1) Big Bucket of Bacon

I know this sounds a bit odd, but bacon has magical powers. Not only does it make your nose tell your brain to follow that smell, but your brain remembers that smell and will do anything to pursue it (even pay $995 to go to a conference). What would a bucket full of bacon cost to add to all those danishes and bagels? A few hundred bucks? I bet you’d get at least 2% more people registering just for the bacon.

2) Wi-Fi that works

I can count on half of one hand how many times the wireless has been (a) working and (b) faster than dial-up at these SEO conferences. Wi-Fi should be sponsored by a company and actually work (even when everyone in the conference is using it!). I feel bad for a company that sponsors the wi-fi and it doesn’t work, how does that fare for their reputation (and the conference itself)? For this reason, I have a Sprint card that I plug my laptop in that is actually reliable and gives me fast Internet. I just can’t ever depend on the Wi-Fi at any of these conferences, which is quite disappointing.

3) Speed Sessions

You know how they do that “speed dating”? How about you try out new speakers and give them 3 minutes to share what they can on a subject. Gives them an opportunity to speak, gives us a chance to hear from new speakers and get valuable content. Everyone wins! Then the speakers that everyone likes the most get invited next year for a full presentation.

What is some of your advice for SEO conference organizers?

- Social Media – Todd Malicoat discussed how in Social Media you need to not only attract the audience, but attract the webmasters (people who can actually link to you) of that audience. Without links you don’t get the residual affect from a social media surge.

- Local Search – For Local Businesses, Google Local (and probably others) lets you have a downloadable coupon, which is probably one of the easiest ways to track online to offline customers.

- Domaining – Use a 14-12-12 font size for best readability of parking pages, and make a simple but appealing logo.

- General/Rant – When speaking at PubCon, don’t give us a 15 minute commercial of your product (getmobile). It makes us despise you. WMW needs a new logo. (No offense Brett, just being honest.) It’s not cool to try to compliment someone but put them down by doing so because you have a huge ego (no link or specifics on purpose). Don’t leave the bathroom without washing your hands; you have a name tag on and there are still 2 days left of the conference for us to be around you. Large concrete rooms with poor acoustics are not designed for keynotes (Sorry Craig Newmark, but we left after 2 minutes of your keynote because all we heard from the back was garbled sounds). An Internet Marketing conference should have good, reliable, in every room and hall, and “free” Internet (from our conference fees or a sponsor), starting on the first day.

- Content – When creating content be sure to address these 4 items: (1) Independent Value, (2) Headline and a Hook, (3) Scannable Structure, and (4) What’s the Story. (Brian Clark)

- Content – It’s tough to get someone to link to a sales page, so make it a “pre-sell” page. Pre-sell pages have these elements: (1) Opening, (2) Empathy, (3) Solution, and (4) Call to Action. (Brian Clark, again)

- Competitive Intelligence – Andy Beal mentioned our IndexRank as a tool for competitive intelligence. (Okay, I knew that, just thought I’d mention where we were mentioned. )

- Competitive Intelligence – Jake Baillie is a great animated speaker, very fun. One of the take-homes was look for unnatural traffic, like allinanchor: or link: searches. Then serve those visitors up something fun (error page, etc.).

- SEO Tools – Google Sets can be an interesting tool for keyword research. (Todd Malicoat; he also mentioned our tools in his presentation)

What did you learn from PubCon 2007?