Yesterday, some of the Marketing team, including yours truly, attended the very first Seomoz SEO Training Seminar, led by none other than Rand Fishkin, the Wizard of Moz. For those of you who may not know who Seomoz is (shame on you because it means you have not been reading our other posts on search engine optimization). Seomoz is a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, and resources with over 30,000 registered users. We highly recommend that if any of you are interested in learning about search engine and social marketing, you should subscribe to seomoz.org

Ok back to my account of our “grueling day”. Our day began with having to awake before sunrise. Before you think that the gang over at Seomoz are taskmasters, I must tell you that we needed to race down from Vancouver to Seattle to get to the seminar by 9am which was held at the University of Washington. We almost made it except my erstwhile navigator blew it and we missed the exit (actually it would have been nice if someone had told us the Express lane did not allow to exit to U of W – Gillian!). Still we did arrive in time. There was even some grub and coffee still left so we quickly grabbed our morning sustenance and joined our fellow boot campers.

Our Drill Sergeant (Master Rand) was just getting warmed up and greeted us brusquely with a “no going to sleep Curtis” before launching into full steam. He was off, working his SEO magic on his loyal disciples who had come before him to partake in his wisdom of search engine marketing starting with using the latest in technology to record his every word – actually 3 pieces of paper stolen from Jim Hedger’s notebook (another luddite like me), I garnered every tidbit I could.

It goes like this; relevance, QDF, juicylinkfinder, internal links, 66 chars, no follows, juice, seed set, H1/images, size matter (not sure what Rand was referring to here), iframes, kw (not ky), title research, linkerati, influencers, and party at 5:30pm (here I paid attention). There; you now know everything I learned. I am kidding! It was packed with juice flowing everywhere; however, I only had 3 small pieces of paper so that was all I had room for (that plus I will get the entire seminar later for review to share with you in follow posts).

After an excellent lunch of gourmet pizza and salads, we then embarked into the land of social marketing, which is why many had come. While some of my collegues and I are well-versed in SEO, Seomoz’s wealth of social marketing knowledge is what drew us to make this pillgrimage to the land of Moz. We were not disappointed. While there was more information that anyone but a veteran could possibly take in; there were tidbits of knowledge that I know everyone took away. For me this is why I go to these events. This is why I travel to distance lands for SMX, SES, PubCon, and other such events; the tidbits. Not because I do not know this stuff but to be reminded of what matters – “size” or to quote on of Rand’s lead off slides, “It is Better to Be Big & Popular than Small & Niche”. Yes we all know that a Search Engine Friendly site design is necessary to drive traffic but we all need a reminder occasionally to fix those little things we have been meaning to everyday but never seem to find the time.

I could go on for pages there was so much information, however, I will write a follow-up on the social marketing side of the seminar. I would like to summarize by including the following:

Seo Tips for Google – Top 10 Countdown (from 37 top SEO masters) with my notes to self in brackets:

10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page (right on!)
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (this is a tough one)
8. Keyword Use in Body Text (this was is relatively easy just do it)
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (need to concentrate on this more)
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links (this one often gets ignored)
5. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure (note to self)
4. Age of Site (thankfully this one is naturally done for us)
3. Global Link Popularity of Site (need to work on this more)
2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link (my favorite)
1. Keyword Use in Title Text (while this may be a duh! it gets ignored still)

For much more on all of the above, I must reiterate, go to Seomoz.org signup for the Premium membership (it is ridiculously inexpensive for what you will learn).

Ok now to the best part, the Seomoz after party held at Jillian’s billards (because of their big screens as the SeaHawks were playing – they kicked butt). As usuals a great time had by all. An excellent follow-up to the awesome part at the Garage after SMX. Unfortunately, as we needed to drive back to Vancouver that night, we could not partake til the end but we did manage to get one pic of Rand, Gillian (Ma Moz) and myself. Ok it was late and we had all been up all day but there you have it – our day at the Seomoz SEO Boot Camp.