SMX Advanced 2008 Recap
Posted on June 9th, 2008by Michael Gray in conference
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Now that I’m back from SMX advanced and have had a few days to catch up I’ll share my thoughts.
I had some client meeting to take care of, and some interviews and videos to shoot, so I didn’t get to as many sessions as I’d like to but I’ll talk about what I did see.
Microsoft Keynote
Interesting to hear some more frank discussions from M$. The branding issue is really a problem for them IMHO. Search is a smaller part of the whole M$ operation so they are subservient to the corp but really this is something they need to fix sooner rather than later. I really hope they take some of the suggestions and requests to heart and act on them.
Link Building
My least favorite session of the conference, probably not as advanced as I would have liked, but Stephan Spencer totally rocked the house on that panel.
You and A with Matt Cutts
Matt’s always fun to watch, I wish we’d get less sidestepping, shuffle step, and non question answering (at this stage Matt is an expert at it), but at least more people are seeing it.
International SEO
This was a really good session. I don’t do a lot of international work, but I think the info presented has a lot of carryover value, from an architecture POV. If this one is offered again and you missed it this time, definitely put it on your must see list
Analytics Every SEO Needs To Know
You know analytics is pretty tough subject to make interesting, but the panelists totally brought it to the table. Every speaker on this panel was rock solid on the money, interesting and informative. This one is another must see session.
Give it Up
ok slight bias as I was on this panel, but every other person on the panel gave me something to think about, and look at when I got home. IMHO much better and more consistent than last years, and this was absolutely my favorite session of the conference.
There has been some criticism that this show was a little darker than most conferences. I’ll admit that “give it up” had content that leaned in that direction, but I defy anyone to say that wasn’t an amazing panel. Other than that I’d say they were sprinkled in and it didn’t really make up a majority of the show. The black hats were just better at “stealing the stage” which made them more memorable. Could you make the argument not everyone disclosed the risks adequately … maybe … but I think as a speaker at an advanced show, it’s ok to assume participants have some idea of where the line is, and should know when they are stepping over it.
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June 9th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Michael,
I think the link building session is the on that stands out as the least helpful and has the darkest tone to it. I feel the conference was fine but should have offered up more advanced white hat seo. I wrote a YOUmoz about it that hopefully Rebecca will have up today or tomorrow so I’ll save my comments for that post.
It was nice meeting you and freezing with you at SMX Advanced.
Brent D. Payne
June 9th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
IMHO the conference wasn’t dark ENOUGH. The word “advanced” implies that you’re going to get into that kind of stuff. Whether you want to use it or not is up to you, but for crying out loud we should all at least know about it. If you want to stick your head in the sand stay at the local SES/SMX events. Sorry - I’m just sick of hearing people say SMX was too blackhat. WTF?
June 9th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I thought I answered most of Danny’s questions pretty completely (on-topic vs. off-topic linkbait, hoax marketing, widgetbait, search results in search results, etc.). On the 1-2 occasions where Danny asked me about secret sauce-type stuff, I couldn’t go into that. But I’m sure every major search engine rep would have a few secret sauce questions like that where they can’t answer completely.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
@Matt Cutts:
I get that you can’t answer the secret sauce stuff, but he asked you one question 3X and you side stepped it all three times, rather than just saying “i can neither confirm or deny that”. The sidestepping comes off as being evasive and slippery, where as “I can’t comment” is boring but honest. Make sense?