I Attended a "FREE SEO Seminar," and All I Got Was a Box of Mints. MMMMMM… Mints.

By: Chris Behan - President, Socius Marketing, Inc.
Posted: 05-05-07

For those of you who have visited our office, you know that we are located in Rocky Point of Tampa in a fairly large office building. As I was entering the lobby of our building a few weeks ago, I noticed a little sign on a plain white sheet of paper that simply said, "Free SEO Seminar" with that fantastic little black arrow pointing to the location.

I just had to attend. After all, it was free! So, one of our account managers and I quietly entered the room - which contained about 8 people - sat in the back, and listened.

The young lady conducting the seminar did an acceptable job of presenting the information she was trained to present. The problem is, she knew very little about search engine optimization, and a lot of the information shared was only half true or not true at all. She spoke about blogs, Meta keywords, and reciprocal link schemes, all of which are either very dated techniques or about to be dated. The conversation about the content, the most important part of search engine optimization, lasted about two minutes. Why was this part of the seminar so brief? That's easy: It's hard to write content. The company giving the SEO presentation does not write content, so they certainly would not want to make that a large issue.

There were many other questionable topics covered in the seminar, including the "SEO expert" telling one company I can only assume sold some type of running shoe that they would not want to be on the first page of Google for the term "running shoes." Somehow, the term "running shoes" was too broad and did not speak specifically to what the running shoe company did. (I think they just thought they could not get him ranked on that term.) Regardless, we just sat quietly in the back, and at the end of the seminar simply thanked them for the little box of mints and left.

I should state that I am not suggesting you should avoid all SEO conferences. What I am suggesting is for you to find out who is running the seminar before you attend. What are their credentials, and can they demonstrate actual results for you?

I have been to a few SEO seminars that were very good; they just cost me upwards of $2,500.00 to attend.

If that price seems steep, just realize that following the advice at a "FREE SEO Seminar" put on by a company that does not fully understand your market, site, and corporate goals can be very expensive, too.