The gang assembled to deliver the keynote at PUBCON 2006 – Las Vegas brings with it a rich experience in Venture Capitalism, Real world business acumen, and all things related to marketing on the net.

 
Guy Kawasaki: His book, Art of the Start is regarded as essential reading on how small businesses can get out of the garage. One of the few gurus with extensive real world business experience, Guy’s thoughts on venture capitalism and his blog posts are eagerly awaited. This Hawaii-born Stanford graduate champions early-stage technology companies through his firm Garage Technology Ventures.

 
John Batelle: A man of many talents – entrepreneur, journalist, author, and professor, John Batelle is a real multi-tasker and a successful one at that. He is the founder chairman of Federated Media Publishing and one of the original founders of the highly respected Wired magazine. He is involved with the collaborative weblog Boing Boing. His book “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture” was very well-received and has been translated in several languages.   

 
Jon S von. Tetzchner: Jon heads Opera, which is in direct competition with Microsoft and Mozilla. At PUBCON, Jon will touch upon various subjects such as web browsers, platforms, web standards, and the direction in which the web is headed. Jon’s journey has been the inspiring garage-to-multinational story and he will speak on the obstacles he faced when he decided to compete with the giants. 

Danny Sullivan: Danny’s tale is of following one’s passion and how the Internet allows and enables people to do so, bless the Internet for that!! Danny started off with the site Search Engine Watch, which he later sold to MecklerMedia and which later got sold off in 2006 for a cool $43 million. Danny has worked with the BBC and the Los Angeles Times. He currently resides in Chitterne, England with his better half and two children.

The event that webmasters and SEO folks look forward to eagerly is back again – and this time in Las Vegas. The whole concept of PUBCONs is based on an egalitarianism that one would not normally associate with such power gatherings; yet it is this factor that makes PUBCONs so apt to discuss SEO, SEM, and all things Internet. From newcomers to old hats, all are richer by the experience.

This year the WebmasterWorld’s Search & Internet Marketing Conference (PubCon) will be held November 14th - 17th at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Expected attendees include search engine optimizers and marketers, channel managers, and affiliates.

Online registration costs $599 and saves you a whopping $400. Registering at the site will cost you $999. You can register here http://www.pubcon.com/register.htm. Attendees should also look out for discount coupons that are to be distributed by the various sponsors. If you are keen to see your company’s banner share space with that of Yahoo and Google then check out this link http://www.pubcon.com/getexhibitemail.htm. Placing an ad at PUBCON gives you the chance to capture the attention of a section of the most tech-savvy crowd with a disposable income and the willingness to try new products.

The keynote speakers include the following luminaries - Guy Kawasaki, Jon S. von Tetzchner, Danny Sullivan, and John Battelle.

In whatever capacity you choose to attend this conference, the bottom-line is that you are getting a fabulous opportunity to network with fellow webmasters, affiliates, and program managers. It should be a great opportunity to strike good business deals.

Here’s a quick question for all you link-building champions out there – What do Paris Hilton and link building have in common? The answer is VISIBILITY. Guys, we can learn a thing or two from the millionaires’ babe about capturing mind space, all we then need to do is apply that philosophy to link building. The heart of the matter in SEO is links and Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz opines that even if the content is not that great, if you can manage to get links you’re in business. This does not mean that content is out of fashion, it only means that great content is only a means to the end.

So, like Paris you got to ensure that the netizens pay attention to you, a great way is to catch the attention of social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit. Social bookmaring is currently the rage in the link building scene and used intelligently, which means you don’t end up getting banned for gaming the system, you can really profit from such sites. A great way to post your content to these social bookmarking sites without having to actually go to each of them is to use tools like http://www.onlywire.com, http://ekstreme.com/socializer, and www.tagtooga.com/pg/delicioso. These allow you to submit your links and tags to various social bookmarking sites at one go.

You need to be particularly keen if it is a blog or a website that represents a known brand. People expect more of a website in terms of quality, online presence, and ranking when the site has to do with a respected brand. So, you are essentially putting your brand at stake when you decide to go online. Thus it is fair to say that brand building equates link building and as links grow so does your brand.

In an ideal world you would create content, impress the hell out of webmasters and they would come running to you with links, alas its an imperfect world we live in and to get links, we first need to drive traffic to our site and how do you get traffic…. well – through links. This is the Catch-22 that pushes webmasters to tactics that include begging, borrowing, buying, and stealing and in the process invoking the wrath of the search engines. Reciprocal linking is not dead but is quite frowned upon and so is purchasing text links; however, these are not illegal.

For those who are beginners and even the experienced ones, there is a quick crash course on link building at http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1534/. The hottest link building strategy doing the rounds these days is link baiting – a catchy name for getting links, basically it involves some ego massage, you write some nice stuff about a guy, tell him about it, and either obliquely or blatantly ask for a link. A well-written link bait article can get you a lot of trusted links that can boost your site’s traffic and consequently your AdSense earnings.

So, girdle up buddy, seize the day and unleash the link lions within you. Systematic effort is all that is required.