Four speakers ran the seminar. Dan Boberg, Senior Director, Strategic Alliances at Yahoo Search Marketing, Chris Churchill, President of Fathom Online, Richard Holden, Product Management Director at Google, and Dana Todd, one of the founders of SiteLab International. The seminar was geared toward those that very little experience in buying their own paid placement ads in search engines. Chris mentioned a number of areas were discussed on how businesses can optimize their search engine advertising experience. While Yahoo and Google certainly dominate search, there are many other routes for advertising.

Alternative engines like shopping engines or b2b engines are possibilities. They also mentioned vertical search allow bidders to choose categories they want to.

Some other points mentioned were to be sure and accept credit card payments, and monitor budgets. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) prices are rising so they will get expensive. They are going up by 10-25%. Also utilize tracking and analytics software and make sure you stay active with your ads. Don't set and forget about them.

Some major points on the PPC thing specifically include click fraud and the fact there's no definitive amount although 30% was mentioned. With Google, trademarks don't provide much protection and paid links are ignored by those who don't like to click ads.

Some strategies included smaller word queries, 2-3 words, because the convert better and cost less. Also tracking at the keyword level to weed out non-performers. Also, high volume key words should go in a separate campaign not to take money away from other campaigns. Also repeat exact search terms in title and description and adjust the page landing periodically. And make absolutely sure you test these all constantly. Keywords, campaigns etc. all should get tested.

Searchers like uninterrupted logic meaning users will click ads most like search queries or landing pages.

Most of these ideas were forwarded by Dana Todd and others reiterated her points. Dan Boberg of Yahoo did throw out some important facts though. Paid searches are tops for driving Internet sales and companies use search for competitive positioning.

Boberg also discussed advertising education and the growing knowledge of the bigger companies and that Yahoo provides some search engine marketing training and best practices for SEM.

Richard Bolden at Google gave out tips for making the most out of AdWords. The Adwords discounter will help cut back costs and charge no more than what is necessary to appear above the ad above you. Target your audience, which Bolden said Google can help with those demographics.

Fathomonline's Chris Churchill also threw in his two cents, saying that better conversions equaled a better chance when participating in auction models of ad buying and that optimized ads lead to better conversions.

There was a lot of other information shared during this session. Small businesses always have a hard time determining the best method to approach advertising because ads can make or break a business.