Patty Adams, Director of Sales and Marketing here at Vertical Measures, is attending the SES San Jose 2009 Conference and has agreed to live blog for the event. The SES Advisory Board and SearchEngineWatch.com have been organizing this annual event for the past 11 years. The conference, with over 70 sessions, will focus on PPC management, link building, duplicate content, video optimization, and more! 

Day 1 of SES San Jose 2009: 

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We all know that link building is one of the keys to the success of websites on the Internet. We can debate what kinds of links are best and where they need to be placed endlessly, but the truth is that there’s always more to learn and you can’t learn it all from “experience.” In fact, trial and error could be the death knell of your business – too many mistakes while trying to develop link building strategies could tank your website. Sure, you could tell yourself that you’ve learned some valuable lessons along the way, but that’s not going to take the sting out of a failed business venture.

That’s why link building training programs can be such a valuable resource whether you do SEO in-house or whether you’ve decided to become an expert in the art of SEO and link building programs as a consultant to other business owners. There are a variety of programs available tailored to the needs of corporations, copywriters, advertising and SEO specialists that can provide you with the skills you need to build links that will work.

Know What You’re Looking For in a Training Program

There are as many kinds of programs as there are businesses on the Internet, so be sure you shop around rather than signing up for the first seminar you find. Do you want something that will enable you to learn the basics quickly so that you can implement some tried and true link building strategies yourself, or do you want a more in-depth program that you can build on as you create a business model as a recognized Internet marketing expert? Some programs are aimed at the small business owner who wants to “do it himself,” while others are lengthy, specialized courses for marketing professionals. Know what you’re signing on for so that you don’t waste time or money. We’ve selected a few of the more popular programs to get you started:

We Build Pages offers one or two day programs to give companies solid overviews of the link building process, SEO, competition strategies and search ranking factors. This is ideal for companies who want to begin “in house” programs.

Eric Ward offers personal evaluation of your company’s website and, in the two hour session, a link development strategy session, including evaluation of competitor’s sites and full reports. This is individual instruction by phone unless you opt for the six hour on-site training session, which includes six months of IM access for follow-ups.

Justilien Gaspard focuses heavily on link building and offers one-on-one training that features lots of in-depth discussion specific to your own business and site. Link bait and email campaigns are among the topics.

Search Engine College is less personalized and less expensive. This is a “nuts and bolts” of SEO and SEM with a wide range of courses you can take online that are self-paced and self-directed. There are also lots of valuable resources in PDF form that you can download.  Covers more than just link building.

Sempo Institute is geared toward those who are looking at starting a career in SEO or SEM more than business owners who want to tweak their own websites. You can learn a lot here, but it will be of a general nature rather than specific to your company or industry. They also offer corporate training options for corporations who feel that their in-house marketing teams need refresher or advanced courses.

There are also conferences such as SES , SMX, and Pubcon, but you won’t get too much out of a 1 or 2 hour public discussion on link building.  As you can see, there are good several options for link building training.  Deciding which will benefit your business the most is up to you. Doing some homework before you decide – and knowing what it is you want to get out of a training course – will lead you to the right link building training program for your situation.

[tags] link building, link building training, SES, SMX, Pubcon, SEMPO [/tags]

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