SEO Mentor

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.

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So this last Monday I booked my flights and hotel heading to sunny Fort Lauderdale Florida (ok I don’t know if it is sunny but hey it is Florida). “Why am I going to Florida in October,” you may ask yourself? I would then reply and say well, “Why Not?” If you could spend a couple of days learning about SEO, SEM, Social Media and much more from a group of stand up people in the industry, then I think you would as well, not to mention the conference is in Florida. Ok, Ok, so what is this conference you might ask, well to find out all the details I would head over to ScarySEO.com to get the low down.

You might have your reasons why your are going or not, but here are the Top 10 Reasons why I am going to the Scary SEO conference on October 24-25, 2008:

1. Dave Snyder (Why is this my number 1 reason? Cause have never met this big huge gorrilla)
2. Speakers - Jordan Kasteler, Jeff Quipp, Rhea Drysdale, Martin Bowling, Loren Baker, Brandy Eddings, Pamela Lund, Brian Chappell, John Carcutt, Ross Dunn, Brian Carter, Chris Hart, Eric Lander (get each speakers bio here scaryseo.com/speakers/)
3. Mini-conference! With this being a mini-conference the networking is going to be amazing, not to mention the close up training with more manageable debates.
4. Agenda - with the above great speakers we will be learning and debating; The Code of SEO, Link Building, Online Reputation Management, SEO Tools, SEM strategies, Analytics, SEO Project Management, Content Creation, Social Media Optimization and much more!
5. Florida! Who doesn’t want to go to Florida and it has been years since I have been out there.
6. I get to meet my buddy Joshua Sciarrino (formerly known as the flying monkey)
7. Zima Contest. If you haven’t heard of Martin Bowling and his love for Zima then you need to check out his Zima Contest and see how you can win a trip to Scary SEO.
   
8. SEOmoz sponsored night on the town with a Limo Bus excursion to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
9. Learning and Fun, and a couple days away from work!
10. For being the first year of Scary SEO their prices are outstanding with total admission to the conference and parties being a great value at $200 per person.

These just happen to be my top ten reasons why I am going to the Scary SEO conference and I could go on and on but I think you get the point. As you can see I am quite excited about going and you should be too. Not to use the fear of loss marketing tactic, but there are only 50 seats available and time is running out so register now.

nuf said!

For this SEO & Social Media Monday Interview Podcast Series I had the opportunity to interview myself. Yea I know I am weird but hey your chance to learn a bit more about me Garrett Pierson Your SEO Mentor. I also go into depth of why and how I do these interviews and stay tuned to my next interview with Lee Odden of TopRankBlog.com on Monday August 25, 2008!

So check out and listen to the podcast above or check out the transcript of the recording below:

Hello everyone, this is Garrett Pierson here; Your SEO Mentor. You’re here for my Monday interview series. Welcome, and thank you for being here.

Today, I have the opportunity to interview myself, Garrett Pierson. The interviewee that I was going to interview fell through but that is okay. I have the opportunity to interview myself. That’s a good thing, because I’ve had a lot of listeners, people who follow me, and friend ask, “Garrett, you’re doing these great interviews with some great experts in the SEO and Social Media communities and industries, but we don’t know a lot about you.” This is a great opportunity for me to tell you all a little bit about myself, to tell you why I do these interviews, and to go through what these interview series are all about. Thank you for this opportunity. Hopefully you guys will stick around and listen. I’m going to make this very quick and to the point.

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So here it is the very first preview of Pubcon 2008 and it isn’t looking pretty. Can you just image these two guys ‘Jordan Kasteler’ and ‘Dave Snyder’ at the same place and make that place Vegas, TOTAL CHAOS!

Ideas by Garrett Pierson and Illustration by Mike Dyson

With all joking aside I am totally excited about Pubcon this year and there is a sweet lineup of speakers and the extra bonus of the conference being in Las Vegas. Just got word that they posted the conference session schedule.

Anyways this was just a quick fun post! Just wanted to lighten up the mood in the industry!

I had the wonderful opportunity to talk a bit with the crazy and funny Dave Harry aka TheGypsy. If you dont know who Dave is then shame on you because you are totally missing out on his very valuable and hilarious content at his famous SEO Blog Huomah.com. So listen to my interview podcast with Dave and get into the mind of this master of words! (P.S. He didn’t even swear once, NEW RECORD!)

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So here it is my first Tuesday SEO Weekly News minicast ready for your listening pleasure. Don’t forget you can watch these podcasts live at YourSEOMentor.tv. In this episode I talk about the latest SEO news and related items such as the new release of Wordpress 2.6 and as I promissed a link to the coveted Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin that will save you precious time and energy backing up and updating to the latest version of Wordpress. We can thank DazzlinDonna for letting me know about this wonderful plugin!

I also talked about my new free Technorati Tag Generator Firefox addon go check it out and leave me some feedback. Also don’t forget to listen to my interview with Jordan Kasteler!!!

Here are a couple of the other SEO News items that I talked about but listen to the podcast to hear them all and my take on each item:

Google Now Displays Code Search Results as Search Snippets

Sometime in 2005, Google has launched the Code Search, a vertical search property that indexes and parses published source code on the web giving users a flexible search engine to find what source codes are …

Google Improves Flash Indexing Again

On the first day of this month, we reported that Google and Yahoo were to begin indexing Flash files. According to the pertinent Google Webmaster Central blog post, Google is able to crawl the contextual elements in these blog posts. …

Yahoo Patents Anchor Text Relevance in Search Indexing

Yahoo was granted a patent this week which describes how anchor text in links may be used to increase the relevancy ranking of a page pointed to by that anchor text. The patent was originally filed in 2002, and it discusses how anchor … (From Bill Slawski)

Remember to stay tuned to tomorrows Wednesday Social Media Weekly News minicast live at YourSEOMentor.tv or listen to the recording here at YourSEOMentor.com!