Has anyone been to SMX or any other SEO Conference?
-
Hello All,
I have been given the opportunity to go to several conferences. But like most SEO guys, I have a tone of work, and need to use my time sparingly. The one conference that has peaked my interest is SMX.
I was wondering if anyone has been to SMX before and if they recommend it.
Also if anyone has any other conferences they would recommend, preferrably on the east coast, that would be interesting please let me know.
Any answers are appreciated. Thank you.
-
Thank you all for the kind responses, I will definitely see what I can do.
-
The other conference I would suggest is worth considering is SMX Advanced. Unfortunately it's west coast also (Seattle in June) but depending on your level of expertise, it's a terrific conference. It shares the good aspects others have mentioned about SMX West etc, but the presentations are at an even higher expertise level.
Not hard to come out of the sessions with your head swimming with new stuff, even if you've got lots of background. If you're thinking of attending and need to minimize accommodation costs, lemme know. I can recommend the terrific pensione I stay at that's less than a 10-minute walk.
I will say too - if you're looking for ways to take your practice to the next level, a conference is a really good next step. In addition to whatever new skills/info you pick up, the time to be immersed with so many others who "get" what you do without needing a long explanation is wonderful! Those new connections can often be critical to our further development as well.
Paul
P.S. If you're looking specifically for east coast events, check out the Distilled SearchLove conference in Boston. I've never attended but they're a terrific company and I've heard good things about the conference. It's in May http://www.distilled.net/events/searchlove-boston/ (I've got a ping out to my east coast SEO connections - met at last SMXAdvanced actually - and will update if I get more suggestions.
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" width="0" height="0" type="application/x-dgnria"><param name="tabId" value="ff-tab-97"> <param name="counter" value="320"></object>
-
You cannot underestimate the importance of food selection!
-
I've attended SMX West for the past couple years, and have always found it helpful. I've been in this industry for 6+ years, but I learned a lot of new things from the sessions at SMX, and my head was just buzzing with new ideas after the conference.
I also had the opportunity to attend SES San Francisco last year, but I didn't find the sessions there to be very helpful or informative. However, it was still a good networking opportunity and I got to meet a lot of cool people people who work for Search Engine Land and a couple other companies.
-
I would recommend SMX (as well as MozCon, of course!). Things I appreciate about SMX:
- They seem to work hard to add new sessions and make sure that it's not always the same speaker talking about the same thing.
- There are ample break times between sessions. You have time to network with people, time to ask questions of the speakers, use the bathroom, check in and respond to messages from your office, etc. I have found this to be more important if you're trying to attend as many sessions as possible, less important if there are only a few sessions that interest you and you're willing to skip a session to have a break.
- Delicious food! I do think Mozcon beats SMX for food, but in my experience SMX beats the other large conferences for food. There's enough food for breakfast if your hotel doesn't provide any, well-stocked snack breaks, and a good lunch.
I would also recommend MozCon, though as an employee of SEOmoz, I have to admit my bias here. We are a bit more reasonably priced when you factor in the discount for being a PRO member, which can help make up for being in the opposite corner of the country from you. We have three days of keynote-style presentations. We don't have panels, but instead have 45-60 minute sessions with one presenter giving an awesome presentation. We also have all of the 2012 Mozcon available on video for $299 for pro members (see our announcement at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/2012-mozcon-videos-are-here) that can allow you to virtually attend MozCon and make it to SMX in person perhaps.
-
Hi Andrea and Jason,
I highly, highly recommend MozCon. I attended last year and, because it was the first time I had attended any SEO event, I made a point of asking everyone I talked to about what conferences they attended and which ones were the best. Hands down, without question, everyone I asked said MozCon. They liked SMX too, for the most part, but said that MozCon was different (and better) because everyone had the opportunity to attend all of the presentations. This is in contrast to SMX where you have to pick and choose what you want to attend and if two things you are interested in are going on at the same time, you end up having to choose. MozCon is also great because it's not about selling you anything. In that way, it's not like a traditional convention because there aren't 100's of vendors also vying for your attention.
While I think both are probably great for networking, if you really want to leave a conference feeling like you've learned some seriously important things related to SEO, I have to believe that MozCon is going to be hard to beat. Please don't tell my boss, but if the company didn't send me, I'd pay for it out of my own pocket....That's how valuable I think it is.
Hope to see you both there!
Dana
-
I went to SMX West last February and I found it to be very valuable. I'd consider myself a middle-experienced SEO; I say that because I am constantly impressed with the technical proficiency of many of the posters in this forum and their depth of knowledge. That said, I felt like there was a good balance of presentations for the different levels of knowledge and it was a great way for me to immerse myself into some more technical and advanced learning opportunities.
I liked the variety of presentations SMX offered as well as the access to experts and general networking. I was able to balance my interests of SEO, PPC and social media and come back with some actionable (key word there) insight to help our performance. I'd attend again, no question.
Although not on the East Coast, this year I want to look at MozCon in Seattle. The SEOMoz team was in Milwaukee this October for a Mozcation and if that's a taste of what their annual, bigger conference is like then I think it'd be a worthwhile investment.
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best SEO agency
What are peoples thoughts and ratings on SEO agencies in London. There are so many of them it is hard to understand which are the best.
Industry News | | S_Curtis1 -
Local SEO issue
Hello, I have a client that is located just outside of Baltimore, MD. Their zip code is 21236, which is seen as sometimes Nottingham and sometimes Overlea. Their competitors come up for Baltimore with the same zip. This client seems to be having some problems, and I think it is because of this geo confusion? Is this so, and if so, how can I make location more clear to Google? Thanks
Industry News | | lfrazer0 -
Build a site, do SEO work on it and sell it?
Does anybody do this? With success? I keep finding industries right here in my local area (concrete work, home security, painting) that have 4-5 local companies that are competing and NONE of them are doing even the most BASIC items to seo their site or capitalize on ANYTHING online. I could pick 7-8 of these industries and have somebody who works for me spend a couple hours a week on each building links and writing a half way interesting blog post, etc. and once they rank higher than most of the competition sell em for 2-3 grand I bet, especially since I can prove how much traffic they are getting. Thoughts? Thanks for weighing in. Matthew
Industry News | | Mrupp440 -
SEO-contests like “hochgeschwindigkeitsSEO” worldwide?
In Germany people out of the SEO industry seem to love SEO contests - the latest one being to bring up the keyword “hochgeschwindigkeitsSEO” on Pos. 1 on Google until a set time (contest entry example here). There obviously is a price (newest iPhone) and a sponsor (Randolf Jorberg), but for the most part it's a contest which holds the Olympic thought: Being there just means most of it 🙂 So I was wondering: are there any other countries where such contests are being held? I have not heard of any examples and I am quite curious if any other SEO communites out there have something similar going on 🙂
Industry News | | blueSummit1 -
Where do i find Local SEO Clients?
Hey, So i've been doing SEO for a while now and know a lot of tactics and a lot of ways to get my/others sites hire. I know good software (and have that software with full licenses and know the methods to use it in whitehat ways that will work well), internal content linking, title/description, webmaster tools (both google and bing), sitemaps etc... I have clients and my own sites that i have managed to get high in google, as well as my own local site that is number 1 in Google for my hometown + SEO, but that only gets about 80 searches a month and gets me very little if any phone calls a week. I've also just ordered 250 high quality business cards, that i spent ages designing to look awesome.. If these work well i'll print some more and stick all over the place... I currently have 2 local clients, 1 is a local web agency who every client they have they pay me a specific amount to boost that company in Google and the other is just a family friend who pays me a small amount a month to build links for him. I'd like to have 10-15+ clients all on my payroll with a nice amount of income that i can live off. I just finished full-time school and am just coming into the big wide world and have for paid for my new laptop, desktop, 2 monitors, SEO software licenses and SEOMoz account from niche blogs, software and SEO coaching and such.. I've built a brilliant online portfolio for people and have had a lot of great feedback from online clients. But i can only earn around $10-$110 per online client for SEO and around $8/hour for coaching... I'd like to be able to make that a LOT more. I do web/graphic design as well and have built a nice portfolio for that as well. So back to the main question, how did you and how do i get local clients? Thanks!
Industry News | | pompano210 -
What is the best method for getting pure Javascript/Ajax pages Indeded by Google for SEO?
I am in the process of researching this further, and wanted to share some of what I have found below. Anyone who can confirm or deny these assumptions or add some insight would be appreciated. Option: 1 If you're starting from scratch, a good approach is to build your site's structure and navigation using only HTML. Then, once you have the site's pages, links, and content in place, you can spice up the appearance and interface with AJAX. Googlebot will be happy looking at the HTML, while users with modern browsers can enjoy your AJAX bonuses. You can use Hijax to help ajax and html links coexist. You can use Meta NoFollow tags etc to prevent the crawlers from accessing the javascript versions of the page. Currently, webmasters create a "parallel universe" of content. Users of JavaScript-enabled browsers will see content that is created dynamically, whereas users of non-JavaScript-enabled browsers as well as crawlers will see content that is static and created offline. In current practice, "progressive enhancement" in the form of Hijax-links are often used. Option: 2
Industry News | | webbroi
In order to make your AJAX application crawlable, your site needs to abide by a new agreement. This agreement rests on the following: The site adopts the AJAX crawling scheme. For each URL that has dynamically produced content, your server provides an HTML snapshot, which is the content a user (with a browser) sees. Often, such URLs will be AJAX URLs, that is, URLs containing a hash fragment, for example www.example.com/index.html#key=value, where #key=value is the hash fragment. An HTML snapshot is all the content that appears on the page after the JavaScript has been executed. The search engine indexes the HTML snapshot and serves your original AJAX URLs in search results. In order to make this work, the application must use a specific syntax in the AJAX URLs (let's call them "pretty URLs;" you'll see why in the following sections). The search engine crawler will temporarily modify these "pretty URLs" into "ugly URLs" and request those from your server. This request of an "ugly URL" indicates to the server that it should not return the regular web page it would give to a browser, but instead an HTML snapshot. When the crawler has obtained the content for the modified ugly URL, it indexes its content, then displays the original pretty URL in the search results. In other words, end users will always see the pretty URL containing a hash fragment. The following diagram summarizes the agreement:
See more in the....... Getting Started Guide. Make sure you avoid this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Here is a few example Pages that have mostly Javascrip/AJAX : http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab https://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects This is what the spiders see: view-source:http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab This is the best resources I have found regarding Google and Javascript http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ - This is step by step instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81766
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
Some additional Resources: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-for-making-ajax-crawlable.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=357690 -
Do "big" SEO companies remove links after termination of service?
Or worded differently: Has anyone heard of "big" SEO companies removing links after termination of service? I have a client who isn't particularly happy with the SEO he's getting from a big Aussie SEO firm, and he wants to terminate, however they've built thousands of links for him and he's a little concerned they might all get pulled. Has anyone heard of this happening, or; Do you think this is a legitimate concern? I think its physically possible to remove backlinks like this because it seems the SEO firm in question is building links by using other client's websites. I also wonder if they might have large content farm style sites where they place links for clients which might be quite easy to take down. Please discuss!
Industry News | | CheapGames990 -
Coupon to SMX advanced
I know I've asked this one before but I was wondering if you had any coupons to SMX Advanced. I think I've scraped up enough to come to Seattle even without it but I was hoping you might have one as a sponsor. Thanks and looking forward to checking out all your new stuff at your booth! Ed
Industry News | | EdKim0