPC. Chris manages client SEO projects and coordinates the company’s East Coast sales. He also teaches many of the company’s acclaimed SEOToolSet® Training and Certification courses, and has spoken at national search industry conferences. Before joining Bruce Clay, Inc., Chris worked for 12 years in the online B2B publishing industry, helping architect SEO-friendly best practices and publishing production processes.

Kevin Lee

Kevin is the Founder & CEO of Didit, a provider of search engine marketing strategy, analytics, and modelling producs and services. Kevin’s books include Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales and The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising. A founding board member of SEMPO and its first elected Chairman he is also active on DMA and IAB Committees. Kevin has been quoted in The Wall St. Journal, Business Week, The New York Times, Bloomberg, CNET, USA Today, San Jose Mercury News among others and blogs at KevinLee.net.

Dennis Yu

Dennis is CEO of BlitzLocal.com, an online agency specializing in local lead gen via integrating Facebook advertising with social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, directory listings, web analytics, and call tracking. Clients include Quiznos, Equifax, Maggianos, Famous Daves, and other national retail and franchised outlets. Dennis is a 14 year veteran of online marketing via Yahoo! and American Airlines. He has spoken at SMX West, SMX Singapore, SMX Sydney, Affiliate Convention, the American Marketing Association, and other venues.

Graham Lawlor

Graham is the Founder of Ultra Light Startups, a networking group for technology entrepreneurs, and ofBrightMap, a business to business directory of companies. Since 2008, Ultra Light Startups has helped over 900 businesses and entrepreneurs build efficient online businesses. He is a frequent speaker at classes, business schools, panel discussions and events related to technology businesses and startups and has been quoted in publications such as BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the BBC.

Question provided by Faraz Qureshi – an Ultra Light Startups member.

Answer provided by Dennis Yu CEO of BlitzLocal – and panelist at SEO for New Websites on Thursday, March 4.

Faraz’s Question:

Can anyone comment on the value (from SEO standpoint) of submitting blog posts to ‘article aggregation’ sites? For example, I’ve posted blog posts/articles to this site:  http://ezinearticles.com/ but not really sure how much [SEO] value its adding.  Any thoughts?

Dennis’s Answer:

The simple answer is that if sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Such is a nature of shortcuts to high rankings and “guaranteed #1 rankings”.  Every year for the last 10 years, we’ve seen new versions of mass submission software, content “generation” (randomization) scripts, and outsourced SEO firms selling their wares.

The medium answer is that if Google or Bing can’t distinguish you from a spammer, then you’re guilty until proven innocent. So if a spammer can submit a ton of articles to ezinearticles or other directories, whether auto-generated or created by low wage people offshore, then you have no advantage.  Search engines base rankings on linkjuice and trust– are you getting links from high authority sites.  A cnn.com isn’t going to link to a spammer, so if you can get such high quality sites to “endorse” you by linking to your site, then that’s a massive trust signal.

Because you’re guilty until proven innocent, the strategy of relying solely upon having great content isn’t sufficient. I could have the best article about a particular topic put on a brand new domain and at the same time create some crappy article on wikipedia for the same topic—who do you think will win in the SERPS (search engine results pages)? At the same time, you can’t get links from high authority sites unless you do have great content. So if you place your great content on these article distribution sites, it’s not the direct linking value that matters, but the SECONDARY effect of actual humans reading your article, writing about it, and then linking to you from their sites.

The long answer is that search engines use a mix of signals to see who actually deserves to rank for a particular keyword.  Imagine that– the goal of the artificial intelligence is to judge as accurately as if a human were choosing which pages among many should show up first.  Forget SEO for a second– do you think your content deserves to outrank what’s already there?  If your content sucks, then search engine trickery will get you only so far.

Ranking in search engines is like passing a lie detector test.  Thus, two strategies– You can either be telling the truth or be an expert at lying. A lie detector measures dozens of signals– your pulse, blink rate, fluctuations in voice patterns, perspiration, and so forth– knowing that a liar can probably keep some signals in check, but not ALL of them.  Likewise, if you want to rank in search and want to fake it, you can generate a natural looking page creation and link velocity, a natural looking mix of high quality and low quality sites linking to you, a natural looking keyword density or theming around certain topics, and so forth.

That’s why there’s been so much discussion about how to buy links in a way that doesn’t look spammy, create auto-generated content that isn’t quite duplicate content, create fake twitter profiles that look like they might just be human (“forgive my English, I am a foreign exchange student”), and so forth.  With the explosion of social media– everyone generating content everywhere they go– the problem of surfacing the “right” search results is more like a needle in a haystack.  Just too many pages to sift through– and they’re multiplying like nuts, especially as social networks make this information public by default.

If you already have a high power site (Google PageRank or SEOmoz mozRank 6 or higher), then you can play the Demand Media, Mahalo, or Patch.com strategy of barely human content that sits under a high power domain to flow down link juice.

If you have a great social site– stupid doggy tricks or other voyeuristic/humorous content– then you can send signals via actual traffic and mentions in social sites, even if those links don’t pass juice.  Yes, the search engines use actual traffic and mentions in rankings, since a popular article created a couple years ago might have gotten 50 links, but that same article created today might get 5 links and 100 tweets.

So to answer your question, using article submissions may give you a slight boost, but cannot substitute for the core of great content and great promotion of the content.  If you’re doing something a spammer can do, it’s probably not high value.  If you think there’s a shortcut via software, you’re likely taking a huge risk, making someone else rich, or both.

Question provided by Jonathan Rosen – an Ultra Light Startups member.

Answer provided by Andy LoCascio – President of Sound Strategies, Inc. an Ultra Light Startups affiliate

Jonathan‘s Question: How does one create a low cost SEO plan when the range of products they sell is extremely broad and not focused on category of products or services?

Andy’s Answer: Rather than think of this as a low-cost SEO plan, we need to address this as how to get maximum SEO benefit from a limited budget.  You start by putting together a detailed keyword analysis.  This will allow you to build a strategy based on competition and traffic for phrases that are most likely to generate sales on your domain.  You could keep the cost of the analysis down by limiting it to just the higher margin items.  Too many site owners skip this step and waste their efforts targeting phrases for which they can never obtain effective rank.  If you are not in the top 5 in the retail world, you will not see any sales.

At minimum the keyword analysis must include the daily search volume and an assessment of the competition for each phrase.  Assessing the competition is critical and involves examining the first page of results for the phrase and looking at factors such as page rank, titles, and page content for each result.  However, it is important to realize that there are other factors that contribute to phrase rank.

If you use an SEO specialist to provide the keyword analysis, you should rely on their experience to help you arrive at the best strategy for your budget.

The keyword analysis will also provide you the information you need to get maximum benefit from your content.  You should optimize your page titles and content based on the phrases you feel that you can compete for.  Diluting your titles and content in an attempt to target phrases with stiff competition is a common mistake.

You also need to come up with a comprehensive plan for inbound link acquisition and link exchange.  You are going to need a lot of properly formatted inbound links (with optimal anchor text).  Once again, refer back to the item analysis and try to focus on specific items or groups of items where you have the best chance of success.

SEO is an investment in your website.  Your goal is to get a reasonable ROI on the initial budget.  During the campaign you will learn how your site interacts with the competition and then you can make an informed business decision about subsequent expenditures.

Additional Relevant Articles

• How to fail at SEO (without really trying)
• Maximize Your SEO Spend, Now!
• Get Linked! (Maximize Your Inbound Hyperlinks)
• New Website SEO
• Choose the Right SEO Specialist (linked above)

For more information on this and related topics, join us at SEO for New Websites in New York on March 4, 2010

Question provided by Stephen Smyth – an Ultra Light Startups member.

Answer provided by Dennis Yu CEO of BlitzLocal – and panelist at SEO for New Websites on Thursday, March 4.

Stephen’s Question: Would like panelists to comment on the this blog post that asserts “If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned”

Dennis’s Answer: There are a lot of misconceptions about SEO and definitely a lot of snake oil out there.  This fellow is broadbrushing and being inflammatory– perhaps even engaging in a SEO strategy called link-baiting– to grab attention and links.  The question of whether SEO is a scam is a well-worn argument where we don’t need to re-hash the basics.  Read this:
http://searchengineland.com/dear-fox-news-seo-is-not-scamming-24301

SEO is the process of getting more traffic and conversions to a website through any non-paid method.  So if you charge money to build a website for a client, is that a scam, too?  SEO is the latest term (albeit faddish) for good old-fashioned webmastering.  Holding contests on Facebook to encourage fans to submit stories about your product or service, which then results in more traffic and links — is that a scam?

Performing SEO should have nothing to do with finding loopholes in search engine algorithms or generating fake content– it should be in direct alignment with what’s right for users, doing things that provides real value.  A large number of folks who claim to be SEO experts do bilk folks who are not wary– and that is just wrong.  But there are as many folks who provide measurable value by doing things that do fall into the category of basic webmastering, which does provide immense value.

Looking at your Google Webmaster Tools to determine what pages are being indexed and where you have 404 errors– is that bad SEO?  How about doing some keyword research to see what keywords are worth ranking on?  How about telling search engines which urls should be canonical, so it’s easier for them to index and crawl?  This stuff may be common sense, but lots of folks need it.

Here’s an example of what a simple SEO analysis can look like

For more information on this and related topics, join us at SEO for New Websites in New York on March 4, 2010

Question provided by Sabir Semerkant – an Ultra Light Startups member.

Answer provided by Alhan Keser of Blue Fountain Media – an Ultra Light Startups affiliate.

Sabir’s Question: Link Building with Directories – how relevant is it now?

Alhan’s Answer: With my clients, I always recommend directories as part of a link building campaign. It is one aspect of a diversified strategy focused on acquiring quality links and is not an end-all solution. The approach for link building through directories should be as follows:

• Get links from general purpose directories with a strong editorial policy. These include the Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ, and Best of the Web. SEOMoz’s Link Directory (pro member-only content) does a great job of listing many of these.
• Seek out high-quality vertical directories focused on the client’s industry.

What to avoid:

• Directories that do not have an editorial policy about what websites they feature.
• Directories that have a “pay-for-placement” policy as opposed to a “pay-for-review” policy.
• Directories that link out using a redirect or some other method blocking link value from being passed.

Many low-quality directories will appear to have link value at first sight and may even help boost your website’s rankings, but in the long run, as with most spammy websites, they will stop providing link value.

For more information on this and related topics, join us at SEO for New Websites in New York on March 4, 2010

Keyword Research Tools

• SEOMoz Firefox Toolbar – Check mozRank, mozTrust and other Linkscape metrics in your browser
• SEO for Firefox – Pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market directly in the search results
• Google Keyword Tool – Shows competitiveness from a paid search perspective
• Use “allintitle:” searches – Evaluate the number of competing pages with the phrase in the title
• Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool – Evaluate the number of searches for the exact phrase
• SpyFu – Evaluate competitor sites keywords and AdWords
• WordStream Long Tail Keyword Tool – Discover comprehensive keyword lists for PPC & SEO
• WordStream Keyword Niche Finder – Discover and target keyword niches for PPC & SEO
• Google Insights for Search – Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties

SEO Background

• How to fail at SEO! (without really trying)
• Website Usability!
• Maximize Your SEO Spend, Now!
• SEM vs SEO – Can’t we all just get along?
• SEO and Web 2.0 (includes video) – Fast forward past the intro to get to detailed descriptions of how the search engines actually work.
• Get Linked! (Maximize Your Inbound Hyperlinks)
• Why do I need SEO (and what exactly is it)?
• Keyword Phrase Rank & Traffic
• Choose the Right SEO Specialist
• Keyword Rank Monitoring

Please feel free to add additional tips in the Comments below!

Question: Is there any cheap way of finding out how you rank in Google or Yahoo for certain keywords?

Answer provided by Seth Dotterer of Conductor, Inc – panelist at SEO for New Websites in New York on March 4, 2010

Seth’s Answer: While ranking isn’t the end-all-be-all metric to watch, ultimately you want to measure success on transactions, leads, etc.., it is a good indicator. Think of it as just another element of a conversion funnel – if you’re not ranking, you don’t have a chance to get those clicks, page views, or conversions. To answer your question – there are several downloadable and online tools that can help you track your SEO visibility for your core keywords, some of the more popular are the SEOMoz tool, Ranktracker, and AWR. One key thing to watch out for – if you’re using a desktop client to track rankings, you can get blocked pretty quickly from Google for too many automated searches. The online tools don’t usually have this downside. (Full disclosure, Conductor, my employer, makes an enterprise grade SEO solution, Conductor Searchlight, that has this functionality as well as a host of others.)

For more information on this and related topics, join us at SEO for New Websites in New York on March 4, 2010

Event Summary

This event will cover:

• Why is brand important to a tech startups? What difference does a good (or bad) brand make for the likelihood of a startup’s success?
• How important is a good name and domain name for your startup? How do you come up with a good name? When is it worth it to buy a domain name?
• What is PR / public relations? How is it different from marketing?
• What is buzz? How can it be generated and sustained?
• What is the purpose of PR for a startup? Do all startups need to do PR? When in a startups lifecycle should it become a priority?
• What are the services a PR agency can offer a startup? How much should these services cost? When do they become a budget priority?
• How does PR and branding fit into an overall marketing strategy? When should a startup focus on PR rather than other marketing priorities (social media marketing, traditional media, CPC, CPM, etc)
• Interacting with the press – targeting publications/journalists, writing pitches, developing press packets, etc.
• When to hire a PR agency vs. do it yourself.
• What are some success stories of tech startups using PR to their advantage? Horror stories of bad PR?
• What are some success stories of tech startups using effective naming, branding and buzz? Horror stories?

Moderator:

• John Adams, Founder of BizBriefs

Panelists (alphabetic order):

• Todd Barrish, Managing Director of LaunchSquad
• Rachel Honig, Managing Director, G.S. Schwartz & Co., COO & Co-Founder, Digital Power and Light
• Karl Schmieder, Founder of MessagingLab
• Lloyd Trufelman, Founder and CEO of Trylon SMR, publisher of NYConvergence

Blog Posts About This Event:

Catch 22 – Startups and PR (by MessagingLab)

Ultra Light Startups to Address PR, Branding and Buzz (by Huffington Post)

Ultra Light Startups to Address PR, Branding and Buzz (by NYConvergence)

Ultra Light Startups to Spotlight PR, Branding, and Buzz (by Ultra Light Startups)

Ultra Lights Hoping to Take Flight (by John Lee Media)

Ultra Light Startups on Tech PR (by NYConvergence)

Panel Video

Pitch List

Panelist and Moderator Bios

Todd Barrish (@tbar98)
Todd is Managing Director at LaunchSquad New York. Todd has launched and worked with many start up companies that have gone on to become strong industry brands including Vonage, Priceline and blip.tv. His expertise includes brand marketing, high-level media and analyst relations, financial communications as well as corporate reputation and issues management programs. In June 2009, Todd was appointed to the Radford University Board of Visitors by Virginia Governor Time Kaine.

Rachel Honig (@rachellynhonig)
Rachel is Managing Director, at G.S. Schwartz & Co. and COO & Co-Founder, Digital Power and Light. G.S. Schwartz & Co is a 29-year-old, independent, public relations agency, whose clients include both “new chips” and “blue chips.” Digital Power & Light is a consultancy specializing in social media and Web 2.0 communications. Rachel has worked with a variety of technology and other start-up ventures garnering outcomes from organic growth to M&A to IPO. She chairs Women Executives in PR, a special sector of Advertising Women in New York, and sits on the Board of Advisors for the Masters in Corporate Communications program at Baruch College.

Karl Schmieder (@karls_mlab)
Karl is co-founder and C.E.O. of MessagingLab, a NYC-based communications firm focused on helping technology companies tell their stories. Karl is an award-winning writer, recognized for his ability to translate hard science into understandable and actionable marketing strategies. He has provided naming consulting services to several start-ups and Logitech, Oddcast, OpenWave and Yahoo! He is also the publisher of the Bio-Marketing newsletter.

Lloyd Trufelman
Lloyd is Founder and CEO of Trylon SMR, a New York-based digital media PR firm, and publisher of NYConvergence, a digest of digital media technology news for the New York area. He has developed and implemented numerous awareness and brand-building campaigns for startup and established technology, media and telecom industry clients nationwide since 1990. Formerly with MTV Networks, Howard J. Rubenstein Associates, CBS and major political campaigns, Trufelman is a member of The Partnership for New York City and a graduate of American University’s School of Communications.

John Adams (@bizbriefs)
John is the founder of BizBriefs, a strategic social media content planner and consultant who guides companies through the Web 2.0 arena while providing meaningful content. John was most recently the Director of Editorial Services for Storm Exchange, a news source for weather-driven businesses, where he produced podcasts, radio pieces and industry news stories. John is also a blog designer with extensive journalism experience who has reported, produced or anchored for various media outlets including: NBC Universal, Institutional Investor, Cox Enterprises, and Media General.

January 2010 Entrepreneur's Forum

On January 7, 2010, Ultra Light Startups is hosting an expert panel on PR, Branding, and Buzz. After six months of covering and blogging about the various events put on by Ultra Light Startups, I’m now pleased to actively participate and moderate the first Entrepreneur’s Forum of the upcoming new year.

Our panel of experts will include:
Todd Barrish, Managing Director, LaunchSquad
Rachel Honig, Managing Direct, G.S. Schwartz & Co.
Karl Schmieder, Founder, MessagingLab
Lloyd Trufelman, Founder of Trylon SMR, publisher of NYConvergence

PR, Branding, and Buzz are terms that have various and ever changing meanings as the “new media” technology evolves around each one of us. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and LinkedIn seem to launch a new application or sharing tool almost every week.

My company, Bizbriefs, has used many of these tools in conjunction with one another to help various businesses boost their SEO rankings and divert more attention to their websites.

What I’ve found is that it’s not how you use one of these social media tools by themselves, but how you can link them together and start a viral campaign with a targeted audience.

Every business owner seems to have a favorite social media site, just one that they feel most comfortable using. However, not using other site options to support their efforts, means losing out on potential prospects and future customers.

In conducting several social media campaigns during the past three years, I’ve learned that there are certain steps you should take before just diving in.

1. You have to identify the true audience your customers are trying to reach first.
2. Once that’s done, you must craft the message or the image that each company wants to portray to the online community.

Too many times, companies want you to just get started, without knowing the message they want to deliver or what audience they hope to reach.

To learn more about branding, buzz and PR strategies, join us at for the first Entrepreneur’s Forum in 2010 sponsored by Ultra Light Startups.