Over the past 4 years I attended several SEO conferences. This year, I have come to the conclusion that there is very little to be learned at these conferences and their real value is meeting people face to face in your industry. But even that has diminishing returns as you start seeing the same people at the conferences and the attendees you want to meet hang out in their clicks rather than venture out to meet new people.

Scott Hendison at SEMpdx wrote this summary post of new things he learned at SMX Advanced in Seattle that only reaffirmed my no SEO Conference stance.

As I read through his post, I see the ‘new’ information is pretty much the same information that is regurgitated at all the SEO Conferences year after year with maybe a small twist here and there. With Google’s Matt Cutts and other search engine cronies sitting in on all the best SEO sessions (keep your enemies close??), it is unlikely that anything ground breaking will be offered to attendees hoping for a few nuggets of useful information. On top of that, if something useful is blurted out that is innovative and works, the SEs will certainly plug the hole in their system before the attendees make it home.

If you visit the WebMasterWorld forum and you can learn the same stuff day after day that is discussed at these conferences. So I decided to divert marketing funds elsewhere and to take a year off and then reevaluate whether I should start attending again. When you add up travel, hotel, food, and entertainment - attending a conference can run into several thousand dollars. If you decide to have a booth, then your company is out at least 10K so you better follow-up on those business cards and hope your site isn’t delisted if you talked too much on a panel.

Making Things Better

I propose that at least one of the major SEO conferences start having “Search Engine Free” sessions where SEOs and attendees can talk openly without fear of SE repercussions. Since the big three Search Engines are often major sponsors of these shows, this may be a delicate thing to pull off. But if an SEO conference wants to provide valuable sessions where there is a chance that attendees may learn something new and valuable, they can’t have Matt Cutts sitting in the back of the room intimidating speakers as he adds to his naughty and nice list.

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