SMX Munich April 2013 Write Up – #smxmunich
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SMX Munich April 2013 Write Up – #smxmunich

11th April 2013

This is a guest post by Irina Hey, Online Marketing and Communications for OnPage.org full bio below)

SMX Munich took place at the Hilton München Park Hotel on 9./10. of April this year. The conference is well-known with professional Online Marketers worldwide. Main topics of the event are search engine optimization, PPC Marketing, Content Marketing and many more. Great speakers from Germany and all over the world are presenting news about the latest strategies in search marketing.

This year the host Rising Media Ltd invited many experts from the US, Great Britain and the Netherlands to share their experiences and strategies with conference attendees. There were many speakers across the day including:

  • Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land)
  • Wil Reynolds (SEER Interaction)
  • Laura Lippey (SEOGadgets)
  • Curt Simon Harlinghausen (AKOM360 Multi Channel Marketing)
  • John Mueller (Google Inc.)
  • Marcus Tandler (Tandler.Doerje.Partner),

The SMX conference in Munich is the biggest search conference in Europe and is aimed at search marketers, regardless if they are experts or beginners. SMX is set to satisfy every attendee who wants to be inspired by new topics or share their experiences with other marketers. Two full days of information, communication and networking were definitely in the forefront.

Warm-Up: Keynote with Danny Sullivan & Jake Hubert

At the beginning of the conference there was a warm introduction to SMX 2013 from hosts Sandra Finlay and Alexander Holl, who welcomed all speakers and guests with short introductions.

The keynote of the search conference was presented by Danny Sullivan, the well-known search engine guru and founder of Search Engine Land. First, Danny presented some facts about what Google exactly does; how they crawl the web and what types of spam are known. Afterwards Danny chatted with Jake Hubert, Business Product Manager of Google Inc. about current topics in search. Jake’s most common answer to Danny’s questions was: “That’s a very good question – I’ll try not to answer :)”.

The most important topic of conversation was the meaning of authorship for Google and how webmasters can use it properly to improve their businesses. Jake clearly emphasized the point that Google tries to understand who those people who write the web are. That’s why Google concentrates on evaluation of authorships. Jake also mentioned that currently, more than 50 experiments are running on Search Results and that 5 Teams at Google are working on authorships. Although authorships are trending, they are “not a clear ranking signal for Google yet”, Jake said.

Afterwards in the panel with Jake Hubert and Marcus Tandler, Jake gave some more information about the meaning of Google’s authorship and publisher data.

Marcus presented a new free-tool author-rank.org – where you can see authorship data for a person or a company.

authorrank-start

One special highlight of the day of the SMX was the inspiring keynote of Julius van de Laar, a young German marketer who was supporting the entire political voting campaign for U.S. President Barack Obama. In very charming way, Julius shows the audience what it means to delegate a political campaign in the U.S., what the differences are in comparison to German politics, and how using big data and social media marketing can help successfully promote a political campaign.

Networking Party – SMX After Dark

During the evening, attendees and speakers found each other at the networking party in the special location “Reitschule”. Here everyone could exchange information, share experiences, meet other people, or just chat with colleagues. During conversation one could enjoy watching people ride horses..on account of the “Reitschule” being the stables! The atmosphere was laid back so attendees could relax after the first exhausting day full of useful tips and information.

SMX Day 2

The second conference day started a bit slower, due to a sleepless night of networking! Among other sessions and panels, John Mueller from Google Inc. Switzerland. and Jonas Weber (webhelps and former Google Search Quality rater) presented their experiences with penalties, Google guidelines and reconsideration requests. Both speakers pointed out that is very important for webmasters to comply their websites with webmaster guidelines for Google.

Keynote with Wil Reynolds

The valuable and entertaining keynote by Wil Reynolds from SEER Interactive  woke up the last attendee, who was tired from SMX After Dark 😉 Wil showed us how to ADD VALUE to produced content and spoke about #RCS (Real Company Shit). The message was to take a look beyond the plate edge and to recognize that the Internet hates what we do actually and wants authentic content. Wil also showed some link building techniques and was able to really engage and entertain the audience.

Wrap-Up

The SMX in Munich is the biggest search conference in Europe and shined in the light of good organization, exceptional content and invaluable connections.

There were over 1,000 attendees and 100 sessions on two days in German and English content on search engine optimization (SEO), paid search advertising (PPC), social media marketing, local and mobile search, analytics & conversions and mobile assets. This conference is very valuable and a must for every professional online marketer nowadays. There were two wonderful and beneficial days to network and to improve one’s own online business. Looking forward to SMX 2014! A little birdie told me that it will be in a new and bigger location 😉

About Irina Hey – Irina has been an Online Marketer with passion since 2007 in Germany and now works as an Online Marketing and Communications Superhero for OnPage.org – the SEO-Software for OnPage-Optimization. She writes many articles about SEO and develops a big knowledge base OnPageWiki for SEO-Beginners (de.onpage.org/wiki). Her strengths are communications and to explain things easily to those who find it complicated!

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