About

“About Duane Forrester” is a tough page to create. Since it’s my site, everything here will naturally be about me, which you could say makes it an ego-driven page. However, the fact is, this is who I am…

I am the Vice President of Industry Insights for Yext, leading industry outreach, evangelism and authorship for the company.  Between my time at Microsoft and Yext, I was the VP, Operations with Bruce Clay, Inc, one of the oldest digital marketing agencies in the United States where I lead the operations for organic and paid search, social, content and design.

While at Microsoft, I was a Sr. Product Marketing Manager with Bing. In 2012, I was responsible for launching Bing’s updated version of Webmaster Tools. Part of my job was to create resources to help publishers and developers improve their websites through search engine optimization, and by using Bing’s tools and applications.

Basically, this all means I travel a lot, appearing at conferences all over. Chances are good, if it’s a search, blogging or online marketing conference, I’ll be there.

Until January of 2011, I ran the inhouse search optimization program focused on MSN’s US &Americas properties. Our team did often focus on other areas, but the main focus was MSN properties. From time to time, I also did outreach for Bing. I even ended up working with groups at GAP, HP, Walmart, USA.gov, TD Ameritrade and Caesars Palace. Always a great time talking to other inhouse folks.

Before that, I was an in-house search Marketing Manager for a sports media company. I was also the founding co-chair for the In-House SEM Committee with SEMPO (www.sempo.org), founded the Salary Survey still in use today and was on the Board of Directors with SEMPO for 3 years.

Prior to my sole focus in search marketing (organic and PPC), I managed all the media buying for that sports content publisher mentioned above. Before all that, I was a promotions Supervisor for the casinos opened in Canada by Caesars Palace. I’ve been into search, digital marketing, PR and seo since around 1997.

I co-authored How To Make Money With Your Blog, and my second book titled Turn Clicks into Conversions is a stand-alone effort (my author page). That first book has been reprinted now in Russian, and the second book is out in Chinese. Traditional and complex Mandarin.

Other writings can be found at the Bing Webmaster Blog, at the inhouse column at Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal, at DuctTape Marketing, and at Entrepreneur Magazine. I’ve also been featured in the New York Times and at Forbes, here and here.

Heck, when time permits, I also enjoy traveling, photography and touring on my motorcycles.

If you want more details, hit my LinkedIn profile.

Twitter also finds me quickly: @duaneforrester

…and while this will get dated, I was honored to be chosen at the 2014 US Search Awards as the US Search Personality of The Year.