One of the most important things to me as part of the SMX search marketing conferences that Search Engine Land runs is educating newcomers to the basics of search marketing. That's why we run a special SMX Boot Camp track. That's also why we created a special low-cost ticket for those who just want to attend this track during our SMX West conference next week.

The track runs on March 2 and covers these essentials:

Keyword Research Tools & Techniques: The first step to success with any marketing campaign is to know your message. With search marketing, that means knowing the search terms that are being used by your target audience. Understand what they're searching for, and you can tune-in to their traffic via search engines. This session covers

I was analyzing results from our recent B2B Marketing University series, which Silverpop launched this past Fall, and the data seem to point to an eye-popping, potential 'banner year' for marketing automation in 2010.  Without getting into all of the math, responses from 290 of the nearly 600 B2B marketers who attended the event series point to the potential for somewhere in the range of 70 to 75% net increase in total adoption of marketing automation technology in 2010. 

Is this the best projection of market growth — i.e., is this 'the number' for 2010?  Beats me — I'm not a full-time industry analyst — but given this data, plus some othe

Back in February, my colleague Heather Hopkins wrote about the shrinking gap in visits between the two leading online maps, Google Maps and MapQuest. As of the week ending April 11, 2009, Google Maps has now edged past MapQuest with a higher market share of visits. While the share of visits is higher for Google Maps, the average visit time on MapQuest remained higher at 10 minutes and 51 seconds as compared to 7 minutes and 24 seconds on Google Maps. Google is the top referral sources for both websites, but is considerably higher for Google Maps with 61% last week while the shar