Google Hosting Live Chat Event & SEMPO’s First SEM Debate

This Thursday, June 19th at 5pm (EST), Google will be hosting their second live chat session for webmasters. The first event, which took place in March, turned out to be a pretty big success. To register for the event, go here and click on the “register” link on the left hand side of the page – you won’t want to miss it.

SEMPO is hosting the “Great SEMPO NY Debate” at Stitch in New York on 247 West 37th Street. The event is tomorrow at 6:30pm on Wednesday, June 18th. The topic of discussion is, “Which is the best way to manage search engine marketing, In-House or Agency?” To register for this in-person event, click here.

The Google Webmaster Live Chat session agenda:

• INTRO: A quick hello from some of your favorite Help Group Guides
• PRESO: A presentation on Personalization in Google Search by our own John Mueller.
• FAQs: We’re calling this “Three for Three,” and we’ll have three different Googlers tackling three different issues we’ve seen come up in the Group recently. What will they be? You’ll just have to attend the chat to find out!
• And lots of Q&A! You’ll have a chance to type questions during the entire session, and we’ll pick as many as we can to answer in writing and in speaking during the chat.

The Great SEMPO NY Debate agenda:

• Average life of the agency-client relationship
• Satisfaction levels of SEO and PPC agency work (SEMPO data points to be provided)
• Effects of agency consolidation
• Moves by the major search engines to work directly with brands
• Moves by the major search engines to better work with agencies
• Dearth of PPC and SEO talent in the market
• Skills required for in-house vs. agency staff (and how to acquire such skills)
• Cost analysis (staff, education, tools, etc): building an in-house team vs. outsourcing
• Hybrid models

Postscript: Here is a video from the SEMPO event:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.