PubCon Vegas 2007
Last week Danielle and I headed out to Las Vegas, NV for my very first PubCon convention. During our five day stay, I was able to sit in on nearly twenty five hours worth of sessions, network with some really cool people, and attend two of the best shows that Vegas had to offer. Over the next week, I’ll be posting a rundown of each day. This is Day #1.
PubCon - Day 1
Craig Newmark’s morning keynote speech was very inspirational, but It started to run long and I had to head out a little early to get a good seat for the first conference session of the morning.
I ended up sitting in on SEO 101 which turned out to be a big mistake on my part. Though the panel was great, featuring both Bruce Clay and Jill Whalen - I just didn’t learn anything. The whole reason I opted to goto this session was because of this line in the agenda booklet:
Although this is a 101 session do not let that fool you into thinking this is a newbie session.
It was definately a newbie session. Or atleast in my mind it was. I’m not taking anything away from any of the speakers on the panel, they did a great job… but there was no material in this session that couldn’t be found on any established SEO forum, blog, or podcast. Looking back, I should have watched the Social Marketing session next door.
*Some* SEO 101 Session Notes:
- Bruce Clay’s new website will be finished soon (over 400 pages of free content).
- SEO your most important pages first.
- Bad OPO will cause you to not rank.
- Test Crawl your website(s) using Xenu Link Sleuth.
- The Title Tag is the most important tag on your page.
- Flash is very bad for SEO!
- Use the no-follow tag within links that aren’t important.
- Robots.txt should not be overlooked - Redirect the root to www.
- CSS may improve SERP rankings by cleaning up HTML.
- Introduce new content gradually.
- Focus on the long tail.
As you can see, it’s fairly basic stuff. GREAT for a newbie though.
Next up was PPC Marketing 101. I manage multiple PPC campaigns for both clients and myself so I was very excited. This session was tagged as “A bottom up look at pay-per-click advertising on today’s major platforms. This is a mid-intro to medium skill level session.” It did not dissapoint.
*Some* PPC 101 Session Notes:
- Compelling Ads = Higher CTR.
- Differentiate your ads from competitors.
- What makes your brand special? (put it in the ad).
- Encourage clicks by establishing a sense of urgency.
- Use keywords in ad title.
- Use brand names wherever possible.
- Don’t sound too self centered in your ad.
- Pre-Qualify your visitors by using price tags.
- Be seasonal.
- Be humorous.
- Quality analytics is the backbone of any successful PPC campaign.
Again, much of this is common sense to any seasoned internet marketer but when you have pages full of this stuff, it can really add up quickly. 
After lunch, I headed over to the Universal Search session with a few new friends. It was basically two presentations about how the Google SERPs are changing, and as marketers we now have to think about image, product, and video search as well as the standard organic and PPC. It contained plenty of heat maps and examples but no notes were really necessary.
After Universal Search I walked over to the Email marketing session which was hosted by Dr. Ralph Wilson. Wilson is one of the internet’s most well known and respected email marketers so again I was excited to see what he had to say on the topic. Though he had a lot of useful information to give, much of it can be summed up into one formula:
Email = Active Marketing
Beyond this, much of email marketing appears to be A/B testing and dependant on a lot of different customer variables. What works in one industry will probably not work in another, etc.
The final session that I attended on Day 1 had a ton of buzz around it. It was called Link Buying and the panel consisted of Rand Fishkin, Jim Boykin, John Lessnau, and Aaron Wall. To make things even more interesting, Google’s Matt Cutts was in the audience.
*Some* Link Buying Session Notes:
- Should you buy a link? It depends on numerous variables.
- It looks less suspicious when you have many backlinks already.
- Stay under the radar. ALWAYS.
- PR envy is a total waste of time.
- Buy links wrapped in content.
- Only purchase links that are naturally relevant!
- Aaron Wall mentioned bartering for links is a great alternative.
- Some directories (yahoo, dmoz, and business) are still worthwhile.
- Use adword ads for linkbait.
- Report competitor’s paid links.
- **removed** Sorry guys, too good
This session was interesting if anything. It really helped to solidify my theories as being mostly correct. When it comes down to it, Link Buying is an issue of risk vs. reward.
At this time, I had to leave the conference and meet up with Danielle. Joe Morin and Treasure Island were kind enough to set us up with some comped tickets to circ de soule’s Mystere. I’ll be writing a review on that show shortly.
Final Thoughts
I hope that you were able to get something out of my Day #1 session notes. Obviously I can’t give out every note that I took, or every gold nugget of information that I picked up by networking (that wouldn’t be wise, would it?). That being said, these are still pretty interesting notes and a good review if anything for the more experienced internet professional.
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