SEO Conferences Are Just Expensive Commercials
You paid $2,000 to attend a conference where every "session" is a pitch deck. The speakers are selling. The sponsors are selling. You're the product.
I've been to the conferences - Brighton SEO, Pubcon, MozCon, SMX, the whole circuit, flying across continents to sit in ballrooms with other SEOs - and here's what they all have in common: nobody learns anything useful.
The Session Scam
Every conference session follows the same formula: Minutes 1-5, speaker introduces themselves, "I'm the head of SEO at [Company], we've been in the industry for 15 years"; Minutes 5-20, generic advice everyone already knows, "Content is king," "Focus on user experience," "Build quality backlinks"; Minutes 20-25, the pivot, "And if you want to learn more about how we do this at [Company]..."; Minutes 25-30, the pitch, company overview, client logos, "Book a demo."
That's it, that's the entire session, and you paid $2,000 and flew across the country to watch a 30-minute commercial.
Why Real Tactics Aren't Shared
Here's the thing about SEO: the stuff that actually works is competitive advantage, and nobody who's crushing it with a specific tactic is going to share it publicly because that would kill the edge, so instead they share the generic stuff that sounds good but changes nothing, the platitudes that could have been written in 2010.
Real SEO knowledge is shared privately, in Slack groups and on calls with trusted peers and over beers with people who've actually done it, never on conference stages, because conference stages are for marketing, not learning.
The Networking Excuse
"But the networking!" people say, and sure, the networking is real, but be honest with yourself: how many conference connections turned into anything meaningful, how many business cards are sitting in a drawer right now, how many LinkedIn connections led to actual business?
You can network without paying $2,000 and spending three days in a convention center - LinkedIn exists, Twitter exists (though it has its own problems), you can DM people for free - and the conference is really just an expensive permission structure for networking you could do anyway.
Who Actually Benefits
Conference organizers sell tickets and sponsorships, pure profit; Sponsors get a captive audience of potential customers, a lead gen paradise; Speakers get free marketing, authority building, lead gen for their agencies or tools (and getting certified helps too); Attendees get...FOMO relief? Instagram photos? A line item to expense?
Notice who's last on that list, and notice who benefits least.
The Alternative
Take that $2,000 and the three days of time and do something else instead: Read actual case studies, not conference slides but detailed breakdowns from people who've actually done it; Run experiments, spend the time testing things on your own sites; Build relationships, because one real connection with someone doing interesting work beats 50 badge scans any day of the week.
Or just keep going to conferences - the after-parties are pretty good, I'll give them that.
SEO conferences are trade shows pretending to be education. Stop pretending you're learning. You're being marketed to.