This was the fifth time I was here in Vegas, and it only gets better every time.

BUT, this doesn’t refer to the broken WIFI at the pubcon (those ads-dudes sponsored 100, then 200 wifi slots for suppesdly 2000 attendees)… what is an internet marketing conference where folks are cut off from the internet for days, or have to go back quickly to their room to check emails at the almost as broken WIFI of the hotel? Conferences like the SES in August or the A4U in October did a way better job in this matter.

Anyway, after hitting the hotel at 0:30 (did some extra sightseeing via LA thanks to delay when flying into Washintong from Europe) I just wanted to grab a beer from the non-existant fridge, so I found myself at the bar til 3:30 …

This happened because the Breeze bar here at the TI was already packed with many of my SEO friends like Greg Boser , Mediadonis , Ralf Schwoebel , Todd Malicoat , Lauren Vacarello , Matt Reider, Bob Rains , Avi Wilensky , Chris Winfield , Neil Patel , Eric Enge , Todd Friesen and so many more I could already talk to so early, tough after 28 hours flight I was a bit dizzy then …

I even met Shoemoney on day 3 as he flew in last minute to attend the parties… and altough we could only talk for a short while I got a coupon code for this shoemoney tools that gives you $19.95 signup and a recurring rate of $ 79.95 afterwards… want it? just let me know!

This kicked of the networking week in a perfect manner – and I found myself to only attend the keynotes and most sessions of the 3rd day which was focused mostly on link building, link buying and thelike.

It was great to be able to meet and talk to a lot of new guys at the PubCon,
including

• Stephan Spencer
• Dixon Jones
• Sam Allock
• Michael Geneles
• Todd Keup
• Christopher Johnson
• Jordan Kasteller
• Brian S. Ree
• Abe Kurien
• Richard Farr
• Darwin Hall

And I had exceptionally lots of fun with Michael , Matt, Chris, Bastian , Francois and Monte again!

I missed Jim Boykin and Dave Naylor as I thought they would be coming in, at least for the poker sessions, but at least I met Aaron Wall again at a conference (was good seeing you, enjoying your presentation Aaron) and Rand Fishkin whom I could barter some more beta-testing deals for his linkscape API with! Looking forward to that!

Cheers to all of you!

This year has been the year of tools – everybody’s launching new tools and promoting them – so in addition to what I already wanted to look into I now got a pretty long “shortlist” of tools to evaluate and integrate into our private toolkit like

• ShoeMoney’s Tools
• Sistrix toolkit
• SeoMoz’s linkscape (been working with that, but looking forward to our API integration)
• Majestic SEO tool (been offered about giving those a try, will see if they can do API integration as well)
• Search Metrics

So, as always after the conferences, my head is full of ideas and insights for improving our services and the way we work for our clients …

In fact I already planned some important conference calls with major clients next week about insights of this week…

Tonight I’m gonna see KA at the MGM the 3rd time – an awesome show – and finally head home then…

It’s been a great week – and I’m looking forward to the next conferences, which will be the London EuroCap in January, the SMX West and the PubCon in Texas in March – followed by the New York SES in April …

Well – attending 3-4 conferences a year ONLY makes sense for networking, especially if you’re up to date and work 24/7 in online marketing anyway.

So while there’ve been PLENTY of talk and blogposts about the SES and it’s sessions on the web now, the most valuable nuggets of information I got came from all those off with SEO rockstars like

• Jim Boykin (congrats Jim on your success again, you got a great team – cheers to all Ninjas and thanks!)
• Greg Boser (thanks Greg for all the time and insights)
• Dave Naylor (this was SUPER-INTENSE content, every sentence like gold, no fluff, just facts – thanks Dave!)
• Shoemoney (had fun at dinner! and love the USE ME t-shirt pic man!)
• Neil Patel (wow, didn’t know you work so much into Europe – and thanks for the dinner dude)
• Loren Baker
• Chris Winfield (nice to meet you Chris)
• Lauren Vacarello (was great meeting you again Lauren – I enjoyed the chat we had)
• Dave Davies (thanks for sharing your consulting experience with me)
• Todd Malicoat (awesome party! actually the ONLY real party – in European standards… or what is an open bar that closes after your first drink… LOL)
• Tim Ash (loved the website optimizer session – and congrats on your recent successes you told me about – looking forward to … )
• Aaron Wall (was nice to meet you and your wife at the party the first night)
• Bob Rains (wow, I was puzzled to hear your Malta story… but great move BTW! and thanks for the awesome dinner, too!)
• many more include Avi Wilensky and his great sister Sheara, Becky Ryan, Pascal, Mediadonis, “Chris Boggs”, Jens, Marc, Tim, etc…

But that wasn’t it all …

I even met so many new great guys that I’ve a hard time keeping up to follow up with all of them via Mail, LinkedIn, Xing … just got my inbox down to 289 unread today, so I thought it’s time for this post

Cheers and a link shoutout to

• Francois – man you rock – had a brilliant time w you and Monte, looking forward to work with you for some time to come – and see you in Vegas
• Lydia – was great meeting you Lydia, I found it pretty interesting that you are yet another US SEO to work into Europe… time to pay a lot more attention to the markets over here I guess
• the Playboy team
• sooo many german SEOs and sailors like Jens, Marc, Andreas, Axel (need to dig up those linkbacks) – awesome to find we share a hobby… remember our plans?
• David funny how we met finally so long after the last session – thanks for sharing so much details as well

I took quite a couple nice shots, but I’ll try keep up even more with my mails now as I’m off for sailing next week,
and I still got more interviews coming up tomorrow…

Interest in our persona links was massive… even stronger than after the SMX in Seattle… to bad we’re booked out until October…

So this week I already hired two new linkbuilders for our persona building service and will interview many more til Friday. Based on the maths I did I also had to increase prices a bit to maintain our quality – since we also started to increase the work and time we spend with each persona …

but you know, if you spend money on time to build good personas, it’s worth every penny…
after all you want NATURAL looking personas, for relevant and NATURAL looking links…

Cheers!