SEO Mentor

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In this post you will find a recap of the Scary SEO conference held October 24-25, 2008 with myself and Dana Lookadoo. Listen to the podcast above or read the transcript below!

Garrett: Hello everyone, it’ Garrett Pierson, Your SEO Mentor. I’m here with Dana Lookadoo. How are you?

Dana: Hi Garrett, I’m doing great. Thank you for having me. How are you doing?

Garrett: I’m great. Did I say your last name correctly?

Dana: You did. Lookadoo. I’m impressed. Very good.

Garrett: Dana, what we’re going to do today; I want to go back and forth with you on the awesome event that we just got back from recently, Scary SEO. I want to go back and forth on what we learned, the fun we had, and what everybody missed out on.

Dana: They really did miss out. It’s amazing that such a small conference could have such a large effect. It really did. I’m excited to talk about it.

Garrett: That’s great. All of you that missed out on Scary SEO, it just happened October 24th and 25th, in Ft. Lauderdale. Dave Snyder and Jordan Kasteler put that on from SearchandSocial.com. You can also find out a lot more about the event at ScarySEO.com.

Anyway, it just started out as a nice day, Friday. The fun thing about this conference was it was very small. There were fifty people invited to come. It was small and very personal. That’s what I really liked about this conference.

It started out with Jeff Quipp from Search Engine People. He started out with the opening keynote. He talked about where search came from, what search is, and the future of search. I loved Jeff Quipp’s keynote. It really started the conference off with a bang. It was very fun. Jeff is a smart guy and such a nice guy. I was able to talk with him quite a bit throughout the conference. That was what was so cool about this conference. In any other conference, I probably would never have had the opportunity to get with him unless I would have made a huge effort. I got to sit with him through lunch. I got to sit with him through the dinners and parties afterward and really speak with him and pick his brain about search and social media. That’s what was really fun about this conference.

I was also able to meet you, Dana. We’ve talked on Twitter and I’ve talked with a lot of people that were there, on Twitter, but it was fun to put a face with a name and business. Dana, what was your favorite part of the first day, and essentially the whole conference there in Florida?

Dana: Starting at the bird’s eye where you started. For instance, getting to meet Jeff and Loren Baker, Lisa Barone, Dave Snyder, Jordan Kasteler and Utah SEO Pro now has a face, a body, and a personality. You get to meet them in person, to talk, and to share. It really was one of the highlights of the conference. As you mentioned, going to SES or even an SMX, being at SMX Advance with a smaller venue, I thought that was great. Attending SEOmoz in August, which was even a smaller venue; I thought that was great. Now, attending Scary SEO, that’s the pinnacle. I can’t wait until April when they do their next one. I definitely want to be there because of the intimacy and the quality of what was shared.

It’s interesting, in talking about Jeff Quipp’s keynote, we didn’t really talk about what he said was a little bit scary, and it fit into Scary SEO. He talked about the past of SEO as well as the future of where things might go in 2010 and beyond, the type of information that might be shared as far as identifying things in images and videos, and ideas of us having virtual personas that would act like a virtual assistant. That persona would stay with us across different platforms. That was a huge, “Oh, really?” He also spoke about brainwave research, and how it fits into search. He touched onto some areas I would not even have considered would have been covered at the conference.

Garrett: That’s true, yeah. After Jeff, Jordan gave a great presentation about the Code of SEO and Coding and Design. He talked about something that I’ve understood. I’ve read a lot about it but I didn’t know how to apply it to my websites, which was domain canonicalization. He gave great examples and resources. They’re going to be posting to either ScarySEO.com or SearchandSocial.com. They’re going to be posting all of the PowerPoint presentations from these speakers, which will be a great resource, to have all of the links about domain canonicalization and such.

After him, Carolyn Shelby, of BeFoundLocal and SEO 101, with Webmasterradio.fm, she talked about coding and design as well. Having two speakers and sometimes three speakers on the same subject, really brought it all together.

What was awesome is after each presentation and session, we were able to sit in our groups; sit and talk with Jordan and Carolyn, and sit and talk with each other and brainstorm together. It’s never been done, that I’ve ever seen, at a conference. Have you ever seen that?

Dana: No, I haven’t. I have to tell you. I think it was the absolute, best approach that we could have imagined. For those who weren’t there, we sat around in ’roundtables’ about eight persons per table. The speakers were organized by topics. For instance, you mentioned Jordan and Carolyn’s presentations dealing with information architecture, with coding the site. Here we were able to talk about what we did and how you did this. I took twenty-five pages of notes, just typing as they were moving along. A lot of my notes ended up being from the Q&A sessions afterwards, of sharing. “This is how I use this and this is how I use this.” I had a chance to catch Jordan in the hall to talk about 301 Redirects, how to use configuration files, and some optimal ways to score moving site domains. They’re applicable to some things I’m doing right now. It was spot on. That was worth the cost of the conference right there, just to get that ‘free consulting’. It wasn’t free, but it felt like it.

Garrett: A lot of times, in most conferences – it’s great to go and listen to the speaker. You get excited, but they have a limited time to tell you what they want to tell you. Although Jordan and Carolyn, Rhea, Loren Baker, and Brian Chappell had a limited time, we were able to get with them after to ask them questions about their presentations. In a normal conference it would have just been, “Oh, well, I’ll have to figure that out on my own.”

Dana: Exactly, and then you would have a mass of people exit and move to another room. You would then have different people. This way you built relationships with the same people. You didn’t have to choose from any other sessions. Everyone was able to hear the same thing. You didn’t feel like you were missing out and having to compare notes at lunch.

Garrett: Dave Snyder needs to pat himself on the back, he and his wife Samantha. They put a lot of this together. He moderated a lot of it and hosted all the parties, the whole conference. He did such a great job. He was stressed; you could tell, but he held himself together.

Dana: Rightfully so

Garrett: Exactly, he held himself together very well. He gave some great presentations also. Most of his presentations came on day two. Finishing up day one, which was Friday, Rhea, Loren, and Brian gave great information about link building. They all went at it from a different angle, which I thought was really cool. I don’t know if there was any one of those that really stands out from your twenty-five pages of notes.
Dana: Let’s see. Rhea walking in as SheRa, Wonder Woman, stole the show. The outfit did it. You’re just glued to what she was saying because you knew that everything she told you was almost magical. That was awesome. Brian Chappell’s presentation is on Google Docs so that’s downloadable. It was super, quality stuff.

One thing that really stood out in my mind was Brian Carter’s approach to his five-step process for optimization, that didn’t just apply to PPC. Actually, he was with Brandy Eddings. They spoke on AdWords and Pay-Per-Click. His process for optimization about identifying your goals, having measurable goals, establishing your measurement and knowing where you are; the planning, strategy, and resource aspect applied to SEO and PPC, content writing and everything about online marketing, including life. They were basic principles – a few “Ah Ha!” moments. They’re so simple, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Garrett: Loren Baker, back to the link building, a lot of times we shy away from paid links, but he got into it a little bit. He said, “If you’re in a market or niche that you have to buy paid links,” he went into ways that were really strong on how to do it the right way and not hurt yourself.

Dana: Not to be afraid of it.

Garrett: I thought that was a powerful presentation on link building, ways that I would never have thought of. I try and stay away from the paid link building, but he presented it in a way that made me think, “If you have to do it, here are ways to be really careful.” I thought that was very neat.

Dana: To add onto that, about dealing with the links, one of the key takeaways I got from Loren was when he said, “Your intention is to convert.” I think too many times, we think our intention is to please Google. That’s my addition on there. I thought, “Wow, that really makes sense.” Place links where you will get an action. I think that should be the basis, upon which we make a decision, about whether or not it would be paid or not.

Garrett: That was powerful. As you said, we sometimes try to please Google so much, we forget about our own business.

Another thing that Loren Baker and his partner Leif and Jordan and Dave announced that day was IMBroadcast.com. That was something announced at Scary SEO that was very cool. I’ll make sure to have a link to that. That’s a niche video website; essentially, it stands for Internet Marketing Broadcast, where you can upload your entire internet marketing SEO, SEM, social media videos. It’s all niche based. We don’t have to scramble through YouTube to find videos. We can go straight to IMBroadcast. I thought that was a very cool announcement they made.

Another cool thing is they streamed a lot of the event at IMBroadcast, which was fun, to think, “Hey, I’m up online.”

Dana: It was great. Go to IMBroadcast.com. Stumble It, share it, tell your friends. Set it as one of your home tabs.

Garrett: Exactly. The day ended with the last presentation; Rhea did another one. Martin Bowling was going to, but I guess he had some back problems, so he didn’t make it. That was too bad. Rhea and Brian did a great job with online reputation management. This one got a lot of Q&A after. We had a big discussion afterward about online reputation. Rhea did a very good job. She went at it from a different angle. She went at it from the opposite of what you do to hurt somebody’s reputation or hurt your own reputation. She was doing it in a way to help you see how fast and how easy it is to get your reputation messed up. Brian came in and taught about how to fix it. Brian is the resource king. He has all the great resources when it comes to social media and online reputation management that I just love.

Dana: I want to do a Vulcan mind meld with him.

Garrett: What did you take away from that session?

Dana: I have to agree with you, one of the things that I thought was unusual yet super valuable was Rhea’s approach to how to mess up someone’s reputation. By knowing what they could do, PR hijacking, going out and squatting on someone’s brand name, filing for their trademarks, buying up their domains, getting their social profiles. It was essentially, “Oh, if that’s the way someone approaches it, I better get on it.” I think of ‘prepare’ versus ‘repair’. So many times, reputation management is about being in the repair mode. By taking Rhea’s approach, we can look and say, “Oh, this is how we could prepare ahead of time,” to essentially buy the company’s name and brand. It was very powerful.

Garrett: It was. That was the last session, but the day ended with a great presentation from SEOmoz. I can’t recall who gave that. His name just slips by me. Do you remember?

Dana: Scott Willoughby, ‘Great Scott’.

Garrett: There you go. Scott Willoughby gave a great presentation on all the SEOmoz tools. He talked about Linkscape. That was a great presentation for those that didn’t already have access to the SEOmoz tools. That was cool.

That night ended up with a limo bus excursion sponsored by SEOmoz. I didn’t go on the bus, but I heard there were some fun, fun times.

Dana: I can’t report on that. I didn’t go on the bus either so I could come home early, yet got to hang out with a few different groups of people there. It sounds like they had a really good time.

Garrett: The excursion went to Hard Rock Casino and Hotel. It was on twenty acres, wasn’t it?

Dana: I’m not sure of the size, but I think it was twenty acres. You could just think of Miami Vice on steroids. The place was like a little city. You could go shopping, go to the spa, go to the casino, go dancing at any kind of music, or get soft yogurt. Everything was offered.

Garrett: It was a really fun place to go hang out. That was the other cool thing about this conference. Again, it was small. We all got to hang out together. We were all together at the afterward parties. That was very fun.

That night ended pretty late for a lot of people. Again, that Friday was just packed full of great information, great fun, and great networking.

Saturday started a little slow because everyone was tired. Dave went over IMBroadcast.com again, with a video workshop, which was really cool. Then we got into some great social media tactics, social media optimization with a great group of guys – Brian Chappell again, John Carcutt of AgencyWeb, and Jeff Quipp. That was an awesome presentation by all three of those guys about how to optimize using social media, and how to optimize it with search engine optimization. I don’t know; did you take anything away from that one, which stood out to you?

Dana: I think one of the things, the value, the content is key in social. We think content is key in SEO. Jeff brought up a good point; writing successful content as well as having a good network of friends. I guess, in a way, friends are content. It was nice to hear the guru say social media is an ongoing learning process. That was one of the things that made the whole learning curve of social not so scary. It’s an ongoing learning process for all of us.

Garrett: That was a great session. We broke off for lunch. Just to put a plug in; the food was great. It was really good.

Dana: Dave did say at the beginning, that he likes to eat. He told them that it better be good food. He promised it was going to be good. He completely fulfilled that promise.

Garrett: He did. It was great. Then, after lunch, we got back into analytics. Rhea Drysdale and Dave Snyder put this session on. It brought to my eyes the importance of getting analytics. Dave talked about this, not just looking at, “Oh, I got this amount of unique clicks. Oh, this is cool, I got all these paid views,” but going deeper into the analytics, spending time each day finding out which page is converting better, which page is not converting. Testing and testing. I got a lot out of this session. I don’t know about you, Dana.

Dana: Yeah, he actually said, “For every dollar you spend on an analytics tool, you should be spending five dollars in people to analyze those tools.” What an eye-opener. We generally think, “Okay, we’ll check our analytics here or there,” and then to add on to that, other than the value of the person analyzing this and doing the data mining, to show how much that needs to be part of the team. He took it a step further, past the tools. He was actually talking about having a system and doing site evaluations, where you ask users to evaluate your site, to find out what they think. He talked about focus groups. His approach helped us to think outside the box to move away from the numbers and listen to our users. That was really key. Our users are part of our analytics. The people on the site, what do they say, what do they think? He turned it into actionable analytics. I thought that was very powerful.

Garrett: It was. Again, throughout all this, we were able to take breaks and talk about it with our neighbors, and with the speakers, which was just awesome. I think, Dana, the last two were my favorites. The SEO Project Management, and Educating Clients, and then the last one, which was Information Architecture., those were my all time favorites. Chris Hart, from Bruce Clay, Inc., did an awesome job. Pamela Lund, from BespokeUSB, and John Carcutt again, from Agency Web, they did such a great job at opening up my eyes, and I believe a lot of people’s eyes. How do we educate our clients on expectations, getting organized, getting everybody on the team, on the Web design – the executive team; getting everybody on the same page to make sure everybody is happy? They even got into if somebody is not happy, what do you do? This happens.

Pamela hit it right on the nail. She talked about being very careful, quiet, and listening to your client. Let them talk. She talked about how she sets up, with her clients, a whole half-hour to hour phone session where they could just talk. I thought that session was just awesome.

Dana: It was really good. Going back to the format of the show, I had a chance to actually meet Pamela at the IM Charity Dinner at the Inn and ask a few more questions. I was able to talk a bit more about how you process for having a weekly meeting, setting boundaries, and coming along, embracing your clients, while at the same time making sure you’re providing them with the best approach. That was valuable to not only listen to her and learn from what she shared, as well as to be able to talk about it afterward. This goes back to the approach of Scary SEO, being able to sit down and talk. To ask questions and listen as well.

Garrett: The last one by Dave Snyder and Carolyn Shelby, this was just awesome about information and content creation. It was how to build your website the right way so it’s user friendly for your users, and user friendly for the search engines, and for the spiders. This was an awesome presentation. They just ended the whole conference with a bang.

Dave’s presentation was on a blog post that he just did at SearchandSocial.com. I’m going to make sure I have a link to that on the transcript of this podcast. If you’re listening at iTunes, make sure you head over to YourSEOMentor.com and I’ll make sure there’s a link to that in the transcript. He did an awesome job of explaining step-by-step what you should do. He talked about how every website is different. If you have an eCommerce site, compared to a news or landing page site, how to build your internal links correctly and your siloing, etc. It was a powerful lesson by him and Carolyn. What did you think of that last one?

Dana: I think one thing I want to add to that with your links is we want to make sure to help Dave and give him credit for coining the term “information environment design”, IED. Looking at your information architecture as your site is a full-over environment, including your domain, the sections of the site, your categories, your pages, and the media that’s involved. He’s done a very good job on that. We want to make sure we give him that credit.

Garrett: Exactly, and he talks about that IED in the blog post at SearchandSocial.com. Again, I’ll make sure I put a link to that. Here is the link to Search Friendly Information Environment Design blog post by Dave.

Dana: I want to get this in real quick. One thing I really enjoyed, that Carolyn said was about keyword research, talking about the phraseology that the audience uses. One of her key points was ‘mingle with the peasants’. That got a good laugh from everyone. Really, what she meant was talk to everyone when you’re doing keyword research with your client. Interview customer service. Talk to sales people. Read customer reviews. Those are the kinds of tips that were so valuable, but many times, we’re not just going to go to Google AdWords and go to Wordtracker to do our research. It’s about holistically meeting with everyone that touches a company and the site, including who picks up the phone.

Garrett: Overall, Saturday was a great day. That night, we had the IM Internet Marketing Charity dinner, hosted by all the sponsors. I think pretty much Search & Social, SEOmoz, Bruce Clay, Fuel Interactive, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch Agency Web and Search Engine People; pretty much everybody came together and I think they pulled a lot of money together that they were going to give to the Ronald McDonald Foundation. That was a great dinner, great food, and again, a great time to network with people. That kind of ended the conference. Again, I got so much out of it. I built so many friendships and relationships. It was a pleasure to meet you, Dana.

Dana: Likewise, Garrett.

Garrett: A lot of friendships were made. They announced their next conference, which will be in spring break. I don’t think they’ve come up with the exact name of it. It’s Internet Marketing Spring Break. I don’t really know what they’ve decided yet. That will be in April 2009, in Ft. Lauderdale again. Definitely keep your eyes on Search & Social, with Dave, Jordan, and Loren on that next event. They’re only inviting about two hundred people.

Dana: I’m definitely going to mark it on my calendar. If this format is a foundation upon which they’re building their conferences, then they have a winner. I definitely want to be there. I have to give a plug to you. There’s one other thing in the conference you left out. You were on WebmasterRadio.FM live broadcast at the IM Charity dinner.

Garrett: That’s true. Let’s hope they air that. I don’t know. It got kind of funny there for a while.

Dana: I believe they will.

Garrett: Dana, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about you for a second. We’ve gone over time a little bit, I’m sure people are chomping at the bit to go and see all these presentations. You live in California now, don’t you?

Dana: I do. I operate Pixel Position. I’ve actually been doing SEO for a number of years. In looking at this, it’s been the SEO gone social. I term it ‘conversational SEO’ because it’s about listening, responding, engaging, and taking a tactic with SEO that’s more holistic including social.

Attending this conference was perfect. Being sponsored by Search & Social, they’re taking that same approach. Being able to listen to the speakers really helped me to come back this week and think, “How can I provide the best service to my clients?” It’s been very valuable. I have a background in Web development. I used to teach Web design at Cal State Monterrey Bay. I’ve been doing this for a long time. The most exciting part of it is how fast things are changing and how much there is to learn. There is power in numbers. Conferences like this are how you can stay on top of that curve. I’m thankful to be in the industry right now, with a good group of people. Thank you, Garrett, for having me. It’s been very nice. I really enjoyed meeting you. You feel like family now.

Garrett: I know. If anybody wants a true friend, Dana is the nicest person you will ever meet. I’m not just saying that just to say that. She is so nice. Tell us again, where your blog is?

Dana: Pixelposition.com. Feel free to stop by and say hi. I would appreciate it. I’m @DanaLookadoo on Twitter.

Garrett: Thank you, Dana, for your time. Everybody go and check out ScarySEO.com and SearchandSocial.com. Get ready for the spring break version. It’s just going to knock Scary SEO out of the water, I’m sure. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Dana.

Dana: Thank you, Garrett. Bye-bye.

Check out pictures from the conference taken by Dana at Flickr!

To find out more about who transcribed this interview check out Tamara Bentzur!

Popularity: 61% [?]

Don't Miss Out On Learning SEO!
Subscribe to the YourSEOMentor RSS feed or my email list below. Also start following me on Twitter. Thanks for Visiting!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 12:31 pm and is filed under SEO, SEO Friends, Your SEO Mentor Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Brian Carter, Brian Chappell, Carolyn Shelby, Chris Hart, Conversational SEO, Dana Lookadoo, Dave Snyder, Domain Canonicalization, IMBroadcast.com, Jeff Quipp, John Carcutt, Jordan Kasteler, Loren Baker, Pamela Lund, Rhea Drysdale, Scary SEO, Search Engine People