SearchFest 2011 Audience Interview: Don Campbell

Don will be attending SearchFest 2011, which will take place on February 23rd at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available now. To purchase, please click the following link.

1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.

I’m president of Expand2Web, a company who builds tools and training for small businesses and small business consultants. We provide a WordPress theme called the SmallBiz WordPress Theme – specifically designed for small businesses to build an effective website quickly; one that performs well in the local search rankings and that they can update themselves. The SmallBiz theme is at: https://www.expand2web.com/blog/smallbiz-theme/

We also provide a training and membership site called the Expand2Web Experts Group, with online training in building WordPress Websites, Local SEO and Social Media Blueprint for Small Businesses. https://members.expand2web.com. The experts represents a community of local search consultants who help small businesses.

Expand2Web also provides a free service for monitoring online reviews called MyReviewsPage, along with a free WordPress plugin for businesses to show their online reviews their website. https://www.myreviewspage.com/blog/wordpress-plugin/

2) Please talk about your prior SearchFest experiences and why you keep coming back.

I first attended SearchFest in 2008. I really enjoyed the event for two main reasons:

– The people there were very smart and willing to share their knowledge
– The event was small enough that you could really get to meet people and spend time with them.

I learned a lot at the event and made many friends, and knew I would come back every year.

3) Please look over the schedule (https://www.sempdx.org/searchfest/2011-agenda/) and give us your top 3 sessions you are looking most forward to seeing.

Here are the sessions I’m looking the most forward to:

– Social Media Strategies and Tactics: because small businesses are desperately trying to figure out how to engage in social media in a meaningful way, and because Matt McGee is one of the presenters.

– Advanced Linkbuilding: because linkbuilding is the most time consuming and difficult part of SEO, and I’m always looking for new ideas

– Mobile Marketing Strategies and Tactics: because mobile is a huge focus for us this year, and I think it will be for many others. We just launched our new version of the SmallBiz theme with mobile-specific layouts, where we automatically detect the mobile device and create an easy touch-enabled interface for the user to instantly place a phone call or get directions to the business. We’re looking to continue adding more mobile-ready features and this session looks like a good one from that perspective.