Here is my perspective on the heated debate regarding SMX Advanced 2008.
There should be a session dedicated to blackhat SEO tactics and I believe it’s important to address in an advanced SEO conference. However, it should be by choice to hear those tactics. I can’t imagine being a consultant and convincing the in-house SEO manager of one of my clients to attend the conference and then having to recant most of what he just paid a lot of money to attend. Would I be seen as being more authoritative than the guys on the panel asked to speak by Danny Sullivan himself? I doubt it. If so, it’d still weigh on the client’s mind. That’s not good.
The conference wasn’t, however, ALL black hat. There was some really good basic SEO white hat tactics mentioned, but it was not too much more than what you could easily learn here on SEOmoz or other SEO blogs. It simply wasn’t that advanced (with Bot Herding being one of the best, as well as Stephan Spencer’s presentations throughout the conference — Danny bring him back for sure).
(Note: I only attended one session of the developer track and I attended the luncheon wherein you had an opportunity to speak with excellent people from the search engines, both of which I found valuable. The company I work for, though, doesn’t use a standardized platform that would have made the track that useful for me in my current role, so I skipped most of it to learn more about International SEO.)
The conference needed more advanced white hat, such as:
- Enterprise SEO and how that world is different than regular SEO.
- Marketing brainstorming, coming up with some great linkbait ideas that others can tailor for their own sites.
- Good widget ideas and how to build them to get SEO benefit without being spammy.
- How to leverage your affiliate base for inbound link management.
- Managing the delicate balance between harnessing a copywriter’s creativity while still beating them over the head as to why SEO is important to keep in mind.
- Code architecture for maximum SEO benefits.
- Examples Examples Examples: show how specific things have helped specific sites. Danny could offer some free consulting or advertising on one of his many popular sites in return for being used as an open case study.
- How to create a kick ass social media profile for a brand on Digg, and how that may differ on other social sites.
- Leveraging Twitter for SEO benefit. How to recruit bloggers to your profile. How to make your followers evangelists.
- LONGER Q&A SESSIONS!! The Q&As were the most powerful ‘take-aways’ from the content of the conference. Extend those opportunities.
- Have Rand moderate more sessions. He did a superb job and digs deeper in the Q&A sessions than Danny does.
Advanced SEO isn’t just black hat SEO (though black hat is a form of advanced SEO, sometimes—other times it’s just spam). Rand talks about the 10% we hold back; well, it is Danny’s job to find people to talk about that 10% at a conference that is supposedly advanced SEO and we pay a lot of money to attend.
Visit my SEO Specialist resume to discover where I can be found online or simply follow me on Twitter @BrentDPayne
