Since I am incredibly lazy – here are the details from the auction for the last SEOktoberfest golden ticket copy and pasted. I do agree with Greg’s assessment of why Rebecca should attend, and will add that I’m expecting it to be a lot like Bavarian Festival in Frankenmuth, Michigan, except 10,000% larger and more rowdy…which may remind Rebecca of home if she was from Frankenmuth (but she’s not), though she IS from Michigan, and I will need some representation from another Michigander to remind me where to get booze when there are no “party stores” around. That is all for the mindless blathering on this post – just go to the damn auction so you can join us. I’m sure the event will be epic.

The original ticket price is 5.000 euros, and the 15 tickets were sold out after only 20 minutes!

15 International Online-Marketing Experts, 15 Attendees, and 10 former Playmates – one conference – one big Party!

Here´s what´s happening at SEOktoberfest:

Tuesday, 22nd of September:
10 a.m – 4 p.m. – SEOktoberfest Conference
4 p.m. – 10 p.m. – Oktoberfest at famous Käfer Wiesn-Schnänke
open end – After Party at P1 Club

Wednesday, 23rd of September:
11 a.m. – 8 p.m. – We got a whole luxurious Spa completly rented out for everybody. 6 massage therapists etc. will get you fit again!
8 p.m. – open end – Friends & Family Dinner at Munich´s No.1 Wine-Restaurant Die blaue Donau

Thursday, 24th of September
10 a.m. – 4 p.m. – SEOktoberfest Conference
4. p.m. – 10 p.m. – Oktoberfest at Schützen-Festhalle
open end – After Party at a secret location

What´s included in the price?
Everything!
Every Attendee gets a whole Oktoberfest Outfit – Shoes, Lederhosen, Shirt etc., and everything you eat and / or drink, as well as all the transfers etc. – everything´s included!

Who are the Online Marketing Experts?

* Todd Malicoat
* Chris Winfield
* Bob Rains
* Johannes Beus
* Brent Csutoras
* Sickness
* RSnake
* Greg Boser
* Barbara Boser
* Todd Friesen
* Marcus Tandler
* Quadszilla
* Frank Watson

The proceeds from this charity auction go to the AMAZONICA Foundation!

There is a misnomer in search marketing and SEO that things change all the time. I think I stopped consuming SEO blogs and news sites on a daily basis about 2 or 3 years ago when I decided enter full time consultancy with no one else’s safety net. There was no extra time for anything accept a low information consumption diet. I had to develop unflinching confidence in the work I was doing to execute on various strategies based on my understanding of how search engines have historically worked, and the assumption that they will continue to function in basically the same manner for some time to come.

This is from a conclusion that there have only been a handful of changes that affected how I conducted my business. I learned from both blackhats and search engineers both to come up with a strategy that fit my ethical code while indulging my competitive nature and hunger for success. I am convinced that the cat/mouse dynamic between blackhats and engineers has helped to form the current state of information retrieval based on strong needs to stay relevant in certain areas that were exploited solely for capitalistic monetary gain.

I’ve found some great posts and articles about search history and how search engines have evolved over time, but not many mentions of how search optimizers have changed their strategies over time. There are a few good resources listed below, but none quite summed up the changes that affected what I like to refer to as the “SEO mentality”. I’m hoping to create a fairly comprehensive document for Market Motive Internet Marketing Training (where I’ll be discussing this shortly with legendary SEO’s Greg Boser and Marshall Simmonds, to help add to the increasingly comprehensive body of SEO training we’ve developed over the past two years (Over 40 Videos now!).

I learned what SEO was in about 2002 – shortly after offpage factors started to strongly determine relevance. I spent several years and thousands of hours on forums reading, learning, an interacting and teaching to figure out how search engines worked. When I made the choice to work for myself at home after another great year of learning and consulting at We Build Pages (with Jim Boykin – one of the sharpest SEO’s I’ve ever known), I decided it was time to start doing. I built sites, and strategies for myself, using consulting money to fund development of website projects, and parlaying to thinks like being able to even afford the insane cost of living in the SF Bay area. It was based on the unwritten understanding of the changes that are mentioned below, and not listening to a lot of the SEO garbage that is spewed all over on the interwebs.

When I started doing – I realized that not much changes with SEO in terms of strategic execution. It is a pretty logical art and science of determining risk to reward ratios, and implementing strategies in a sequential fashion following certain established rules based on intended outcome. I’ve developed a playbook and these SEO rulesets by understanding the HISTORICAL GAMECHANGERS in SEO. Feel free to add some on twitter with #seogamechangers

I’ve been taking a mental inventory of these game changes for a few months, and here is what I have them broke down to:

1. Onpage factors (1995 – 1999)
2. Offpage factors (2000)
3. Florida update (2003)
4. Fresh Crawl/ Everflux (2004)
5. Sandbox effect (2005)
6. Duplicate content filtering (2006)
7. Human editorial (2006)
8. Onebox/ Universal Search (2007)
9. Paid linking handling (2007)
10. No follow (2008)
11. User data validation and segmentation (2009)
12. Brand Mentions (update Vince – 2009)

Some of my dates may be a bit off, but for the most part these are the major factors that affect my actionable SEO Strategies. These are the major changes that contribute to the hurdles, filters, and challenges of ranking a site on a search engine.

I’d love to hear from other folks on the things that you think should be included in the list. There are MANY minor things that full under these categories, but after revisiting most and asking twitter, I think this is pretty comprehensive, as things like local search 10 pack, personalization, geotargetting all fall under one of these other areas (even if the dates aren’t exact). Please let me know if you can think of anything I missed. I’ll try to watch the comments on the post closely for once:) Please post any great resources, or suggestions for adding/updating to the list.

Resources

• Brett Tabke
• Danny Sullivan
• Aaron Wall’s extensive writing on SE history
• Jim Boykin
• James Svoboda
• Rand Fishkin
• Mark Knowles
• Funny from Pat

Most people are taught that the first rule of SEO club is that you don’t talk about SEO club (some learn this rule harder than others.) This is an important question as far as most people in the SEO community are concerned. Based on the system that information is knowledge, power, and ultimately money, you can see how people often have a vested interest in outing other peoples techniques, or keeping them secret. You also learn very quickly that who you can trust is extremely important. Everyone has their own code. Mine personally is started with – ""their are no hats, only goals". With the essence of that being that only illegal techniques are truly crossing the line, but everyone has to determine their ultimate level of risk and reward (similar to investing or anything else). Hats are bullshit. Techniques and code should be determined by one’s career choice and goals.

My buddy Brent got a little bit of flack last night for this post, about digg selling links. I’ve also had more than a few conversations defending my friend Rand’s choices for outing sites on more than one occasion (as well as arguing with him about where I disagree with his choices). I figure I’d open it up for a bit of public debate, as well as state for the record where I stand with it, since I helped Brent in this case rather than mentioning it was a bad idea. This of course, got me riled up on a pretty good topic of discussion anyhow, so I figured it was a good time to put it on paper quick and bust out a blog post.

I’m not gonna point out names, but you know who you are, and where you stand.

When is it okay to out a site’s SEO techniques? Here’s the spectrum of types of people I would categorize people into. "Outing" a site includes doing a spam report or blogging about it, which are essentially different methods to do the same thing.

Old School Affiliate SEO/ Competitive Webmaster

It’s never okay to out a site. EVER. EVER. EVER. Google Japan buying links MAY qualify as an exception, but probably not. They’ll definitely talk about spammy techniques in the bar (and you’ll learn a helluva lot), and swear you to secrecy, or have you know that secrecy in these matters is always implied. I respect this code the most, and only disagree with it in a very few rare instances.

I think Rae sums it up nicely, “back in the days when we used to have Omerta and anyone with a name earned it – kinda like television before reality TV”

Basically – the rule is “keep your mouth shut unless you have been granted permission to speak about it” on anything outside of a conference presentation (especially if you heard it in a smokey pub at 1 am).

SEO Consultant/ Blogger (aka me)

It’s okay to out ultra large sites on very rare occasions with proper justification and research, knowing that they are large enough that there will be no penalization instituted because of the hypocrisy of search engines. Outing these sites is mainly to piss them off a bit (get their attention), or demonstrate the hypocrisy of search engines. I didn’t get this, until I saw some of my favorite OG SEO folks discussing Colgate, BMW, and other large brands that ultimately got a tiny slap that amounted to nearly nothing more than probably a link monkey getting a scolding from their boss. In cases of big brands being the new black hat

Personally, I still wouldn’t out these, but I can at least find a rational reason why a journalist/practioner (see below) might when they discover and seo company or consultant that totally sucks at what they do and does it for a giant dumb corporation. Again – not my thing (and I would never do it since I respect the OG affiliate competitive webmaster code far too much), but I can at least understand their logic, unlike some of the other following types of people.

This being said, on at least one occasion, I’ve ACCIDENTLY outed things that I didn’t mean to (and still feel bad about it JS:) Tough lessons to learn, so I always try to err on the side of STFU

"I’m curious who the genius is that told Experian buying a straight link on Digg was a good idea. Pretty fuckin clueless." – Greg Boser on Twitter

Oh – one other time it’s probably okay to do a spam report – if you’re searching for blues clues and get beastiality pr0n

Weak (and cowardly) SEO

People who do spam reports and outings because they’re not competitive enough to play the game. I probably have the least amount of respect for these people than anyone. They hope that by reporting others, their rankings will improve. I learn from my competitors, and it pisses me off when someone acheives higher rankings than I with a bogus OLD technique. It still NEVER justifies reporting them in my opinion/code.

Journalist

For people whose business model is based on news, hype, ratings, and traffic – they’re going to out as much stuff as they can to get the traffic. Just the same as traditional media, they are not active practicioners of SEO. The trouble becomes when you are an active practicioner of SEO and don’t respect your craft enough to have a solid code.

Pointy White Hat "Ethical" SEO.

These folks have spam report bookmarklets in their tool bar, and pride themselves on making the web a better place (by ruining other people’s livelihoods) because they think google will make a rather benovelent dictatorship. Kind of the equivalent of the religious right, and often get outed themselves with something equally as morally ambiguous like Jimmy Swaggert or Larry Craig.

Search Engine Engineer

Always okay. It’s they’re job, and at least their consistent in what they do. Even google japan deserves a penalty for buying links. I respect consistency.

It’s very difficult to be respected by both sides of the fence, but in order to do it you have to have a level of respect for both sides of those playing the SEO game.

So the question becomes – when is it okay to "out" a site, and where do you see yourself on the spectrum? Anything I missed?