I went to Brighton SEO on Friday April 13th. Thank you to Kelvin Newman for organising a fantastic event and thank you to Andy Betts for getting me a ticket.
There were many interesting speakers, I wrote a summary of the “How to launch or re-launch a brand or product online effectively”a few days ago. However, I think my favourite of the day had to be the opening panel which was “Ask the engines”. Links have also been a hot topic in seo and even more so since the Panda update. BrightonSEO is the third event three weeks that I have been to or organised where links and link spamming has been a key feature of the event.
The topic was quite broad which also allowed people to ask Google (sorry not many people asked the Bing rep), about the fact that Google penalises sites through no fault of the webmaster. Ciao.co.uk saw a drop in rankings after the panda update.
So what should you do if you think you have been unfairly targeted by Google?
1) Look at your webmaster tools. This will show you any bad links that you may have
2) Contact those sites who have been linking to you from their spammy sites. Ask them to remove the link.
3) if you have contacted the webmasters and are stil banned from Google, go to them directly.
4) Keep all correspondance between you and the webmasters. Send these to Google.
Do not give up, Google said they were here to help us, help the users. Sometimes I am not 100% sure of this especially when they banned my ppc adverts for no reason and they never even got back to me.
Kelvin sent through an email asking us to complete the questions below and here is my feedback:
1. What was the best thing about the event?
The fact that there were so many speakers from within the industry attending the event and that it was free.
2. What was the worst thing about the event?
Nothing, it was all very good. Perhaps there could be a selection of food at the venue so people do not have to go out and find somewhere to eat. (But then again it was fun to go to a local restaurant)
3. Who would you like to see speak at the next BrightonSEO?
Rand Fishkin and Tom Anthony from Distilled.
4. If you were to attend a paid workshop next time what topic would you like it to cover?
Authorship in detail and how this can tie in with link building.