Yesterday proved to be an interesting kickoff to this year’s Search Engine Strategies conference here in New York. The Organic Listings panel was entertaining and informative as always and the Build Investment Interest in your SEO/SEM firm was an early indulgence for myself that offered great tips for those looking at the future liquidity and monetization for their agency.

Jolina weighed in with her posts on excellent sessions, Four Ways to Redfine the Customer and Three Tips for Successful Analytics. There was also a spontaneous goofball interview with Mike McDonald of WebProNews offering a few insights about the future of SES/SMX.

The day wound up with the Orion Panel on Vertical Search which didn’t leave Jolina with a warm fuzzy (to be expected as Kevin Ryan’s just not that kind of guy ) but it did offer interesting insights into vertical search – vertical content marketing as well as how social networks will play into the future of vertical search overall.

There’s plenty more coverage at Search Engine Roundtable, Lisa @BruceClayBlog and many others.

The usual “secret” invite only parties followed along with an all-hands St Patrick’s day pub crawl which quickly splintered since there was no way any bar on this day would be able to take a hundred+ SES revelers.

Here are a few favorite photos and more which you can find at TopRank’s Flickr Set for SES New York 2008:

Orion Panel on Vertical Search with Joshua Stylman looking very rugged, yet philisophical

The SEO Rapper. Yep, that’s right.

This is what happen in the speaker ready room. Very boring.

“You ask me for my phone number again mate and I’ll smack you with this stick”

NY Hilton where SES NY Magic is Happening

The best SEO blogger on the web and a tired wannabe SEO CEO

I’m such a tourist and like photos like these

For Day Two of SES NY we’re looking forward to Nick Carr’s Keynote and will be covering sessions ranging from “Converting Visitors into Buyers” with friend Mike Moran, to Local Search Marketing Tactics with Jon Meyers.

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