SEO Class NY a Raving Success!

I just got back from the second SEO Class. It was held at the Affinia Hotel in Manhattan. This was a two day intensive training for advanced Search Engine Marketing techniques.

Below are very brief take aways from some of the sessions.

Brett Tabke did an amazing presentation on Video optimization. Search Engines are able to scan the frames for text and review the audio for content. Video is prominently showing up in Google Universal results. Do a search for "Google webmaster tools" in Google and you will see a thumbnail for a video by Matt Cutts.

Todd Malicoat did a few great presentations on link building and SEM tools. A very cool take away was his classification of 12 types of links: authority, directory, run of site, one way inbound, .edu and.gov, media sites, press releases, article bio, rss, comment and profile, presell pages, and reciprocal.

Greg Niland covered research & testing. Multivariate testing is a complex topic. With his guidance and training, it becomes a much easier proposition. He also did a great session on brand management and protection. This is a hot topic! Nothing bothers a CEO more than negative information showing up on the first page when doing a search for their company name. Greg laid out strategies to effectively combat that problem.

Michael Grey was the workhorse of the bunch. He covered the most topics and gave the attendees a ton of great take aways. His topics included blogging, content generation, brand protection, social media marketing, and technical issues.

Brad Geddes is the king of Google Adwords (among many other things). He frequently teaches advanced PPC seminars directly for Google. When he talks about PPC everyone listens! Besides great information about PPC strategies, he gave away a great Google Base Tip - Add custom fields to your database, Google loves new information.

I covered advanced content generation and Webmaster Tools. Never delete any content that exists on your Web site. Archive everything! Old content can drive traffic and validate the Web site's age. If your site is not registered with Google Webmaster Tools, do it today. Google provides a wealth of information about their crawling of your site for free.

Overall the training was a great success. The most interesting feedback was about some of the intangibles of the 2 days. Workshops were available during the regular sessions for one on one time with the experts and live reviews of the attendee's Web sites. We (The SEO Trainers) had three meals with the SEO Class attendees and two cocktail hours. This interaction time with access to our wealth of knowledge and experiences in Search was probably the greatest asset for the class.

The next SEO Class / Pubcon event will be in Los Angeles in November. Stay tuned for more information or send me an email to get on our mailing list.