I feel very grateful that I was able to attend the SEOmoz seminar. I’ll spare you Moz readers my below-average review-critic journalism and skip to the highlights:
- 8 hours of insight on a wide range of SEO-related topics from, for my money and many others, the best SEO in the world. He is also a fantastic speaker. I also came to the conclusion that Rand is better suited for SEO than stand-up comedy.
- Free flowing audience participation. Phenomenal questions were asked and Rand was able to answer all of them, taking no more than 2 seconds to deliver a relevant answer.
- Beginner-Intermediate SEO material delivered to a predominantly Intermediate-Advanced audience. One of the great benefits here is the ability to use Rand’s slides (he said we could) to educate clients, especially those that ask “I don’t know what SEO is. Why is it important for my company?” I already have an interesting factoid that I am taking back to Houston: “Do you know what the #1 search term in Yahoo! and MSN is? GOOGLE.”
- Networking – probably my single greatest takeaway. I made some great connections that I fully expect to work with in the future. I also got a fantastic book recommendation from BJ Wright, the SEO Intern: The 4 Hour Work Week (Interesting, when I searched Google for 4 hour work week).
- The cost: $200? It was almost charity, in my opinion. Thank you, SEOmoz. I offered Rand extensive feedback as a small token of gratitude, and he said “Put it in YOUmoz.”
- Located on a beautiful campus – the University of Washington, Seattle. I prefer a scenic college campus over a hotel conference room.
- Gourmet donuts for breakfast. Pizza for lunch.
- After party at a sports bar with free pool, open bar, and wings and burgers.
I honestly don’t have any negatives to offer. One attendee told me that, if they had to nit-pick, they would have wanted tables for their laptops. To tell you the truth, this was the first conference I attended without a laptop, and I am happy I left it at the hotel. I provide more value to my clients by ignoring their emails for 8 hours and listening to Rand without distractions.
Overall, if I were reviewing the seminar for the New York Times and I needed a tagline, I would group the 4 adjectives that I used in this post: Great, Fantastic, Phenomenal, Beautiful.
