DMA Annual Catalog Conference Report

With speaking at and attending the DMA's Annual Catalog Conference, this has been an incredibly busy week. On Monday morning at the Search Marketing Basics session, I presented some of the fundamentals of search marketing best practices.

One of my many perverse occupational avocations is collecting examples of egregious spam. All too often marketers, who do not code sites themselves, do not have a working familiarity with many of the so-called tricks that are regretably still used by some search marketers. So I continue to add to and refresh my Spam Gallery. In it are examples of keyword stuffing and various other types of abuse.

One of the hallmarks of this show is that marketers get the opportunity to have paper catalogs and sites evaluated by the experts. The site clinics at this show reaffirmed for me that there are still lots of well-meaning, hardworking site owners who do not realize  what search marketing peril their sites are in. During the site clinics, we saw many examples of less than best practices. Many thanks to those who were willing to subject themselves and their sites to this learning experience. Their courage will bring them and the other attendees big dividends.

Site clinics are always fun to do since they are opportunities to see a number of sites in a limited timeframe. I do hope to continue to do these in the future.