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How not to design an “advanced” SEO conference

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 4, 2008 in General

I told Todd this morning that I have absolutely no interest in attending the “SMX Beginners” conference scheduled for Seattle this June 3 and 4. The agenda looks like a typical “introduction to basic SEO” schedule.

“Blow your mind link building techniques”. Oh, for the love of Jason Calcanis, Ted Leonsis, and Dave Pasternack, is that seriously the best the advanced search engine optimization community can expect? Someone noted a while ago that the SMX conference series is so expensive because Danny wanted to give everyone a nice backpack. I’m sorry, that’s just not an even trade in my book.

The next topic in the organic track is “Bot herding”. Instead of offering some interesting teasers, the description says: “Search spiders and bots are pretty stupid when the come to your web site. If you don’t guide them, they’ll generate duplicate content issues, miss important pages in favor of junk, not realize where existing content has moved to and have other problems. This session looks at some advanced techniques in herding bots when “good cloaking” make sense.”

Okay, I think I can cover these basic principles by visiting the Web Robots pages for free.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did the description say something about “good cloaking”? Yawn.

Here’s a good topic: Buying Sites For SEO. “Forget the debate over buying links. How about buying entire web sites to gain success in search. This session looks at how to find the gems out there, criteria to consider, ways to negotiate and how to best leverage your new purchase. Tips, tricks, success stories, and painful lessons learned will be shared.”

Hm. We’ve considered that here. The problem is, any site for sale is either going to have a humongous price tag or it will come with a penalty. Besides which, the search engines claim they reset the clock on the links when sites transfer ownership, so what is the point unless you just want the domain name? Who actually buys sites for content? It was the content that got all the links in the first place, unless the links were gamed, in which case, why is the link gamer dumping the site anyway?

A long time ago G-Man wrote a fantastic post on SEOmoz where he shared some insider secrets about how domain spammers really mess with each other. They burn through domains pretty quickly and the last possible means of monetizing a penalized domain is to sell it. Be very, very careful before you “buy a site for SEO”. Okay, no need to attend a conference to figure that out.

The “You and A” with Matt Cutts looks interesting. I might ask someone to ask him a question.

“Search Marketing & Surviving A Recession”. Hm. There are no recessions in search engines. People keep searching so “surviving” doesn’t really make sense. An ADVANCED search marketer would understand that.

On the other hand, some businesses that suffer in recessions might benefit from aggressive search marketing strategies. Are there any real estate Web site owners who think they’ll be attending SMX Beginners? I’m curious to know.

This one is interesting: “International SEO - Do you — or can you — sell worldwide? If so, there might be some low-hanging fruit you can pick up by considering SEO for searchers outside the US, even if your site is in English. This session looks at how to make some simple changes to please non-US search engines along with some of the challenges you’ll need to consider.”

Low-hanging fruit is always a tough challenge for advanced optimizers. I’ll be sure to mark my calendar for THIS session.

The paid search session on metrics positioned against the low-hanging fruit for beginners session looks more interesting and informative.

“Analytics Every SEO Needs To Know - It’s more than just rankings and traffic reports to measure the health of SEO efforts. This session focuses on analytics that SEOs should be considering.”

It can’t be very advanced if every SEO needs to know it, right?

And finally there is the Give it up! session. Anyone remember what happened last year? Matt Cutts sat in the back of the room while Danny Sullivan forbade all attendees from blogging about it, so the rest of the SEO world had to wait 30 days for this lame crap.

I’ve set up conference schedules more than once. I’ve presented at conferences and road shows in various technical and non-technical capacities. I have a pretty good idea of what advanced search engine optimization is all about.

It’s not about getting a really nice backpack.

And if it’s really just about the booze and the parties and getting your picture on someone’s blog or flickr account, why not just call it what is: “Lame-assed SMX party in Seattle where nothing really interesting is happening”.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect those of my employer, co-workers, or anyone else affiliated with me. But it still looks like a pretty lame excuse for people to get together and wag their wet noodles at each other in the social non-event of the season.