Yep, it was nose bleed day for me. SEO. The most complicated word for me until today. So, I pushed my friend Macky to get me a slot to attend the summit.
The summit has a line up of (person of) authority when it comes to this subject — Jason Acidre is talking about Zero to Hero, Benj Ariola is sharing Black Hat to White Hat, and finally SEO Hacker CEO Sian Si is going to discuss I’m not Doing SEO.
Here’s a quick commercial break. I put up a story of the event and I’d like to share it with you first.
Here are 8 things I learned from the summit.
(1) Follow excellence and success will follow – Jason Acidre, author of http://kaiserthesage.com/, Online Marketing Strategist.
Like I always share to my friends at the Philippine Bloggers Network, let’s take care of our blogs first, let’s make it popular, let’s build traffic, let’s blog often, and as much as possible let us write original content. I also learned this strategy from my blogging mentor Abe Olandres. Once our site/s are popular, brands and advertisers will come to us naturally. We don’t need to pitch our blog network in order to get projects; in order to earn. Follow excellence and success will follow. So true.
(2) Just have the passion to learn – Benj Ariola, co-founder and CEO of Xight Interactive.
I believe that in everything you do, you have to develop passion, otherwise you will get tired easily. Working on Holidays is very hard, and even waking up 2AM in the morning when there is breaking news to share. So learn to have passion and you may never have to work so hard. And doing this for SEO is getting involved in a community, a group of bloggers who share the same interest.
(3) Invest on seminars like SEO Summit
Pay P2,500 and learn from the real masters. From the real people who have done it right. I have listened to Sean Si’s presentation time and again, but I still learn every time I attend to his talks. But for summit like SEO Summit, you get premium and actual experience done by professional. Awesome.
(4) Black magic don’t work anymore; Create original and relevant content
Doing black hat worked only in the past. So, if you want your site to rank, write original and relevant content. And besides if you trick Google, it will punish you for sure. So if you want more sites linking to your post or site, create a really relevant post that will make people want to read it time and again, something that they will bookmark and share to their social media channels. This will also let other bloggers write about it and link your original article.
(5) Get your product reviewed
SEO becomes natural if you let your products reviewed by bloggers. Be it a gadget, food, restaurant, hotel, or services. Let the bloggers experience it and write about it. Get the bloggers with high influence and high following. It will make your life easier.
(6) Join communities
Network with people who share the same interest. Share what you got. Learn from them too. They are not competitors, they are allies. So, go ahead and join group of bloggers, digital influencers, and SEO groups.
(7) Summit is the best venue to network
SEO Summit is not only about listening to speakers. Its not only about the awesome topics prepared for the seminar. Its about networking. I have been blogging for four years now and I am still excited to know new stuff about blogging, specially that I am now a professional blogger. Networking with other bloggers will not only expand your network of friends, but they will bring you potential projects in the future.
(8) Don’t do SEO
This can be controversial, but Sean Si’s topic at the summit was “I’m not Doing SEO“. That’s right, create posts or articles that will let other bloggers link you. I know that kind of difficult to do. But you have to be creative and learn it overtime. Its not going to happen immediately. There is an alternative for this, specially for us tech bloggers. If you want other bloggers to link you, be the first to break the news, be the first the release the review.
I learned a lot of techniques today at the SEO Summit 2014. What I listed above is the top 8 that I think other bloggers can learn too.
Now I’m looking forward for the SEO Summit 2015.
