Chiang Mai SEO Conference

MightyOwl

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Heyo my favourite people on the interwebz,

Anybody here who will be attending the Chiang Mai conference on Nov 3?

Drop me a message,let's hang.
 
I would love to go but it’s just came at the wrong time for me this year. I’ll definitely be there next year if it’s on.
 
I know a lot of people going.

Spoiler... It's crap.

There might be a nugget here or there, but you're not going to learn anything that you won't have already heard somewhere before.

People over-complicate SEO...

Everything you need to know about link building has already been summed up by @Ryuzaki on this forum.

The best links are earned, great links are built as part of a larger marketing campaign. If you're not potentially getting clicks and traffic through a link then that link is never going to be a true quality link.

The harder a link is to build or acquire the better quality it is, the less people out there who are going to have it. Many lessons in our industry are intersectional. @Kevin speaks about the economics of quality & effort with content. The same applies to link building.

More effort = better quality = better results.

Taking link building to the next level? Just read 'Trust Me I'm Lying' and get creative.

People who 'don't have the time' to build links themselves, or hire someone to do it for them under their instruction are either lazy, liars or failing elsewhere in their business. If you have enough of your business automated - broken down into systems and processes. Then your main focus should be on promoting/marketing and business development. If one of your MAIN traffic channels is organic search then there's 0 excuse for not getting your business setup to allow you to do this.

I am not an avid white hat enthusiast either. Not at all. I think there is a time and place for a truly private blog network, I believe that buying links provided it fits the right criteria is all good and fine. There are certain practices I believe in that would be considered grey or black hat. You just need to make sure that these things are done correctly, that they don't make up the majority of your SEO 'strategy'.

In five, near six years of doing this I've still never had a penalty following this basic philosophy.

The other thing you need to be actively thinking about with your link building; anchor text percentages. In Chiang Mai if they talk about this, they'll surely over-complicate it as well. Not to mention that they'll totally ignore the most important thing about this which is that most people are criminally ignoring the volume of links their big competitors have to their homepages vs their other content.

Lastly, the technical and on-page... Again this gets over-complicated.

Good user-experience, writing like you're writing for an actual person while making sure that you're doing your markup in a semantic, logical way... Doing the basics right. All this will take you a long way further than your competitors.

Sure there are other things you need to be aware of, but being aware of them is usually enough.

Things can be slightly different for a SaaS or an eCommerce business, the more complicated and dynamic a website is the more technical you need to get. Frankly though, for most people running MFA sites (niche, authority) it's just not that complicated.

I've ranked sites with minimal links and good on-page that's been implemented in vastly different ways, the only thing they shared in common was the philosophy I spoke about in regards to link building and they had a good UX with the basics done right.

Tools:

Again something that's so over-complicated. I co-own an agency that works with eCommerce businesses. We achieve amazing growth for them with a staff of four. Only me and the other owner are full-time.

Is this achieved because we have access to amazing, expensive tools? No.

- Analytics
- Webmaster Tools
- Ahrefs or SEMRush
- ScreamingFrog
- SERPWoo

You can find out everything you could ever need to know about your site's SEO, your competitors SEO with these tools. You just don't need anything else period.

Basically... Chiang Mai is for people who want to over-complicate this shit for business reasons or are simply too stupid to grasp how easy this shit is, these are the people I speak to daily who spend 10-20x more than I ever do on their SEO campaigns to get the same results.

One thing I see consistently from these guys? Their sites suck, their content sucks. They have no systems in place, and because of this they rarely promote content or build links themselves. To circumvent this glaring and easy to fix issue, they look for new tips and tricks to rank their sites.

They end up spending 1000x more time doing this rather than fixing something that would take them a few hundred dollars or 10 hours of their time.

All the testing that people like the guy running the conference does is based around that, look at his blog. It's tips and tricks, very little about systems. He talks about how his role in his business is testing, for what end? Unless you're testing to improve your results in an ROI driven way it's almost pointless when SEO is fairly simple to begin with.

The reason I come here instead of going to these conferences, share my opinions here instead of on the groups on Facebook (moderator on one of the big ones too) is because I know there are guys here who do actually get it.

@CCarter and @Ryuzaki ' content on this forum essentially saved me from the trap of thinking that my ideas and philosophy were wrong, when essentially every other blog, forum and group dedicated to SEO was preaching the exact opposite.

So no I don't really think that there's anything that'll be hugely beneficial from Chiang Mai even though there may be a couple of good bits of info here and there.

Those days people are over there, I'll be sat here quietly growing my business and taking down my competitors. Some of which are probably going to the conference.
 
Yes indeed. I will be there. Would be great to meet up.
 
I would like to go, but alas, I am stuck in Europe where Winter Is Coming.

I would encourage everyone to go to these kind of events unless they're prohibitively expensive. Make friends, have a good time and enjoy yourself. I've always been positively surprised by the people I meet in this business, particularly those who travel abroad.
 
RomesFall said:
Not to mention that they'll totally ignore the most important thing about this which is that most people are criminally ignoring the volume of links their big competitors have to their homepages vs their other content.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that the MFA/SEO guys send too many links to the homepage, but the big brands get links mainly to get inner pages, right?
 
RomesFall said:
I know a lot of people going.

Spoiler... It's crap.

There might be a nugget here or there, but you're not going to learn anything that you won't have already heard somewhere before.

People over-complicate SEO...

Everything you need to know about link building has already been summed up by @Ryuzaki on this forum.

The best links are earned, great links are built as part of a larger marketing campaign. If you're not potentially getting clicks and traffic through a link then that link is never going to be a true quality link.

The harder a link is to build or acquire the better quality it is, the less people out there who are going to have it. Many lessons in our industry are intersectional. @Kevin speaks about the economics of quality & effort with content. The same applies to link building.

More effort = better quality = better results.

Taking link building to the next level? Just read 'Trust Me I'm Lying' and get creative.

People who 'don't have the time' to build links themselves, or hire someone to do it for them under their instruction are either lazy, liars or failing elsewhere in their business. If you have enough of your business automated - broken down into systems and processes. Then your main focus should be on promoting/marketing and business development. If one of your MAIN traffic channels is organic search then there's 0 excuse for not getting your business setup to allow you to do this.

I am not an avid white hat enthusiast either. Not at all. I think there is a time and place for a truly private blog network, I believe that buying links provided it fits the right criteria is all good and fine. There are certain practices I believe in that would be considered grey or black hat. You just need to make sure that these things are done correctly, that they don't make up the majority of your SEO 'strategy'.

In five, near six years of doing this I've still never had a penalty following this basic philosophy.

The other thing you need to be actively thinking about with your link building; anchor text percentages. In Chiang Mai if they talk about this, they'll surely over-complicate it as well. Not to mention that they'll totally ignore the most important thing about this which is that most people are criminally ignoring the volume of links their big competitors have to their homepages vs their other content.

Lastly, the technical and on-page... Again this gets over-complicated.

Good user-experience, writing like you're writing for an actual person while making sure that you're doing your markup in a semantic, logical way... Doing the basics right. All this will take you a long way further than your competitors.

Sure there are other things you need to be aware of, but being aware of them is usually enough.

Things can be slightly different for a SaaS or an eCommerce business, the more complicated and dynamic a website is the more technical you need to get. Frankly though, for most people running MFA sites (niche, authority) it's just not that complicated.

I've ranked sites with minimal links and good on-page that's been implemented in vastly different ways, the only thing they shared in common was the philosophy I spoke about in regards to link building and they had a good UX with the basics done right.

Tools:

Again something that's so over-complicated. I co-own an agency that works with eCommerce businesses. We achieve amazing growth for them with a staff of four. Only me and the other owner are full-time.

Is this achieved because we have access to amazing, expensive tools? No.

- Analytics
- Webmaster Tools
- Ahrefs or SEMRush
- ScreamingFrog
- SERPWoo

You can find out everything you could ever need to know about your site's SEO, your competitors SEO with these tools. You just don't need anything else period.

Basically... Chiang Mai is for people who want to over-complicate this shit for business reasons or are simply too stupid to grasp how easy this shit is, these are the people I speak to daily who spend 10-20x more than I ever do on their SEO campaigns to get the same results.

One thing I see consistently from these guys? Their sites suck, their content sucks. They have no systems in place, and because of this they rarely promote content or build links themselves. To circumvent this glaring and easy to fix issue, they look for new tips and tricks to rank their sites.

They end up spending 1000x more time doing this rather than fixing something that would take them a few hundred dollars or 10 hours of their time.

All the testing that people like the guy running the conference does is based around that, look at his blog. It's tips and tricks, very little about systems. He talks about how his role in his business is testing, for what end? Unless you're testing to improve your results in an ROI driven way it's almost pointless when SEO is fairly simple to begin with.

The reason I come here instead of going to these conferences, share my opinions here instead of on the groups on Facebook (moderator on one of the big ones too) is because I know there are guys here who do actually get it.

@CCarter and @Ryuzaki ' content on this forum essentially saved me from the trap of thinking that my ideas and philosophy were wrong, when essentially every other blog, forum and group dedicated to SEO was preaching the exact opposite.

So no I don't really think that there's anything that'll be hugely beneficial from Chiang Mai even though there may be a couple of good bits of info here and there.

Those days people are over there, I'll be sat here quietly growing my business and taking down my competitors. Some of which are probably going to the conference.
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with you.. If it weren't for me talking at this conference.

There's several speakers, but I'm the only one who's bringing anything of realty to the table - Talking about black hat, when none of the other speakers are even talking about actually ranking anything, minus Gareth Simpson's Outreach talk - Who @RomesFall knows builds some serious numbers of links and for clients that are on the NYSE.

However, there's nothing else I can really say for it.. The ticket pricing isn't a bloated $1,000 and it requires some level of travelling.. What I will say, is the Mastermind VIP Table Talks are pretty awesome every year. They split you into related groups of people and you take turns to help mastermind each other's business - Last year I was put with Diggy from ViperChill, Daryl Rosser, Diggity etc and it gave me a lot of insight into my own business.

Plus, a lot of SEOs don't have a community where they can actually talk about real SEO shit in person.. And why the hell would anyone not want to go to Thailand? I'm taking a side-holiday whilst going, it's an excuse, duhh :smile:
 
RomesFall said:
So no I don't really think that there's anything that'll be hugely beneficial from Chiang Mai even though there may be a couple of good bits of info here and there.
Click to expand...

I thought the real purpose of things like this was the "get together with likeminded professionals" aspect. Creating opportunity for networking, joint ventures etc.
 
Joe said:
I thought the real purpose of things like this was the "get together with likeminded professionals" aspect. Creating opportunity for networking, joint ventures etc.
Click to expand...
Maybe. If so it just sounds like an excuse to not be doing whatever it is you are currently doing.

Did Steve Jobs & Woz go around networking when they were working on Apple in their garage? No, I don't think so.

Each to their own, but in my opinion these things are a giant waste of time.
 
How did this go? November 3rd came and went. Any good presentations or actionable info released? How were the after parties and all that?
 
Chiang Mai was a neat experience and gave me a solid excuse to travel a bit and break away from the routine of the agency life for a while. Although, I can attest to the fact that the main stage was nothing overly exciting. But, that being said the real value came in the small unorganized groups. There are a lot of really cool people doing cool things.

Although, you could make the argument that "Apple wasn't out networking" this industry is entirely different, and that is not a fair comparison. In fact, we are providing services to business owners (whether it be the end consumer or another SEO). The only way to grow bigger and to increase revenue is to network and sell yourself/service. If we were all building software or the next generation computer system then maybe some head down grinding would be a better suite.

At the end of the day, there were about 500 people in attendance and I didn't hear a single word of negativity spoken. So who are we to judge?
 
I know this is a late response, and @RomesFall is right- except that I've never known conferences to be a place to learn.

I worked the ground in big data analytics conferences for a year when I was employed, I've never spent any time sitting down to listen. It's one of the best places to scope out potential clients (they literally paid money to attend, and ask for help), generate competitive intelligence (like finding out who their clients are) or create new partnerships.

Conferences are for sales and networking. If you aren't selling something, or finding a partner in something you lack, you shouldn't be there. I've never attended an SEO conference, and if I did- it would be for the same reasons.
 
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