The study will project planned spending across the industry for search, advertising, and social media campaigns in 2010. Its goal is “to assess the economy’s effect on year-to-year online marketing spending and investigate new trends.”

The survey is open until February 22nd. All participants will get a free copy of the final report (a $249 value) when it’s released in March.

You can access the survey at http://bit.ly/SEMPO-search. SEMPO says it should take about 10 minutes to complete.

SEMPO is hosting a webinar this week to explain more about the requirements and responsibilities of being a board member, as well as the nomination and election process for its board. The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, January 14, at 3:00 pm ET. You can learn more and register here for the webinar.

SEMPO board members serve two year terms.

The new courses were added to the Effective Search Marketing online classes and are named “Linking and Brand Management” and “Social Media.” They cost $299 each and you can enroll for them over here.

Here are the course descriptions:

Effective Search Marketing: Linking and Brand Management:
The course will cover how to obtain high quality links from a variety of sources, including link recovery, directories, social media and expert articles. It will explain how to develop compelling content and how to effectively promote the content to traditional and online media in order to attract links, and include discussion on the use of humour, interactive games, podcasting and video as tools for link attracting. Students will also learn what to consider before purchasing text links and paid methods such as brokers, ad space, sponsorships, newsletters and reviews.

Course attendees will learn the value of brand reputation monitoring and management, brand management methods and procedures, competitor tracking, and how best to respond to feedback in various online channels.

Effective Search Marketing: Social Media:
This course will examine the gamut of social media and employ case studies to illustrate the right and wrong way of using social media to fulfill marketing objectives. Since each social media channel has its own rules of engagement, the course will help marketers learn what you need to consider with each channel in order to get the buzz out for your company or client.

Developing an effective social media strategy is a key part of the course which will cover digital media assets, defining and engaging your target market, and how social media integrates with search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising to social media.

Students will also examine Twitter in depth, as a social media archetype. They will examine the opportunities, risks and obligations of Twitter, and how this information can be applied to all social media marketing.

Lastly, students will learn how to use social media for reputation management and for quickly correcting public relations problems. Case studies will be used to demonstrate right and wrong methods.

This is more good news from the search industry showing that venture capital companies are still investing in search marketing firms. Yesterday, we reported that Marin software raised $13 million and today, Conductor raised $10 million.

Here are statements from the release:

“We see persistent demand from large organizations to invest in SEO. However, lacking the tools to manage and measure that investment, many large organizations are effectively inactive in natural search and miss out on significant opportunities to grow their businesses,” said Nick Beim, a General Partner with Matrix Partners. “Conductor has demonstrated considerable success in improving the metrics and transparency of natural search.”

“Matrix and FirstMark bring important industry expertise, support and extensive networks that will enable Conductor to continue giving our customers insight into their natural search efforts,” said Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor. “We look forward to continuously adding significant value to our customers by closing the loop for their natural search marketing efforts.”

Marin reportedly manages $300 million of online ad spend annually for clients such as ZipRealty and Microsoft’s Razorfish.

It is nice to see companies in the search field still able to raise money in these slow economic times.

Today, I had free time and used it to meet up with some of the larger search marketing agencies in Israel. The meet up took place at Compucall, one of the largest SEM companies in Israel. Several of those that attended have been in the SEO/SEM space for about ten years and have extensive experience both running an SEM company and performing SEM services. Gilad Sasson (aka Algoholic), Ophir Cohen, Itai Levitan and Olivier Amar are names some of you would know, if you have been in the industry for a while. So, getting a chance to sit down with them and just chat was valuable, to say the least.

Before the Compucall meeting, I went to lunch with Mayer Reich from RankAbove.com and then we went to meet Ophir, the CEO of Compucall. Ophir felt it would be a good idea to have Simon Gelfand of Bukisa and ArticlesBase.com talk about his product offering. That lead into discussion about what search marketers in Israel want. Truth be told, it is extremely similar to what any SEM wants.

In my meet up with Google Israel piece, I wrote about how Google’s presence in Tel Aviv has helped expand the awareness and budgets for SEM services of Israeli-based companies. Itai Levitan expressed to me that he would love to see Yahoo and Microsoft set up offices in Israel as well. I know Microsoft has a very small user base in Israel relative to their US share. But in terms of Yahoo, even setting up a single office with one or two representatives that can help educate, as Google has done, would help agencies sell Yahoo search ads tremendously in the Middle East region. The bottom line is that Israel SEM agencies feel that it would be a win-win for Yahoo and Microsoft to set up offices here.

But what SEMs really want is for Yahoo to fix their search marketing platform. Itai told me that it is almost unusable. Olivier said that pulling reports is almost impossible. Gilad feels that Yahoo should go back to the Overture backend and dump the Panama interface. This is often what I hear from SEMs all over the world, and it is the same issue here in Israel. The word “upsetting” does not do justice to my feelings on Panama. All that time, money and resources put into that product — what a shame.

We also talked about analytics and how SEM companies should sell that as a service to their clients. Yes, Google Analytics is free, but most site owners don’t use it fully. Ophir and Itai’s companies are both Google Analytics certified resellers and they are able to sell these services as a value add. They add value by tagging marketing campaigns properly, using Google Website Optimizer to squeeze out every conversion metric possible and use these tools to make for the most efficient and streamlined marketing campaigns. Ophir explained that SEO was once a free way of gaining traffic to your site, but then agencies evolved and began selling SEO consulting services. Same here with analytics, Ophir said — the industry around analytics is growing and selling the services side of the software is both valuable and credible.

The last question I asked was how does SEO and paid search differ between Hebrew and English languages. Itai told me the main difference for him is that there are less publishers placing AdSense ads on their Hebrew online publications or blogs. You can find AdSense on tons of English content sites, but it has not grown that quickly on Hebrew sites. Since there is less inventory on the Google content network for Hebrew sites, that changes the strategy they deploy for Hebrew campaigns. Ophir said that savvy Israeli companies will show Hebrew AdSense ads for Israeli IPs on sites like TechCrunch. This way, they can advertise their products and services in Hebrew to Israeli users. Here is a picture of TechCrunch showing Hebrew ads on my computer:

Olivier told me that, on the SEO side, Google.co.il is lagging behind Google.com’s organic ranking and algorithms. Shortcuts and tricks that still work on Google.co.il do not work on Google.com.

I did not have a chance to meet all the local SEM/SEOs here in Israel, but hopefully in future visits we can meet up.

[SEMPO] says North American search marketing spending will increase only 9% to $14.7 billion in 2009 from $13.5 billion a year ago. Its previous estimates, made in early 2008, called for the industry to grow at more than twice that rate this year, from $15.7 billion in 2008 to $18.8 billion in 2009. The new forecasts call for the industry to reach $19.8 billion in 2011, down from a previous estimate of $25.2 billion for that year.

But even as the economy hits search spending fairly hard, other media are faring worse. Search, widely regarded as the most efficient form of online advertising, is still benefiting from advertiser and agency budget shifts to online:

Search is continuing to steal from traditional ad budgets, according to the survey. More than a quarter of advertisers reported that they were shifting budgets into search marketing from print magazines. Nineteen percent said they were shifting their budgets into search from print newspaper advertising.

The paradox of these shifts is that they express a simplistic view of consumer behavior, which has become increasingly complex and relies on many sources of information and ad exposures, both online and offline. However, many marketers are starting to see with greater clarity the convoluted consumer path to conversions. Search remains perhaps the critical component of online advertising; however a search-only strategy is somewhat myopic.

Here’s an excerpt from findings from Atlas’s (Microsoft’s) recent “engagement mapping” report entitled The Long Road to Conversion: The Digital Purchase Funnel:

The large number of ad exposures consumed prior to purchase may come as a surprise to marketers who are used to discussions of frequency that revolve around site  or campaign metrics. Measuring only the last ad in a  conversion history conceals the true length of the relationship an advertiser has with each consumer. When we focus our view on individual converters’ histories and apply the funnel concept to their ad consumption, we discover that their histories are much longer and richer than typically assumed. These results confirm other research showing that advertising reaches consumers from multiple advertising campaigns and across channels . . .

Yahoo’s increasingly integrated search and display platforms are consistent with this more sophisticated consumer behavior model. And the SEMPO report apparently does find some interest in search retargeting accordingly.

We’ll explore the findings of the SEMPO report in more detail after we have a chance to review it.

The new officers begin their one-year terms on April 1st. Below is the full press release with more details:

Wakefield, MA, March 4, 2009 – The Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), www.sempo.org, today announced the election of a new slate of officers. Jeffrey Pruitt, formerly SEMPO president and executive vice president of corporate partnerships, iCrossing, was elected chairman. Sara Holoubek, corporate strategy consultant, was elected president. Ron Jones, president and CEO of Symetri Internet Marketing, was elected vice president of SEMPO, and Dave Fall, group product manager, Google, Inc., was elected treasurer. Chris Boggs, director of search engine optimization for Rosetta, was elected secretary.

The newly elected officers will begin their one-year terms on April 1. For profiles of the officers, visit: http://www.sempo.org/about/governance/board_of_directors_and_officers/

“As SEMPO membership continues to grow, we welcome new faces to leadership roles in our boards and committees. I look forward to working with Sara Holoubek, who brings experience and a diverse industry network to the task, and to working with all our talented board members, committee chairs and volunteers. I also want to extend SEMPO’s thanks to outgoing chairperson Dana Todd for her dedication to helping SEMPO grow as an organization,” says Pruitt.

“SEMPO continues to add value to search marketing professionals through its educational programs, via SEMPO Institute, its major research initiatives, including the annual market survey, and through information and networking events such as our growing list of local working groups,” said Holoubek. “I look forward to helping drive these initiatives forward in the upcoming year.”

The SEMPO board of directors has mapped out the organization’s initiatives for the 2009-2010 term, says Pruitt. SEMPO will focus on three areas: thought leadership, increased global and local activity, and continued growth of SEMPO Institute.

About the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Its purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing.

Representing thousands in over 30 countries, SEMPO has more than 850 members. It represents the common interests of companies and consultants worldwide and provides them with a voice in the marketplace. SEMPO’s education and outreach initiatives are funded in part by Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Superpages.com, ABC Search, SMX and Search Engine Strategies. For more information, or to join the organization, please visit http://www.SEMPO.org.

SEM Vendor joins a list of free alternatives to finding and submitting your SEM companies. One of the oldest and most popular directories is named SEO Consultants. Another very popular directory is SEOmoz’s SEO Market Place. I am sure there are others that I am missing, so I apologize in advance.

As expected, SEMPO, has rung the bell at the NASDAQ yesterday morning. You can see the full release and several pictures at the NASDAQ release. Dana Todd, Chairperson of the Board of Directors for SEMPO, presided over the Opening Bell at NASDAQ yesterday morning.

Congrats to SEMPO and congrats to the search marketing industry!