Want to know more about link building? I've got something you might be interested in. For the first time ever, we are running one-day seminars dedicated purely to link building:

Distilled link building

At both venues, you will be invited to evening networking drinks. If you want to get exclusive one-on-one time with the expert speakers, we're holding a fancy dinner the night before for very limited numbers. It costs £175 / $200 per head - book early and request your place on the booking form.

Many of you have attended a Pro seminar such as the one run by SEOmoz in Seattle (see last year's invitation) or the one run by us in London (see last year's sneak preview). Pro training consistently sells out and the feedback has been phenomenal:

Just finished ProSEO 2010 and yet again Distilled and SEOMoz knock it right out of the park - if you are attending any conference in 2011, you've just found the right people to book with. Richard Hannan, Essential Travel

An event packed full of experts giving away actionable tips and the results of quality research. Cheaper than events of much lower quality too, bargain. Will O'Hara, Zen Web Solutions

Great, focused seminar that other event management teams could learn a lot from. Richard Underwood, Telegraph Media Group

[I am getting gradually less shy about shouting about the feedback (98% satisfaction rating!) as increasingly it's others in our organisation deserving credit for this - shout out to Lynsey Little (@lynslittle) for her phenomenal work on London 2010 - she's handling London and NOLA this time around.]

The feedback we receive at the end of each seminar make for fascinating reading. Predictably, great speakers get great feedback no matter what they are talking about. Slightly less predictably, any session about link building gets high scores. Let me repeat that. It turns out that our attendees keep telling us they want to know about link building.

We carried on for a little while doing what we were doing. Then it struck us(*). What about running a seminar dedicated to link building?

OK, so you can say we were a little slow to catch on, but at least we got there, right?

The schedule

You can expect us to cover:

  • Linkbuilding and social media: hitting the sweet spot
    • Social platforms that recreate the old "linkbait on digg" effect
    • How social forces can influence pages like links and how to earn tweets / likes / shares
    • How to get links from real life relationships
  • Myths and case studies of outreach success
    • Psychology and influence
    • Content hooks to get links
  • Analysis: without data, you are working blind
    • Gathering and sorting link data
    • Understanding link metrics
    • Measuring the competitiveness of SERPs to understand the challenge you face
  • Pitfalls, mistakes and traps for the unwary
  • How to scale link building
    • How to "ask for links" scalably and effectively
    • Using tools
    • How to spend money effectively
  • Expert "give it up" secrets
    • Rand has one about nofollow links....

(*) hat-tip Tom - we were sitting at the back of a link building session by Wil Reynolds in Seattle when he turned to me and said "you know what would win the internet?"

We push our speakers hard to bring their A games - everything is designed to be actionable, specific and tips-oriented. We don't want hand-wavy generalities - we want real stuff, that you didn't already know, backed by evidence, that you can take away and actually use.

There are going to be some more speaker announcements in the coming days, but we already have lined up many of the top-rated speakers from previous events as well as some new faces:

  • Rand Fishkin is speaking at both events (he's from some company called SEOmoz - you might have heard of him)
  • Wil Reynolds from Seer Interactive - after following Wil online forever, I finally met him last year in Seattle where he gave one of the best presentations I've seen on linkbuilding. We've snagged him for London and New Orleans.
  • Tom and I - people might get us confused, but we're easy to tell apart on stage [insert your own joke here]. See for yourself in both countries.
  • Jane Copland from Ayima - as pictured below - I've learnt a lot from Jane and I can't wait to see more of what she has to say - also in both countries
  • Martin MacDonald from Seatwave is speaking in London. His presentation at London Pro was one of the highest-rated - expect some more magic to be revealed based on real data and real-life experimentation
  • Kris Roadruck from click2rank is speaking in New Orleans. He's shared some awesome tips with me behind the scenes. I'm forcing him into the spotlight. Expect great things - I've heard he does well with pressure.
  • More TBC..... Watch this space

 

New Orleans - 

The New Orleans seminar will be held at The Pan American Conference and Media Center. The conference center is located in downtown NOLA, and is only a short walk from the beautiful French Quarter. I'm personally really looking forward to going to New Orleans after hearing Rand rave about it. I'm assured the party is going to be something special. 

 

London - 

The London seminar will be held at the Congress Centre, the same venue that we held Pro 2010. The venue is located in London’s West End, surrounded by many hotels and great restaurants. The linkbuilding training day will be jam-packed but will be followed by networking drinks at a location nearby to the Congress Centre. 

We will also be announcing more details soon around our plans for a memorial lecture dedicated to Jaamit Durrani and evening fundraiser for his family in conjunction with the guys from OMD.

FAQ

I might come back and add more here, but here are a few:

  • Video -  yes - we will be recording both events - watch this space for the announcements of how to get your hands on those videos (and I believe there'll be news about the long-awaited 2010 recordings coming soon as well)
  • Pro seminars - don't worry we aren't going to stop the popular general sessions just because we're getting all specialised. There are plans to have events in Boston (May 16th / 17th), Seattle (Aug / Sept) and London (Oct)
  • Staying up-to-date - if you want to make sure you hear all the details of all events, drop your email address here:

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Just in case all of this wasn't clear. It's all about linkbuilding, you can book now and it's in London and New Orleans.

If you still have any questions, you can email [email protected] (or drop them in the comments and I'll do my best to pick them up there).