Posted by willcritchlow

You might have seen some of the buzz about the recent #linklove events we ran with SEOmoz in London and New Orleans. These were single-day events focused purely on link building. In a little over a month’s time, we are running our first 2-day deep-dive expert conference stateside. I’ve spoken at a bunch of the mozcon events in Seattle, and we thought it was about time we brought the show to the east coast. Without further ado, I present Pro SEO Boston:

• Where: Boston, MA – Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School
• When: 16th / 17th May 2011
• What: advanced SEO, actionable tips and new stuff you’ve never seen before
• Who: the best speakers we could find, including Rand, Dharmesh, Seth Besmertnik, and many more
• How much: only $799 with the SEOmoz PRO discount (grab a free trial if you aren’t a PRO member)
  • [Non-PRO member price: $949]

Tickets are available now – you can:

book here

Yes, that is the appropriate response

We pour our heart and soul into these events and recent feedback suggests we’re going in the right direction. 92% of attendees of our recent London #linklove event said they’d attend again! Typical criticism of advanced events is that it’s really tough to get the level right – when we ran #linklove in New Orleans, 94% of attendees said the level was "just right" (vs. too advanced or too basic).

Since this is our first event on the East Coast, many potential attendees won’t have attended a Distilled / SEOmoz event before. If you need more convincing than I can give, I suggest you read a recap of our last event (#linklove in NOLA) from Tom Harari who said:

“The SES New York conference was being held at the same time as the Distilled seminar and I almost went to SES instead – man, am I glad I didn’t”

Sneak Preview

The first thing you should know is that Rand and I will once again be battling head to head. Previous battles have been quite "big picture" – so this time we’re taking it to the trenches to put together two competing SEO plans for specific sites. We’ll present them, you’ll decide whose is best, there will be only one victor. (Place your bets now – I’m currently ahead 3-1, but I’ve never won in the US and I believe Rand has been cheating by taking presentation classes…). We’ll also be presenting a regular session each:

• Live data analysis: it may well be that in the long run, the only thing that separates search marketers from "traditional" marketers is our obsession with data. I will be presenting a session where I will show you in real time some of the skills you need to become the master of that data – from new sources, APIs and Excel wizardry up to hacking programs together to get you the information you need. I am increasingly of the opinion that every SEO should be comfortable with at least one scripting language / method. If you’re not automating, you’ll find it harder to be effective.
• Blended and verticals: fewer and fewer searches are returning 10 regular blue links these days. Rand will be showing you how to win in a multi-vertical search world. Some sites live in areas where everything is vertical, others have upside opportunities from (for example) news or video. Whichever applies to you, Rand’ll be showing you how to rank.

I’m a little scared of Rand’s presentation training

When programming our 2-day events, I focus on the things that I know advanced SEOs want to know; what would I be quizzing these guys about if I saw them in the bar? What does Tom need to learn about? What doesn’t Rand already know?

Out of all this brainstorming came a schedule that looks a little bit like the following:

• Taming the panda: Google didn’t just change an algorithm – they changed the web:
  • How has the world changed with the recent Google updates?
  • How is it going to continue to change?
  • What should you be doing right now to win over the medium term?
  • Possibly the hardest question: if you’ve been negatively impacted, what can you do to recover? How permanent are the impacts likely to be?
  • Laura Lippay has had a unique perspective on the evolving landscape of search over the last few years as she’s moved from working in SEO at a search engine to consulting alongside ex-Googler Vanessa Fox to running her own show. If she can’t help work out the answers to this, no-one can.
• Engineering links: how the geek shall inherit the earth:
  • A large proportion of the web’s links go to functionality that people find useful – engineers are the new link builders
  • How can developers create link worthy applications?
  • How do you build link-worthiness into your core product?
  • Is this really a good use of your time? How do you make sure that you get the right kind of business benefit from building popular products?
  • Dharmesh Shah is the only person I want to present this session – who else do you know who has those engineering chops alongside the ability to build businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars?
• How not to fail at link bait: not everything works – learn from it:
  • How should you coordinate research, writing and design?
  • What tools and sources create the most link-worthy content?
  • What link bait fails and why?
  • Chris Bennett and his company are behind some of the most shared content on the web. It’s inspiring to hear his stories of success, but what about the stuff that went wrong? I’m going to be pushing Chris to share both details of his process (from brainstorm, to data, to wireframes, to finished designs) as well as notable failures along the way.
• Social media: an engineer’s perspective: the new social skills:
  • Whether as a ranking factor or simply as a traffic / business driver, social media is becoming ever more important.
  • How do you architect your site to get liked, shared, clicked?
  • How do you measure social interactions through closed ecosystems?
  • Mat Clayton recently blew me away over coffee with some of the stories he shared about the growth he has driven for mixcloud.com . Is it possible the true social media guru is an engineer?
• Effective link building: still necessary, still hard:
  • Tips and tricks from an effective link builder
  • What really makes a difference?
  • Channelling your “creativity” – everyone has evil ideas; how do you use them for awesome?
  • Justin Briggs has had remarkable success building links for his clients out of the Seattle Distilled office – I want to see his presentation to help carry some of the knowledge back across the pond to London HQ.
• Information Architecture 2.0: if it can’t be crawled, it can’t be found:
  • How can you decentralise IA decisions to cope with rapid publishing and / or UGC?
  • What can smaller sites learn from enterprise?
  • How should you change your decisions as crawling gets ever faster?
  • What should be your top priorities when presented with a brand new site? What about when you are struggling to get change implemented?
  • Marshall Simmonds is behind some of the biggest site architectures on the web and has thought long and hard about the different difficulties facing legacy sites with inflexible CMS constraints and start-ups without the authority to support immense architectures
• Forecasting, presenting and explaining SEO to management: you have to get the budget from somewhere:
  • What’s the right balance between detail and story?
  • How do you reconcile the things you need to say to win budget with describing progress month on month?
  • What metrics do management understand that actually correspond to real success?
  • Seth Besmertnik blew me away with his presentation in Seattle last year on taking SEO to the next level in the enterprise. Out of everyone I know, he has done more thinking on "managing managers" into understanding, investing in and rewarding SEO than anyone. Bring your notebooks to this one.
• Keyword culture: whatever else changes, we’re still typing words into boxes:
  • What has changed in the world of keywords while you weren’t watching?
  • What are the best sources of data?
  • What’s the latest thinking on targeting keywords and implementing a keyword strategy?
  • Kate Morris has helped implement keyword cultures with in-house teams at some of the biggest brands in the world. With backing from Distilled’s resident data junkies, she’s going to change the way you think about keywords.
• Moving the needle: if there’s no return, there’s no point:
  • How do you manage your investment across multiple channels?
  • How does the new GA functionality impact multi-channel marketers?
  • What lessons can this teach us for SEO? How should we allocate our time between activities?
  • How do you forecast in a world of uncertain results and outcomes? What does this mean for your planning?
  • If you’re working with big sites, manually tweaking every page might not be possible. What marketing activities have genuinely moved the needle for SEOmoz over the past 12-18 months?
  • Joanna Lord is not only one of the best and most energetic speakers I know, she’s also got a unique insight into cross-channel challenges in a hyper-competitive industry. She’s going to share key formulae and tools they use to manage this process at SEOmoz.
• New technologies: the future has to be useful for something:
  • How can you create crawlable AJAX?
  • What does HTML5 mean for SEO?
  • What do you need to know about PUSH?
  • Rob Ousbey loves the future and he’s going to show us a bit of what it looks like. As one of our most experienced SEOs, Rob’s combination engineering / management degree sums him up perfectly – technology for business purposes. I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Tom’s presentations got better when he started wearing nice shirts

Bonus sessions:

• Live site review / link building – it’s not a normal presentation, but it’s perennially popular. Watch the sparks fly as experts battle to be the first to find issues and opportunities live on stage.
• Getting $hit done – the section of Tom’s presentation at #linklove NOLA on how to cause change and actually get things done was a surprise hit. Causing change is becoming one of the most powerful internal memes at Distilled and Tom’s going to share some of the lessons we’ve learnt and implemented in a short energiser session.
• Give it up – best thing on the internet – we love the energy you get when you put all the speakers on stage at once. In Boston, we’re trying a new tack: aiming to inspire us all towards awesome. What are the ideas and implementations that these great minds have been most impressed by? I personally can’t wait to hear what they all come up with.

Our speakers

A bit more about the people who are coming to share their knowledge – I’m really exciting to be speaking alongside a bunch of old friends as well as some people I’ve been wanting to meet for a long time. I hope you’ll join us to learn from all these people used their skills to create success and awesomeness all around themselves:

• Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot – I am in awe of Dharmesh’s ability to pilot an amazing growth story of a company, geek out and write code and have a family life all at the same time. I will definitely be picking his brains for tips. I can’t believe that after speaking online so frequently and with both Duncan and Tom having met Dharmesh, that Boston will be our first real life encounter. I, for one, can’t wait.
• Seth Besmertnik from Conductor – another great East Coast entrepreneur. I first met Seth in Seattle back in 2007 and he has repeatedly inspired us to set the bar higher. No-one knows more about what steers big companies through the SEO maze than Seth. Whether you’re in-house or a consultant, Seth will help you bring the data that will convince management and clients of what you need.
• Marshall Simmonds of Define Media Group – when we made the list of people who could talk authoritatively on the topic of large sites and complex architectures, Marshall’s name was right at the top. Our decision was absolutely not influenced by our shared love of whisky. Not even a little bit.
• Laura Lippay of How’s Your Pony? (I know, really?) – I first saw Laura speak on her SEO forecasting process. I was blown away by both the effectiveness of her model and (probably more importantly) the explanation of the underlying assumptions in management-friendly terminology. It was immediately clear why she has been successful working with some of the biggest websites in the world. You might also have read her 8 step SEO strategy (if you haven’t, you should go read it now, I’ll wait….)
• Chris Bennett of 97th Floor – I asked Chris to speak at #linklove in NOLA because I knew just how much of the internet was created by him and his company. If you haven’t seen him present, you are missing a serious trick. This time around, we’re asking him to reveal even more of the actual process behind the success. Last time he spoke, I immediately started sending notes back to our team. This time, we’re going to see even more of the magic.
• Mat Clayton of Mixcloud – right now, you might not have heard of Mat, but I’ve heard some of what he has to say, and it’s quite possible that his is the session I’m looking forward to most. One of a team of 4 University of Cambridge graduates behind Mixcloud, Mat has been more successful than anyone I’ve come across at baking social sharing and mechanics into the core of his business. He has a self-deprecating way of saying he isn’t an SEO and doesn’t know much about it. But don’t believe his British reserve – he has the data to prove exactly how well his approach works and I think he might just add more value to some websites in the audience than the rest of us put together.

and… of course, from Distilled and SEOmoz:

• Rand Fishkin and me going head to head in a competition to see who can bring a better, more actionable, more powerful strategy for some lucky sites in unloved niches
• My brother, Tom Critchlow, who’s been appearing in Whiteboard Fridays and webinars all over the place recently. He’s been in-house at SEOmoz for a little bit now and so he’ll be combining his agency and client-side lessons into advanced tips
• Others from the Distilled Seattle office: Kate Morris whose ability to combine marketing and technology is second-to-none, Justin Briggs who, in the short time he’s been with Distilled has been tearing it up with great blog posts and speaking engagements and Rob Ousbey who has done such a phenomenal job of running our West Coast outpost over the past year.
• The bundle of energy that is Joanna Lord (from SEOmoz) is going to kick your ass if you don’t bring it. I’m already feeling pumped.

Who let that guy ask questions?

The reminder information:

• Where: Boston, MA – Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School (it’s at Harvard Medical School – how could you fail to learn?)
• When: 16th / 17th May 2011
• What: advanced SEO, actionable tips and new stuff you’ve never seen before
• Who: the best speakers we could find, including Rand, Dharmesh, Seth Besmertnik, and many more
• How much: only $799 with the SEOmoz PRO discount (grab a free trial if you aren’t a PRO member)
  • [Non-PRO member price: $949]
• There is also a VIP dinner on the Sunday night before the conference. You’ll get 1-1 access to the speakers and a handful of other delegates – this costs $299 / person and is extremely limited – it will sell out quickly so don’t hesitate if you’d like to join us

book here

We have negotiated a discounted hotel rate for our delegates at The Holiday Inn Boston Brookline, just a short cab ride from the conference venue. The rate is $189 per night. In order to qualify for the discounted rate please call the reservation department directly on 617-277-1200 and quote ‘Distilled Delegates’

If you’re really lucky, you’ll even get to sing karaoke with the Distilled crew (or maybe that’s if you’re unlucky):

No caption could do this justice

Pictures from #linklove London. Thanks to foliovision – you can see the full photoset here.

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