2007 PubCon Recap - Through the Looking Glass

Filed under: Conferences by TheMadHat |
12/11/07 at 4:15 pm

Punk Rock Cheshire Cat Everyone has a PubCon recap so I won’t bore you with the normal rundown. If you want the full coverage head over to Search Engine Roundtable and check out their PubCon coverage. They did an excellent job covering PubCon and SES Chicago (as if anyone was in Chicago). Let’s get to the juicy stuff from my crazed brain.

First off Rae, Carolyn, Vanessa, Jon & Scott, Rhea, and Nick you all kick ass and I’m looking forward to once again hanging out and consuming ever increasing quantities of fermented and/or distilled beverages. I briefly met a few others that I didn’t have much time to chat with. Jane Copland who hates her caricature and Tyler Pratt who doesn’t like people who draw his caricature. Bill Slawski and Todd were usually swamped since they’re so wildly popular. Dave who was occupied with a six foot tall beer. I chatted briefly with Andy Beal at the Gooruze party (and thank you to the Gooruze folks). We’ll have to find more of those six foot beers to consume sometime.

Second, many thanks to Dave at Purposeinc.com for holding the first annual SEO poker tournament. It was a blast even though I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter and was almost the first one out. Jim Boykin and I think someone said Neil Patel were out first. Maybe. My only consolation is that Dan Perry put me out (in like 3 hands) and he won the whole thing.

Now that I’m finished with shouts, here are some thoughts on the conference part of it:

First a small complaint…MORE WATER!! We stay up until 3am every night drinking and there is a 7 ounce water for lunch and most of the water bottles on the table are gone before I even arrived. Need more hydration!

Perl - PHP Session - Way too basic. I’m not that strong of a programmer, but explaining how to install Apache almost put me to sleep. The security part was fairly interesting but didn’t provide much actual info. The PHP part….blaaaah.

Link Building Strategies - One of the better sessions. Rae some good info on things to look for when outsourcing link dev. If she would have told me that about four years ago it would have avoided lots of mistakes. I took the jump in and see approach. With the amount of link buying I do nowadays I still hit some bad apples but she gave some great tips. Jim, Roger Montti and Greg Hartnett basically just said to stay under the radar.

Link Baiting - 96 Different Strategies - This was also one of my favorite sessions. Todd had a great rundown on the type of links, distribution channels, and target markets involved and stressed to know what they are before you even start. Targeting those pansy’s that crank it thinking about the next ipod on digg are going to be much different than the tree huggers on Hugg or the political nut jobs that like tasers on Reddit (apparently tasers make the reddit home page every day?). Andy Hagans and Bill Hartzer spoke next. Andy pointed out you should submit to all social media at once for maximum penetration (penetration…haha) and to put a call to action at the end of posts to try and convert some of that traffic. I think he spoke about sex too. Actually I think they all talked about sex. Baby.

Link Buying - What a crock. Aaron Wall had the most information, which wasn’t much. Everyone else either changed their presentation or stuttered through a doublespeak “stay under the radar” speech. My most anticipated session was useless. Probably due to the evil influence sitting in the back.

Effective Domaining Strategies - Since I’m new to domaining I was anticipating this session as well. I’d give it a B-. Monte Cahn has some good pointers on what to look for now that the market is fairly saturated. Jeff Libert showed everyone a list of domains he bought this year letting us know there are still some good 3-word domains around. I felt like he did too much bragging about what domains he owned and how cool he was so that’s about when I tuned out.

Domainers Round Table - Eh. Opinions (different ones at that) on where the industry is going. It succeeded in confusing me on which directions I should be looking.

WereWolf Tournament - Missed it because I had to catch up on some work, but it sounded interested. And I did score a pack of cards anyway. I heard Matt did a black hat dance. Who’s got it on video dammit?

Search and Blogging Reporters Forum - Another decent session. A couple good tips and a lot of banter between Rand and Andy. Then Rand mentioned he keeps some stuff to himself. I’m so shocked.

Effective Affiliate Strategies - Blaaah. How to be nice to your affiliates, then how to become an affiliate. Move along.

Organic Site Reviews - Some fucktard got up and gave them an affiliate site with a shit ton of blogspot links. And Matt was on this panel. Idiot. Boser and Graywolf tried to talk him out of it but he wouldn’t listen. The only thing that was cool was how quickly Matt’s CIA tool works. It took him about 20 seconds to tell the guy he only had 3 links counting. The dude shut his mouth after that.

Tools of The Trade - Good for beginners I guess. Next time Todd, let’s just swap some internal tools and we’ll call it a day.

PubCon Classic - W00t! Great time.

There are some people I missed and didn’t get to meet. I spotted them several times but either they were busy and I didn’t want to knock someone over to say hello or I was conversing with someone else. Lisa Barone was elusive, I missed Patrick, Rebecca must not like me ;), I met Tamar briefly before she hopped a private jet, and Esrun was out spamming stuff and I forgot to IM for a meetup. Next time I’ll buy you guys some beers and shots as a bribe to say hello.

Oh yea, and one final shout out to “that guy who knows about SEO” who explained to Rhea and cshel what SEO was at the poker table because he didn’t know them. That’s funny. (His name is Brian by the way girls) Thanks for hanging out for the week…it’s a good thing you chickened out of that bet too, I’m about to take over your spot

UPDATE ** Shit fire, I knew I’d forget people… Tim Dineen from indeed.com and I had some interesting chats this weekend. Sorry Tim!

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17 Comments »

I’ll reiterate here that I heard you say “Super ::Space:: Bowl” and I have a photo of the two of you shaking on it. Perhaps he’ll be ready for next year??

Really enjoyed finally meeting you, too. Putting a face to the hat always makes things more personal and I definitely enjoyed/enjoy your sense of humor.

Comment by Rhea — December 11, 2007 @ 4:50 pm

Well, we did have a couple shots and were downing beers like they weren’t going to be free in twenty minutes so maybe he didn’t hear it the first seven times

Enjoyed meeting you and your husband and hopefully we can do it again soon. Your witty (read smart ass) comments are much better in person

Comment by TheMadHat — December 11, 2007 @ 5:00 pm

Great to meet you too!

We should all link to Brian’s site to help him to rank for “That Guy Who Knows About SEO” - Well, you already linked it… so I guess I’m making that suggestion for myself

Thanks, Tim

Comment by Tim Dineen — December 11, 2007 @ 5:21 pm

He may never hear the end of this… I hope his sense of humor stays intact

Comment by TheMadHat — December 11, 2007 @ 5:23 pm

Drinking with you again cannot come soon enough. Although, it may happen sooner than you think if Scott is able to pull off some off the ~~evil~~ search engine friendly plans that were discussed during the consumption of many refreshing beverages.

Comment by Jon Henshaw — December 12, 2007 @ 12:28 am

Precisely…I’ll be following up with you guys this week on the list we talked about for that and the other thing

Let the ~~creation of good content~~ ~~editorial link building~~ evil mind control triumph!

Comment by TheMadHat — December 12, 2007 @ 1:15 am

>>>Jim, Roger Montti and Greg Hartnett basically just said to stay under the radar.

Wrong. I went into great detail on how to obtain links. Were you even there?

Comment by martinibuster — December 12, 2007 @ 1:06 pm

That wasn’t a diss Roger. I was just listing the things I personally got from it. I was in fact there and according to my notes you mentioned buying websites which is a good technique I haven’t used before and I should have mentioned. My bad.

I didn’t have my notes when I wrote this post so I was running from memory. Everyone had a good rundown for someone that’s a beginner to SEO, but I’m not so I didn’t specifically remember it. Telling me to look for relevance when link buying doesn’t personally get me anywhere, but it probably gets Joe the n00b something.

Comment by TheMadHat — December 12, 2007 @ 1:34 pm

…and Tyler Pratt who doesn’t like people who draw his caricature.

And it’s true. I’m like a cartoonist’s wet dream. Big ears, somewhat big nose, receding hairline…yet I still get the ladies! Haha. Great meeting you to, Aaron.

Oh, and it is Taylor.

Comment by Taylor Pratt — December 12, 2007 @ 8:42 pm

yea, I know…I just type fast. Whatever gets the ladies right?

Comment by TheMadHat — December 12, 2007 @ 11:13 pm

“Telling me to look for relevance when link buying doesn’t personally get me anywhere, but it probably gets Joe the n00b something.”

Some people could certainly find that advice useful, simply scroll up 7 posts MadHat!

Comment by explain SEO — December 12, 2007 @ 11:20 pm

What the hell is 7 posts up. and don’t be linking to that crap or I’ll start being mean, my shit isn’t nofollow.

Comment by TheMadHat — December 12, 2007 @ 11:29 pm

Well it was Rhea at the time, but I have to email you to post my stuff (lets see if it will work this time)

Comment by explain SEO — December 12, 2007 @ 11:52 pm

Ah… 7 comments up you mean. Get it straight.

Comment by TheMadHat — December 13, 2007 @ 12:04 am

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Pingback by » 2007 Pubcon - Collection of thoughts from around the interweb | Brian Chappell — December 14, 2007 @ 12:58 am

[…] are plenty of good session roundups out there so nobody needs me to rehash the conference like I did for SES […]

Pingback by Pubcon 2007 Nuggets | An Internet Consultant Speaks | Scott Hendison — December 15, 2007 @ 10:25 am

Great meeting you as well, and I’m sorry I got pocket Kings right out of the gate.

Why the heck did you sit next to me anyway? I know I’m not THAT cool.

Comment by Dan Perry — February 11, 2008 @ 10:33 am