I was at SMX Advanced in Seattle basically to see some friends, and to discuss with a few trusted folks about my upcoming year. I didn’t really attend sessions, and as someone who didn’t attend sessions I discovered something. There were alot of people who didn’t attend sessions, but were there just to interact with others.

I love the SEO industry, even though I am almost entirely out of it now with my gadget/widget strategy stuff. Almost every successful widget spread I have seen has been very Google guideline friendly (white hat) and is orientated around the user, or based on actual interaction that helps or entertains users.

I love the discussion that occured around the wonderful Lisa Barones post “SMX Advanced goes to the darkside“. Her article discusses that the flavor of SMX Advanced was a bit Grey hat.

I liked the discussion because (as always) Dally Sullivan is open to discussing critiques, which I admire, and I liked the discussion because it really highlighted some of the basic reasons why I got into gadgets in the first place.

A couple years ago, I would answer the questions of new webmasters alot. They always were, basically, “How do we get on top of Google results?”.

They were never, “How do I do more business on the internet?” or “How do I make more money on the internet?”.

It was considered a given that search engines were the best way to do this, so the questions were always orientated around “being on top of the search engines”.

I started to ask myself “What if there were no search engines?” and “How do I create an online presence that does not depend on Google or search rankings?

If you have read my article “The Hitchhikers Guide to Linkless SEO” you know what direction of thought I ended up going in.

I realized that you do not need search engines at all to create major brands and millions of users.

Think about this. You use Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon right?

You didn’t find those in a search engine, you use them because of interaction. You read about them or were invited by someone or they were suggested to you.

No search engine needed.

Twitter, StumbleUpon, and other social media is not dependant on search engines. They would be the same success they are even if Google didn’t exist.

This isn’t sinking into the search community very quickly, but you really don’t need search engines for everything.

This needs to sink in, particulairly for advertisers. How you advertise is changing and how you bring people into contact or awareness of your brand is changing.

It is really simple, and it is called “Word of Mouth”.

Social media is, in it’s essense, “word of mouth”. Understanding that is key for internet marketers.

Back to SMX Advanced. Danny Sullivan knows his shit well. I would challenge him to offer sessions that offer real ways for businesses and advertisers to actually interact with social media instead of teaching people how to “use” social media for links or other SEO goals.

The goal isn’t links in social media. It is interaction. It is word of mouth.

If the only thing you use social media for is link creation, then you are missing the point.

Advice like…

“If you make a profile on several social media websites, you will get several links which may help your ranking.”

Is the same thing as…

“How to get reciprical links, or Wikipedia links, etc., etc.”

The most advanced and forward looking marketing looks at social media not as an opportunity for links, but as an opportunity for interaction and brand awareness. I would love to see Danny, Brett, and other conference organizers embrace this idea more and see it reflected in their sessions.

I like that Danny has the SMX – Social series and I would recommend them as the most effective sessions you will likely find on leveraging social media.

But at the same time, those sessions are also of the same flavor that gave Lisa pause about SMX Advanced. How to “trick” or “linkbait”, I hope to be proved wrong on that, but we will see.

I will be leaving the trail to attend a few things in the next three weeks. I hope to see you there, and also this will be the window of opportunity to get some face time with me if I am working on your projects. Contact me asap to arrage meetings, here is where I will be…

May 12th – Palm Springs (personal stuff)

May 15th – Sunnyvale, CA – Yahoo HQ – I will be at the Yahoo campus for an evening of drinking, er, I mean developer stuff

May 28th 29th – Google I/O -  I am looking forward to several goings on there, especially the MySpace/Open Social stuff, and of course the Google gadgets stuff as well.

Jun 3rd 4th – Seattle, WA – SMX Advanced - I will swing by Seattle for the SEOmoz party, and also maybe get a networking pass for the event.

Jun16th – New York, NY – WidgetWebExpo – I will be doing a session there on Widgets and SEO

I also want to mention that Smx Advanced will be having a developer day which programmed by Vanessa Fox, who has over 13 years of experience building websites, documenting APIs, and reading comic books.

Vanessa is starting a new thing Nine by Blue, which looks at the relationships between development, SEO, and online marketing silos and how the data from each of these areas can be used holistically to learn more about customer behavior. She also is features editor at Search Engine Land, a leading online journal covering the search industry. She previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help website owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search.

In addition to the above, she is also quite hot

There is a real benefit for companies to send their developers to this event, and I want to add that I personally think that if you are a developer and you are tinkering with the idea of broadening your horizons, this is a good event to go to. If you are thinking of working with me I would say the developer days would be required. (hint-hint)

Although this developer day is naturally orientated towards SEO, there are some very important basics to understand before starting a large project that will be useful to just about any development team out there.

My compliments to Vanessa for starting this.

That about does it, after that I will be back on the trail.

SEOmoz has announced that they will be holding a full day SEO training event on October 1st in Seattle which costs between 199 – 399 dollars, depending on when you register, and if you are a premium member of SEOmoz or not.

When I read about it I was excited for a couple reasons. First reason was the free drinks part, to be completely honest, but the second reason was more serious.

I have recently chosen to stop working with clients, but there were a few people (you know who are) who I was going to at least try to dedicate some time consulting. Ready for my consultation?

Attend the SEOmoz Training.

You can invest your time and money on this while safely knowing it will help you now and also serve as a solid foundation for further learning.

The biggest problem that I see in the entire SEO field is the lack of a clear definition of what information represents a base level knowlege of practical SEO.

There are volumes of information available on the web, some of it is extraordinarily great info, some of it is utter BS. How does someone choose? Even if you identify the good from the bad, there is still the problem of sorting through all the information and making real decisions from it. What is important? What is not important? What do I do first? What can wait?

What are the “ABC’s” of SEO?

I was really pleased when I looked at the subjects this training is covering. It is remarkably similar to what I envision as “a solid foundation”of skills and concepts needed to understand and profit from SEO.

Some benefits I see in the SEOmoz training seminar…

Information from a reliable source.

- Rand Fishkin is widely regarded one of the most knowledgeable and professional people in SEO. He is also a personable and talented speaker. He and his SEOmoz staff have trained enterprise level businesses the ins and outs of SEO. Real world, current SEO. It is a surprise to me that he is providing this training at such a low price. This is a good opportunity to get this kind of training from an acknowledged leader of our field.

Scope of coverage.

- The subjects covered are, as I said, the ABC’s of SEO, and are a foundation of knowledge that isn’t theory, but actually a great core set of what is important right now in SEO. The subjects are…

• An Introduction to Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Algorithms
• Keyword Research & Keyword Targeting
• Content Development Strategies
• Social Media Marketing
• Blogging & the Blogosphere
• Search Engine Friendly Design
• Analytics

Networking.

One of the greatest benefits of this training is the networking. You will meet and interact with the SEOmoz staff and your peers and this is important. It is very nice that I feel confident, when I have something useful to say or ask, that I can emailanyone at SEOmoz, and get a timely response. If you attend this training, I think you will feel confident about this too. A fundamental part of successful SEO is knowing and interacting with others in the field and the whole crew of SEOmoz are active people in the field, who are quite frankly, good people to know.

Interaction.

The info page for the training says…

“Each module will contain a thorough how-to presentation followed by Q&A. Come prepared with questions about your site(s) and specific issues. Get clear answers and instructions you can put into action now.”

This is good. They are actually telling you to bring your problems to them.

Free Booze Additional, informal networking opportunity

Okay, I know that I was at the last party SEOmoz threw and I drank like a madman. Due to my prolific drinking, I could justify the cost of this on the free booze alone.

Visit SEOmoz to find out more details about this training.

These are some photos from the Google party and the SEOmoz party

There are more photos of SMX out there, mostly on Flickr.

The Microsoft Party

SMX kicked off with a party thrown by Microsoft. I had sorta envisioned this party as the place where I was going to meet everyone, pick some brains, and introduce me, me, wonderful, fabulous me to the world of SEO.

Then I realized the drinks were free.

I drank and drank and tried different drinks just cause they were pretty colors. A well dressed couple in front of me ordered martinis. When my turn at the bar came I instructed the bartender that “I wanted something yellow” (I got to have a drink for each color that you can find in a bag of Skittles.)

Some of the worlds foremost experts in the SEO industry now know me as the guy who showed them how to make a fart noise with nothing but your hand and your armpit.

The party was actually very impressive and wins the coveted SEOish Award for least wait time at the bar but it sucks that there wasn’t any t-shirts. Somewhere between free drinks and no wait time at the bars, I fell in love with Microsoft.

It was really great to see everyone drunk. Susan and Lisa (or as Lisa would say, “Lisa and Susan“) of the Bruce Clay blog only wrestled each other twice, which I am told is a new record.

This party is where I learned two important lessons. First thing I learned was that everyone is actually as nice as I have heard.

The second thing I learned is that blackhat/whitehat is not the real distinction of the search industry. There is a far more powerful reality. There exists only two types of SEO people, and depending on which one you are will ultimately define who you will end up networking with most.

The types are “smoking” and “non-smoking”. I would mention the non-smokers, but they suck. The smokers rock, we rule the SEO world.

After the party ended a good crowd of people went to the Fairmont hotel bar and drank more. Good stuff.

YOU and A with Matt Cutts

After a nice breakfast and alot of coffee, everyone went excitedly into the “YOUandA with Matt Cutts” session. Matt then asked Danny to strip, which Danny did. (SEOfangirl, you should have been here…) Really, he took off his suit on stage, he took off his pants on stage, but after that Matt and Danny sat down and started the session. This session was covered in depth at Search Engine roundtable by Tamar, who did an incredible job in her coverage of SMX. This session was covered well by Susan Esparza at Bruce Clay as well but I heart the WebProNews coverage of it where Navneet Kaushal of PageTraffic was kind enough to link to my site in his coverage.

What I liked about this session was that I got to shamelessly promote my Google guideline site ask a question.

I asked about the Google webmaster guidelines and why were they so damn vague. I explained to Mr. Cutts that if the Google guidelines were not improved within 24 hours, he was never going to see his cats again. (Google updated the guidelines the next day and Matts cats were returned safely to their home where they then meowed.) After I asked my question, other people started to ask and discuss things other than me and I lost interest. Especially the real estate stuff… grr…

Duplicate Content Summit

The representatives of four search engines (Ask, Yahoo, Google, and MSN) explained duplicate content in a manner that would be deemed duplicate content by most search engines.

This session was good, but the best part for most people was after they stopped talking when they started answering questions and really spent alot of one and one time with people. (Thanks for that) I honestly can say that everyone who wanted a minute or two or five with each representative got to have it. I was really impressed by this.

The representatives were… Vanessa Fox of Google, Amit Kumar of Yahoo, Peter Linsley of Ask.com, and Eytan Seidman of Microsoft.

More coming soon (I need to get more beer).

Everytime I try to sit down and write something I am either drunk, tired, or both. I simply do not have the capacity to write anything in any real sense during this event. I have been meeting people left and right and I like talking to them and I guess that is why I am here. So basically I am saying that I will cover SMX after the fact and will give some good insights on it later when I am sober and not surrounded by people I respect.

The best live coverage of the event is at BruceClay, where Lisa and Susan are doing an impressive job covering in very real detail, just about every word of the sessions, truly.

The real scoop fom SMX is that you can attend the sessions in damn near real time at the blog on Bruce Clay.

The Microsoft party was great and the drinks were free, resulting in happy, drunk SEO people. I would have used this to my advantage but I couldn’t because I was drunk. It was a well done, and very nice affair, and I got to meet just about everyone. After the party (which ended which resulted in me paying for my own drinks grrrr,) a rather large group of people ended up in a hotel bar where more “networking” occurred.

SMX Begins some Organic track photos:

Okay, I am at the Green Tortoise hostel in downtown Seattle. My roommates are three Norwegian girls who are part of a larger Norwegian girl group, water polo or something appearantly involving giggling. Hostels rock.

The weather in Seattle is glorious. I am not just saying that. It is a beautiful and sunny day and the Mountains are clear today over the sound. Truely lovely.

I arrived here in Seattle at about 11:00 AM (I had a little advenure in Portland last night) and as I was looking for the convention hall I noticed an outdoor beer garden for charity.

You have no idea how charitable I am and I write this now drunk from giving to the “Pike Place Fund” or something like that.

I am going to stop writing cause I want to lay down on some grass and feel this pretty sun on my face.

NOTE: If any conference goers notice me laying asleep, wake me up for the Microsoft party. I am on the little strip of grass right near Pikes place where they have that big bloe up thing where kids can jump up and down on. Seriously, if you see a handsome man with a newly trimmed beard laying in the grass with his head on a laptop case, that is me.

Wake me up.

Well, wake me up if it is like 6 or something, waking me up before 6 isn’t recommended.

Okay I close my eyes, look at the sun and feel it nice on my face. When the Microsoft gig starts, I will start covering it. If I have to pay for drinks Microsoft sucks. If I do not have to pay for drinks then Microsofts results are extrodinarily relevant and useful.

Four hours to SMX sweetness… I take my nap.

My computer died a few days ago and I have just now replaced it, sorry for the delay in posts. I am getting on a train (yes, a train) in about an hour and heading up to Seattle for SMX a little early.

SEOish will be providing the sweetest coverage of SMX on the web and remember, drunk news is fun news and I plan to be drunk and have fun. I will provide pictures, some reviews of the networking events, interviews, and who knows what else.

The one thing I do know is that I will be drunk. It should rock.

UPDATE: If anyone sees “Pat was here” or something soaped on the door of the SEOmoz offices in Seattle, I totally don’t know anything about it.

The winner of the free pass is me.

The SEOish coverage of SMX in Seattle will no longer be based in the conference center parking lot in thanks to Aaron Wall.

You heard it here second! The first place you heard from was on SEObook, where the winner of the free SMX pass (ME) was announced.

Thank you Aaron… It is greatly appreciated and I look forward to seeing you there.

Note: the ROWYEoPo Parking Lot Sweetness event is officially canceled.