Hey everyone who took time to stop by, say hello, share a story, etc! I just wanted to say thanks, I sincerely apologize for the AV issues...it was 100% my fault, I used my own laptop.
I had fun, and hope that you all took something away from the time you spent today.
A few things I am noticing on the blogosphere, most notably the comments from Jason Calacanis on twitter, I had a friend let me know he was posting thoughts about it there, and a few things are worth clearing up the record on because they can be taken out of context.
You all will hopefully see the video, so you can see for yourselves, here were some tweets from Jason, who I think gets a bad wrap because people can't separate what her is saying from how he delivers it. I liked the challenge though.
3 things I wanted Jason to clear up that found its way onto his twitter page. I hate twitter.
1 - Wil Reynolds says SEO could go away if Google Knol, and other publishing tools, come out. Google Knol is controversial for publishers.
I never once referenced Google Knol I didn't even know what it was really. Right now it doesn't seem to have an impact on anything I am seeing, but that doesn't mean we should not be preparing for the day when it starts showing up. Then again in my presentation I showed how Google tests including things all the time that never stick. I spoke more about Google Co-op.
I doubt SEO will go away, it will morph, but right now and for the forseeable future, it is here to stay. Everything morphs...it will be a fun ride. What I did mention is that Google hasn't figured out (from what I can see) how to even show the most relevant results for a singular or plural query. I think SEO as we know it is going to stick around for some time. 2 - Wil Reynolds the SEO is telling folks to pay for links even though Google says don't.... interesting debate.
The other part of that is I was saying that people come see speakers to hopefully get some real actionable stuff that works, while I know that buying links is NOT a good long term strategy, I advocated looking at the people who out rank you and seeing if you need to do it to compete with them, while at the same time building as many legit on topic links as possible, when I mention paid links I mean low/average quality directories.
3 - SEO Wil Reynolds says Google users Google analytics to impact search results. True you think? I think that sounds church and state to me
I didn't say they DID I said it makes sense for them to use it eventually and why wouldn't they to create a better user experience?
Just wanted to clear up those points. It was great having someone there to really challenge me a bit.
Thanks to Joel Ownby who asked some great questions and kept priming me! (please 301 redirect the non www version of your site to the www version, it helps make sure you get maximum value for your inbound links).
joelcomm - thanks for the boxed set!
Jason thanks for the challenge.
James, thanks for the positive feedback!
Thanks to Shawn & Missy for letting me GO WAY over time, and thanks to whoever cared enough to stick around late to hear me blather about SEO :)
Ok, so blow it open...what did I do well, what could I have improved on? If you leave feedback it will help me do a better job next time.
Gracias, and good luck in Vegas - hope to see many of you at the party.
