SmallBusinessNewz

There is no question that search engine marketing is vital to any business that hopes to find customers on the web.

This applies to online businesses of course, but also to brick and mortar businesses who have web sites and want their customers to be able to find them.

Today in Santa Clara, California, the Search Marketing Expo or "SMX" West has kicked off.

Many of the biggest names in the search industry will be speaking and/or moderating: Danny Sullivan, Vanessa Fox, Jill Whalen, Rand Fishkin, Shari Thurow, Gord Hotchkiss, Andy Beal, Michael Gray, Neil Patel, Aaron Wall, Chris Sherman, Dana Todd, Todd Malicoat, and Matt Cutts, just to name a few. Believe me, there are many more. If this were a basketball game, it would be the NBA all-star game.

There are sessions taking place covering nearly every aspect of search engine marketing, and if you were not able to attend, there will surely be a wealth of information pouring out of the expo and onto the Internet for you to learn from. Our sister site WebProNews will be covering it extensively through articles and videos.

A few sessions that stand out to me as being potentially helpful to small businesses in particular are:

- Local Search & Blended Results

- Defending Your Paid Search Budget Against New Ad Fads

- Online Retail & Blended Results

- Search Engine Friendly Web Design

- Analyzing The Competition, and

- Reputation Monitoring & Management Through Search

There are a lot more than that though. Take a look at the complete official schedule for all of the sessions at the expo to get an idea of what all is being discussed.

SMX West is carrying over through Thursday the 28th. If you are interested in attending a future SMX, there are 9 more of them taking place around the globe this year. See the list here, and find more details about the one nearest to you.