It also has some great background information including: What is SEO, what SEO is NOT, SEO Facts and Figures and it also has my Google quiz that I give.

You will also see some of my favorite Google logos within the document, which if you have seen any of my other presentations often get reused. You are welcome to make use of any of the data or slide information for your own presentations as this has and continues to help the teams in the companies I work with.

This was done in 2005 and most of this is still very relevant. While the Yahoo qualification program has been closed to new members, Microsoft has created a certification program and Google’s program is growing and further being supported.

In the presentation you will see the slogan I used “Don’t Depend on Luck. Depend on Professionals” as it really holds true to all the actions a client should take.

While having said that I understand the absence it is too bad, as without having some good guidance and support the market is developing in a sub optimal manner.

On the other track I spoke (presentation also included in on this site) the speaker before me was Allen Qu from NetConcept. NetConcept is typical agency in Asia as the speaker spent 20 minutes telling the audience to buy links from him and his network of sites. I have posted more about that presentation on the Secrets to Links & Google Rankings.

The keyword research presentation, is a very useful processes in planning and understanding the how SEO works. This example given is from an old process which I created, there are many variations of this process since then but it will give you a great insight even the more advanced SEO’s. As an added bonus I have attached both the English and Chinese version, so it is all ready for you to use and to develop further.

English

Chinese

SEO, when done properly by professionals, is very complex and involves much more than keywords with fairy dust. I would say that most website owners are not ready for true SEO. When I ran my agency I turned away over 90% of the clients that approached me for SEO services, there is no point in taking a client’s money and giving him or her something that will never work. Yes, they might be very happy to be #1 for their company name and they might even see an increase of traffic, as the Internet does grow by over 1 million people a month. But, in the end did your SEO work really drive their business forward?

Within my industry I have held true to the idea of do it right, do it for long term, and do it for the right reasons. I add “do it for the right reasons” because I have had offers from companies that have the right process the right long term goals but the methods of monetization go against my better judgment. I am very proud to say that in over 10 years I have never promoted a gambling, pornography, or pill website.

Keeping this focus has given me less market share, but I have had some of the bigger companies come knocking on my door asking for my expertise: Alibaba, Dell, eBay, Expedia, Global Sources, Microsoft, Tesco–even the almighty Google has come looking for my services. But keeping a selective nature also means I don’t make the insane amounts that the “fairy dust” SEO sellers do. It’s much more profitable and easy to have several clients that you are charging $10k a month to simply change some META data and once in a while advise them what you read on someone else’s blog the night before.

Being in the industry for over 10 years and working with so many companies I have seen “fairy dust” go for as high as $150,000/month. If you look around the industry you will see a lot of the SEO world more focused on creating a blog post then doing actual SEO work. This is because skill level in this industry, for some reason, has become based on the number of blog posts you make rather then your technical expertise and experience. If I was hiring an SEO professional I’d rather hire the head of class coming out of applied mathematics of Harvard then any of the SEO bloggers.

In a lot of my talks at industry events I relate search engine optimizers to stock brokers, and search engines to stock markets. This comparison comes from search engine optimizers having millions of people that claim they can bring in returns, like stock brokers. But many fail and lose clients money while others simply just live off the natural flux within the stock markets/search engines. There are also the day traders and the DIY SEO’ers who believe they have the system beat. Then there are the elite who can not only to guarantee returns but are already making enough money themselves that the only reason they take on a client is to be able to make even more money using their formula for success.

The only real difference between a stock broker and an search engine optimizer is that, unlike a stock market, a search engine follows a mathematical formula. Ultimately there are no unknowns in the search engines, so a true SEO professional has no reason for failure. While I don’t claim to know everything about the ranking formulas at Google I do know that there is a set formula, and with the right set of people (note to self: hire some ex-WWII code breakers) the formula can be understood.

This presentation was informative, fun and easy for most to understand as it was relatively a high level review of Search Engine Optimization.

The 4 areas which I focused on where:
What is SEO?
What SEO is NOT
SEO Facts and Figures
Future of SEO

Slide #6 also contains my favorite Google logo, that uses Albert Einstein’s math formula e=mc2 to really portray that Google really is equal to one large math puzzle.

Enjoy, SEO Facts vs Fiction

While ad:tech isn’t a search specific event, it is probably the largest advertising conference circuit. My speech at ad:tech would be focused on letting people know what SEO is.

This event was held in Shanghai and it was my first trip into China, which made this even more special. I few up with my good friend and business partner Michael and we both enjoyed Shanghai far too much. I’ll post some stories about that trip in the travel section later.

The event was full of agencies, mainly people trying to sell services, CPM advertising and other things far far from what SEO is about. I did managed to meet some great people at the event, I met 2 people that have gone to become very good friends. I met Ahnee Min as we both were trying to support the growth of SEMPO and I met Inway Ni, who later went on to setup SES and SMX in China.

My presentation is rather basic, but it has some fun graphics and talks about how Google, Yahoo! and then MSN geo target their results. I had a great time presenting at ad:tech and an even better time meeting my new friends and learning about China, as now China is almost a 2nd home to me.

Sure some of these items are no longer considered “advanced” but still websites fail to follow this simple requirements in both the basic and advanced presentations. It was also yet another great trip to China, in the photo here is Michael, Chris, Inway, Tim and myself.

The 2 presentations reviews these items:

IP/Domain
Title Tag
META Description
Absolute vs Relative Links
Dash vs Underscore
Product Focused Pages

Basic SEO Presentation / Top 3 Metrics of a Search Engine

Advanced SEO Presentation

The report has 3 sections:
AUDI.com.sg Home Page Review (7 points)
AUDI.com.sg Inertial Pages Review (6 points)
and AUDI.com.sg other Factors (3 points)

I will also publish the Google and then MSN now bing algorithms information on separate posts, which are linked to here: Google’s Algorithm & bing’s Algorithm

9 Main Points to Yahoo’s Algorithm:

Title of Page

META Description

Domain Name

WebRank of Website

WebRank of Links to the Page

Text in the Links to the Page

Number of Links to the Page

Page’s CTR on Search Results

Page Theme/Keyword Density

I am back in China for the next 10 days, will be speaking at SES China on the Advanced SEO track. I am really looking forward to meeting up with some old friends at this year’s event. This will mark the 2nd year for SES in China and thanks to Inway and TimeV sure it will have many more years of great success.

Later today will be fun as I will meet up with several executives from the largest Internet company in China (for those that don’t know it was the team from Alibaba) for some dinner and talk about the future of that company within the International marketplace. This dinner also happens to include an old friend from Singapore, she happen to leave Singapore to join this company and now landed herself a sweet directors role and an even sweet chance to meet up with me again tonight.

Its 6:30am here, which means its 6:30pm back in Guelph and surprisingly my body has been able to shift over to the new time zone relatively easy. Part of the easy of switching time zones came from the flight as it was non-stop from Toronto to Shanghai which meant it didn’t really feel like you where traveling. But sadly the flight was on Air Canada and boy even though I was flying Executive First Class it was far far from first class service (I was spoiled flying in Asia as they all use new planes, but found out that Air Canada uses mainly planes from the 70’s).

On a funny note related to domain/company names, the gentlemen sitting beside me on the flight was the CEO of a company which I thought was a really cool name, eSteve (ie electronic steve) or at least that is how I read his company name. Turns out it’s really Esteve and is a pharma company based in Spain. He did laugh when I told him I thought is company was eSteve and he said that it’s very often people don’t know how to pronounce the name. Got me thinking about eStephen.com, but sadly some damn domain parker has registered it so not much chance of getting that one anytime soon.

Ok its off to have some breakfast and then a quick nap so that I can make it though the day as want to make sure I am fresh and alert for tonight’s dinner.

UPDATE ON POST:

SES China was eventful and fun, met up with the Jianfei Zhu, who is the Matt Cutts of Asia and is actually the one in charge of the websites ranking in the Asian markets at Google. There where a lot of great presentations and this year Rand Fishkin attended and several other agencies had foreign speakers. This trend hasn’t really continued as the last few events have had less and less major foreign agencies and more and more local Asian startups that are enjoying the easy to spam system of Baidu.

Here are the presentations that I gave at this year’s event. I ended up speaking a few times and also ended up doing the site clinic, which I will try and attach the notes from that. I will have the Chinese finial version and an English version, but the English version might not be 100% complete as all my presentations in China are created in Chinese, the English one is just one of my earlier drafts.

Hope you find the presentations useful and if you have feedback or suggestions please comment back in the comment section below, thanks!

Final Version in Chinese