The Las Vegas air was waiting for thousands of search marketers to fill its void. And we did. This was my first PubCon attendance, and although much of the information presented would be valuable to most noveau-seo, I would have to say that much of what I heard here could be learned with a little trial and error and elbow grease (which I’ve always said is the best way to learn).

But what was good about this conference? In my opinion, we now have some definitive statements from the guys at the search engines themselves - things that don’t trick the engines, but will dramatically increase our rankings.  And most of the time, a few minutes of a code tweak can mean a world of difference in ranking.

Good

• I think Matt Cutts lost some weight. Thoughts?
• In the duplicate content session, Google, Yahoo, and MSN all weighed in on some easy and quick ways to eliminate duplicate content confusion. Central point here was mainly comprised of two things: 1. Avoid parameters and session ID’s. Engineers may love ‘em, but this is where you - as an SEO - need to step forward and say, “NO! I will not take this kind of abuse.” Instead, says the search gurus, you should try to track your visits through cookies, and 2.)Take the extra two minutes it takes to do your www. to non-www. redirect (or vice-versa). I mean, really? Why do people not do this from Day 1 of launch?

• Paid links. Do they work? Are they legit? This was, by far, the most heavily attended session of the conference. I’d like to think it’s because most people want to know what NOT to do, but somehow, I don’t think it was the case. SeoBook’s Aaron Wall gave some pointers on how to campaign for links without directly “paying” someone for the link, as did SEOMoz’s Rand and John Lessnau from LinkAdage. I especially found Aaron and Rand’s advice to be helpful. Among the things mentioned were charity donations, article syndication, widgets, contests, and site acquisition (I got the sense that this was mostly for the links, rather than the site itself).

Bad

• Don’t submit a site with paid links to the site review session whose panel contains Matt Cutts. I think a few sites (I won’t mention any names) made that fatal mistake, despite the fact that Matt’s computer was mysteriously inoperable. (by the way, does anyone know what tools he uses. I would pay a fortune to know and/or receive the .exe files for them).
• I got the sense that a few PubCon attendees saw the conference as a springboard to promote themselves. Besides the fact that this is a conference for SEOs ( who generally don’t purchase Widget A from Site Alpha), I didn’t see any reason why some site reviews had people expounding on the infinite virtues of their products. Let’s hear how you got all those links for a change. 

The Ugly

• How do you get 5 million+ unique visitors a month with such an ugly site.
• Why does it cost $14.95 to get to the top of the Stratosphere?

I’ve been a Search Engine Optimizer maestro for a while. What I’ve realized is that no amount of underhanded techniques, link building trickery, or paid strategy will ultimately get you where you want.

Content is king, of course. But links are queen. And in order to reconcile the two, one must realize that good, relevant, and interesting content always wins when it comes to building links.  I have pushed, and pushed… and pushed for a few pieces that I thought were interesting. Sadly, they fizzled out in the bones of social bookmarking gravestones.

But every once in a while, I put out a piece that — while technically a little inept, and in my opintion: unininteresting. What surprised me about those pieces was the fact that they gained a rabid following in the social bookmarking sphere. Why? Sometimes you will never know. But the sure strategy to getting ranked will continue to require one simple task-at-hand: What will MY users find INTERESTING.

If you have that pinned down, then it’s a sure win.

Before you think a link is golden, think again!

For those of you who are frequent link prospectors, you’ll often run into what you consider the mother lode. This is a seemingly untapped link that - with the right coaxing and ’strategery’ (thank you, GWB) - you can turn your new homestake into a golden bonanza for your target site.

For the right prospect - let’s say a ballpark PageRank 6-8 with strong backlinks - you’re willing to invest considerable time and resources. For some of you, getting a link on a PageRank 8 is a must, by hook or by crook (I do not condone “by crook”).

The easiest way, which is generating all the buzz lately, has been blog comments. Google clearly indicates that blog comments are a relatively white hat practice (with one or two caveats). Remember: Your comments should be relevant and on-topic!

For example, let’s just say you find a blog or news page with dofollow comments. You spend a good 20-30 minutes reading the entry and typing in an insightful comment (of course, with a link back to your target page). Shazam! You’re well on your way to a valid PR8 backlink — or so you think.

So where does the Guardian come into this?

The U.K. Guardian’’s cleverly (deceptively?) entitled community blog, “CommentIsFree,” may or may not have been on your radar. I know it was on mine. My plugins were all indicating dofollow comments. The page was being cached every day by Google. And spammers had not yet discovered this beautiful opportunity.

My ma’ always said: “Nothing in life is ‘Free.’”

That was all before I looked under the hood. The title “CommentIsFree” was a blatant bait-and-switch phrase intended to send SEOs on a wild goose chase. Comments were not — in fact — free. The links were hidden behind a snippet of JavaScript. I looked at the text version of the Google cache and the comment links were nowhere to be seen. It seems as if the Guardian is capitalizing on the dofollow blog movement to hurt the SEO industry (whether or not its intentionally malicious is up to the U.K. Guardian to elucidate).

So, moral of the story: be familiar with good ol’ fashioned “View Source.” Plugins that show whether or not a link is dofollow are convenient for first inspections, but it could also lead to fruitless and time-consuming endeavors. The U.K. Guardian is just one of many cases in point.

I’m on to your ways, U.K. Guardian! You underestimated the intelligence of the average SEO.