SEO Pro Training Overview – WARNING: Extreme Dancing

Heres a light-hearted summary appropriate for a Friday afternoon…

This week saw our first ever London SEO PRO Training Seminar, held on the 19th and 20th October at the Imagination Gallery; an impressive venue situated in London’s West End. The conference was packed out and the feedback has been great, take a look at our rundown of the two days.

Throughout the event attendees were tweeting on #ProSEO, so watch out for a few of our favourites dotted throughout this post.

Day 1

The event was billed as advanced and the tone was immediately set with ‘Advanced Analytics’ by Distilled’s own Will Critchlow which kicked off at 9.30am.  Following this Richard Baxter (SEOgadget.com)  gave the lowdown on structuring and organising an efficient SEO team. A quick coffee break then it was time for Lucy Langdon’s “ROI from Social Media”.

Jane Copland (Ayima) followed this with “Diagnosing and fixing penalties, understanding guidelines”, which dispelled a few myths and provided some invaluable info. Duncan Morris took us through to lunch with “Scalable site architecture” prompting comments on his “unique” and  “direct” style!

Lunch gave everyone a time to digest the information and recharge for a big afternoon which was kicked off by Ben Hendricksen (seomoz.org) who spoke on ranking models and left the attendance suitably in awe. Rand Fishkin (seomoz.org) and Tom (or is that Will? Nope it’s definitely Tom) Critchlow kicked on with “Live Linkbuilding” before Conversion Rate Experts’ Ben Jesson and Dr Karl Blanks concluded the first day with “Conversion Rate Optimisation”.

But all work and no play makes an SEO turn grey(-hat?).*

So it was off to Charlotte Street Blues for free drinks and the chance to unwind with fellow SEO-ers.

Providing the music was blues band Bloodless Coup and several attendees opted to “get down” to those smooth blues rhythms. However, you’ll have to agree the Distilled crew took the dancing to the next level as shown in video evidence below.

Day 2

The second day began a little later at 10am and – with sore heads aplenty – the room filled up once more. There was no time for moping around though as Will Critchlow and Rand got underway with “Head to head presentation-off – the re-match”, two presentations up against each other on the subject of keywords. Who wins? You decide!** Next up was Rob Ousbey with “News site SEO” and Tom Critchlow tackled linkbuilding with “The Pacman Chunk of the Piechart: Getting Links”. After lunch Rand presented “SEO is Nothing Without Content” before Patrick Altoft and Tom Critchlow provided great tips on “Vertical and universal search”. Dave Naylor presented an entertaining talk on “The limits of automation” and the  talks were concluded by Will and Duncan with “The right strategy for your organisation”.

The evening event was held at Crown and Sceptre pub in conjunction with LondonSEO, offering another chance to network and unwind with fellow attendess as well as members of the LondonSEO community. With free drinks aplenty it was a great end to a fabulous couple of days, before the reality set in that it was back to the office on wednesday and the implementation of everything learnt!

Thanks go out to everyone who made this event possible – the team at Distilled working behind the scenes, the guys at SEOmoz, all the speakers and of course everyone that attended. See you next year!

*sorry

** attendees – check your email

Other ProSEO Blogs:

9 Things from SEOmoz/Distilled Training 2009

Photos from SEO Pro Training by Fernando Macia

Seminar Review from Chris M

SEO Pro Training Seminar London 2009 Patrick Moogan