Seattle SEO/SEM Seminar

My good friend (well, we just met, but I like her a lot), Jill Whalen and her crew from the Highrankings forum are putting on a seminar in Seattle on March 31 & April 1 down the street from my offices. I won't be there the whole time, but I'll definitely drop by.

If you're in the Seattle area and want to participate, the URL for information is:
http://www.highrankings.com/spring05-seo-seminar.htm

Jill's fantastically skilled with the organic side of SEO, so not a lot of spam techniques or black hat sessions there, but some really solid information on how to rank higher, target keywords more effectively and optimize the website for conversions.

If you're in Seattle those days, PM or email me. I'll be out on several nights with the crew from the seminars and hope to see you there.

Incidentally, is there any plans for an SEOChat event now or in the future? I would definitely make myself available for that.

The registration seems a little steep. The content from what I've read seems to be geared mainly toward newbies.

For example, the "Traffic Building Track":

The first two hours is spotting spam? What a COLLOSAL waste of time. Who cares about spotting spam and what does spotting spam have to do with me building my traffic?

Real World Pay Per Click? This MIGHT be worth seeing IF it wasn't just more opinions and theories like most of the others offered.

Understanding and Managing Your Linkbuilding Campaign? What is THAT supposed to mean? Sounds like marketing double talk to me.

The "Content Enhancement Track" doesn't seem much better.

It's really too bad, I may even be in Seattle during that timeframe and I'm still not willing to pay the registration fee. The question is: What exactly am I going to get out of this after spending over $1K and more importantly, two days of my time?

A couple three hundred dollars maybe, but still the only reason I would attend is for the networking opportunity. I surely wouldn't even pay that for just those tracks offered.

If I am displaying ignorance regarding this, please help me to see the value. However, I feel this event is too basic for the amount of money being requested for registration?

That pretty high for the content being offered. Rand - send me an email of where you will be meeting afterwards so we can have drinks. That will be the most fun anyways :-)

Jill Whalan is ok, but the highrankings crew border on the equivolent of SEO hamstringing newbies.

When I first started learning seo I started by reading highrankings and ihelpyou, knowing what I know now, I feel like they mislead me, and ended up wasting a lot of my time.



Well they preach content SEO which in my experience doesn't equal SEO sucess for competitive terms.

I wonder how much the clear of each of these seminars. $1000 a head they probably do pretty good.

I certainly understand your reticience to go if you're an experienced SEO with some success stories under your belt. This definitely is more of "training seminar" than an SEO conference - that's the impression I get from the seminar page.

I do take severe exception to your harsh language though, Gr8. These are talented people, I'll bet their courses do teach a lot of material, and they really do know their stuff - including link-building. There is more of a focus there on content-based SEO, but remember that these are people who work with big companies (Fortune 1000 and the like), so link-building is not as critical as information architecture and site management.

They do know link building too, though. I spent some time with one of their staff who does it and she is quite talented. There's no reason to be so negative Gr8 - usually you're just grumpy in a fun, benevolent way

LS - I'm not sure where we'll be going for drinks, but I'll email you before then so you have my cellphone. It would at least be fun to get together.

Ok, maybe I came off a little strong. I've been "grumpier" than usual this week, not sure why... By the way, I prefer the term direct 8)


I have nothing but respect for Jill and her accomplishments (same goes for you). I'm not necessarily saying that any one of the presenters isn't competent, I'm just implying that I think they are ripping people off at those fees for what they are offering. Perhaps they aren't doing as good a job as they could be describing what they are teaching.

Personally, someday I'd love to meet you and many others here at SEO Chat, I really got excited when I saw your post because the timing seemed very fortunate. I was very disappointed to see the same old rehashed content posted for this venue.

My first thought was hmmm, $1K for two days? Better be good. Then the next thing I see is how to identify spam. That IS a waste of time and I don't think I even have to go into why. As far as the remaining content; perhaps it IS geared toward the IT department of larger corporate structures. It must be at those rates for what appears to be being discussed.

"Direct" - I like that I think I'll use it next time I'm in a bad mood.

Perhaps an SEOChat seminar is something that can be arranged in the next 6-12 months. I believe I will start a thread on it when I have some time and resources to devote. In the meantime, if you are just starting out in SEO or even if you're an advanced SEO who needs some time away from the office, I highly recommend Seattle.

We've got a lovely town, great bars & restaurants, and I guarantee that whatever Jill's teaching, there's something you haven't learned in the past. I went to SES NYC with a very open attitude and came away amazed at what I learned. These events rely on the "2 heads are better than 1" philosophy and with the small session size and in-depth coverage, I would guess that an event like the HighRankings one is probably an even better place to discuss very granular or specific issues.

I agree, Seattle is a beautiful city, and one of my favorite places to visit. I'm just saying that WMW is half the cost, for three days and a lot of good information. SEW has events that are quite worthwhile, and yet you don't see them charging $1000+ a head. For $1000 I'd better be getting some real world information with at least some quality preliminary data behind it.

I do like the idea of a smaller gathering though. Ah well, maybe next time.

Gr8ted3s - just aim for the afterparty then. I'm sure that Seattle nights are good as well. Especially after the 'newbies' have gone to bed (?)

I bet rand will paint the town yellow with his shoes LOL.

I can't go there but i want to watch video of that seminar ^.^. anybody can help me?

Hey Wit, how often do you make it to the states?