Now that Bruce has provided his dream agenda for SEOs, Matt for PPC, Jessica for the in-house crowd and Disa for the beginners, here’s a track for the business manager who needs to stay on top of the macro issues, develop investment cases and report back to HQ on future trends. You can have a peek at it now, or wait until you read through the below.

Sunday, Arrival Day

Five out of five search experts agree: Sunday’s SMX Meet & Greet is the way to kick it off. I am with Jessica in that social activities are a must. Meeting people and learning from their experiences is as important as attending sessions. I am all about putting the “confer” back into “conference.”

Monday, Day 1: Shiny New Toys

Since your job probably requires understanding new investment areas, now is the time to brush up on mobile, local and maps. Long considered the Internet marketer’s shiny new toy, mobile, local and mapping are here to stay. The morning session, Mobile Search Ads, will review the various paid search opportunities that your firm could be utilizing as either an advertiser or an agency building out a mobile competency. Later in the day, Ranking Tactics for Local Search will break down how to win big in local listings today…and down the road. For the app-obsessed, Mobile Search Apps & Opportunities will answer marketers burning questions around this new means of engaging with the customer. Finally, Maps, Maps, Maps! Will detail how the various search engines and local search services integrate mapping technologies.

At the end of day 1, pull out the mobile device of your preference and navigate on over to the SMX Expo Hall Reception, followed by the Internet Marketer’s Charity Party@SMX East.

Tuesday, Day 2: The Agency Decision + Attribution

Step 1: Lots of coffee. Remember, last night’s party was great…and we raised lots of money for charity!

I’ll spend Day 2 covering two big topics for business managers: agencies and attribution.

I’m eager to kick my day off with a new session, When An Agency Just Won’t Do. For some companies, the search challenge does not fit into an agency’s typical scope of work and a strategic investment scenario must be developed. This was the case for LexisNexis when they needed to deliver search marketing services to thousands of small lawyers. The lessons learned, from building an internal competency to integrating a scalable technology infrastructure, are a good fit for companies that service SMBs, agencies that need to build out a search marketing competency or anyone who feels that the search challenge is too big for a standard agency relationship.

For those who love their agencies, Search Marketing & The Ad Agency will reveal how the large, traditional agencies are building their search competencies, be it through partnering, building or buying a search competency.

Later in the day, we will move on to Case Study: Integrating & Measuring Search As Part Of The Marketing Mix. For starters, who doesn’t love a good case study? More importantly, the panelists will cut to the chase, providing specific examples, how to’s and results for integrating search into the mix.

For those who are currently integrating and measuring, the next question is “who gets credit?” In The Cross Media Attribution Battle I will do my best to broker world peace between search, display and any other faction that seeks to win budget based on attribution.

And since I love shiny new toys, Real Time Search: Opportunity Or Hype? (from which I will tweet every money quote) and Evening Forum With Danny Sullivan are a must.

Wednesday, Day 3: The In-House Decision + Management

Following a day of agency talk, in-house sessions Bringing SEO In House: How To Be Successful! and Bringing PPC In House: How To Be Successful! are advised. Like any investment decision, there is no right or wrong to the agency vs. in-house question. However, it is key to understand the talent, technology, management and cultural requirements for each option.

If you are large multinational, Managing Search Across Business Units is a must. Search engine marketing’s rapid rise has created new challenges in the form of company culture and communication. Learning how to garner input and buy-in across company stakeholders is as important as the hard skills.

And since this is a dream agenda, I’d be able to attend a few sessions simultaneously, especially the shiny objects. Social Media, Search & Reputation Management and Analytics For Social Media are calling my name.

If I may extend the dream a little longer, the conference will end with the delightful surprise that my email inbox would be completely empty, my clients content and Thursday and Friday declared national holidays.

Still need to register for SMX East? The countdown has begun – less than two weeks left!

“Who knows about Wikipedia?” asked Neil Patel. “Everyone,” he answered. And this is exactly why the session “Wikipedia and SEO” was completely packed at the 2007 SES New York show.

Moderated by Danny Sullivan, the panel featured Neil Patel, Co-Founder of ACS, Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts, Don Steele, Director of Digital and Enterprise Marketing at Comedy Central and Jonathan Hochman, Founder and President of JE Hochman & Associates.

So why exactly does everyone know about Wikipedia? For starters, it is pretty hard to ignore a site that consistently ranks in the top 10 organic results for just about any query. Consider Wikipedia the organic counterpart to eBay’s ubiquitous paid search ads. The success lies in the social media genius of a distributed model where anyone can contribute to the collective knowledge, trusting that the majority will balance the scales of information justice.

With over 1.7 million articles in English alone, it is clear why the site ranks so well. And as the equation goes, with visibility comes pageviews, and with pageviews come marketers.

Yet search engine marketers have been particularly fond of Wikipedia for an entirely different reason: its page rank. That is, until Wikipedia implemented a no-follow rule, indicating that outbound links should not be followed by search engine spiders. One would think that this move would kill all interest in Wikipedia’s value to the SEO crowd, yet a link is still a link, and many search engine marketers have realized that capitalizing on the original intent of a link (to secure traffic) can be just as good, if not better, than securing PageRank.

Dos and don’ts

One of the more confusing aspects of Wikipedia is the underlying editorial policy, which, of course, is appended with the “break all the rules” rule. So how exactly to ensure Wikipedia success? For Patel, It all comes down to building credibility as an editor by first adding valuable information, and then links. Spencer furthers this conversation by suggesting that links be placed in the “References” section, and not to external links. “And of course, it helps to communicate with the main editor” he added.

Patel was firm in stating that it is best to follow the community’s rules or face the consequences – something he experienced first hand. Furthermore, Hochman reminded the audience of wikisleuths – people that love finding spammers and placing you on the Wikimedia blacklist.

If you are hit hard by what Hochman calls “rabid Wikipedians,” all is not lost. Such was the case of Barry Schwartz. Having started a column about himself the community immediately questioned why he was notable enough to deserve a column. Fortunately, others came to his aid and opinion was swayed. The keys to such situations are to be civil and polite, according to Hochman. For Spencer, it is best that there should be no connection between you and the article subject and that you have plenty of allies on hand should an article be deleted.

Advice to marketers

“The traffic volume and success in SEO make Wikipedia a channel for us to understand,” said Steele, who works for the online leg of Comedy Central. Of course, his firm is a prime example of art imitating life in the Stephen Colbert “Wikiality” sketches.

“Our content is highly referenced,” said Steele, “requiring us to make sure that information is accurate, up to date and that our own site has the information being referenced.” While Steele never edits anything about Comedy Central’s shows, he makes an effort to understand what is being said and the impact on the audience.

For example, 24 hours after the South Park Easter Special, there were references to this episode on Wikipedia. “It becomes this community. If we do not understand that in 24 hours, that people are taking the time to talk about our show, we are not doing our job,” Steele concluded.

For numbers junkies, the site received 90,000 visitors from Wikipedia in March, making it a top 10 referrer. When one extracts the engines and sister sites, Wikipedia is the most consistent referrer over all. In Steele’s words, “We are saving about $20k a month.” When an audience member asked how much time this consumed, Steele suggested that monitoring is a daily task.

Of course, building a Wikipedia article could ultimately mean knocking oneself out of a first place result. The panel agreed that second place is not bad. The same tactic can be used to knock a competitor off. “If you have a competitor ranking first for “notebook computer” You could knock competitor off by building Wikipedia up – and your competitor down,” said Hochman.

WikiFuture?

One of the more debated topics of the session was the question of whether Wikipedia will overtake Google. In one sense, it appears that optimizing a Wikipedia article internally and externally has become more important than optimizing one’s own site.

To this, Sullivan suggested that “people are desperate for the next Google killer. It’s like asking what’s new in TV? Well, there is a new knob. We have HD, but for the majority, it doesn’t change. But that doesn’t make it easier for the person sick of writing about Google.” What many forget is that if Google suddenly decided so, Wikipedia could lose its traffic overnight.

Sullivan also commented on the no-follow rule. “I feel this resentment that I link to you, but you won’t like to me? I think the Wikipedia community should find a way to get it back. A lot of times they deserve the link.” Spencer chimed in that with a no-follow rule, it is actually the engine that holds the cards, and that it is possible that the links are indeed being followed. For those who are curious, Sullivan suggested Search Status to determine whether a link has a no-follow tag.

Sara Holoubek is a free agent consultant for the interactive advertising sector and its investors. She can be reached at saraholoubek@gmail.com.