“Jon Cooper SEO PRO: Creative Link Building” training with Point Blank SEO
What happened on November 21st from 10 am to 6 pm in Dago Centre in Warsaw? Only the most positive thing – another training that I’ve attended. Some time may have passed since the event took place but because of a whole lot of work, I couldn’t write about it earlier. But I couldn’t also let go of this opportunity, so here it is.
The subject again concerned Link Building and its references to content marketing, in particular specific ways for creative strategies of building link databases. What distinguished this training? The speaker – Jon Cooper.
Who is Jon Cooper and what was he doing in Poland?
I think that everyone interested in the SEO functioning not only in Poland but also in foreign markets should know this man or at least has heard of him somewhere. Jon Cooper is a known Link Builder who leads an agency in Florida and spends most time at work acquiring good and safe links for his clients. Many people may also associate him with the blog Point Blank SEO.
What else can you say about him? He’s a 21-year-old student but he has already been a co-author of a guide for link builders as a speaker at many important SEO conferences around the world (including SMX Sydney 2014). He also specializes in creating link building tactics for the area of eCommerce. It’s in a nutshell, because Jon Cooper also has some interesting opinions and views on the whole industry of link building, but you can find it in various interviews and on his blog.
Joe appeared in Poland at the invitation of the guys from Max ROY team in Poznan. They organize trainings in the field of Internet marketing and consulting and their next project was Creative Link Building and Content Marketing, How They Work Together. Two days later the same training was held in London, so the fact that Cooper starred in Poland was quite an achievement.
Great respect for the guys for organizing trainings at a really high level and inviting speakers who can teach us something new. A breath of fresh air and first-hand information about what Link Building looks like overseas and in foreign markets were a great thing for me. On the spot, without having to travel and spending tons of cash, I could learn cool stuff even if it is not necessarily possible (yet!) to be used in Poland.
Facts about the Max ROY training
As I’ve mentioned, it was held on the 21st November 2014. A group was rather small, approx. 15-20 people. It was required to have a decent knowledge of English to participate but for obvious reasons – you had to somehow understand Jon. I think that people with, let’s say, intermediate level, would manage to cope.
Max ROY reported that the training would address topics, such as:
- knowledge about building natural and safe links, easily getting through Google filters ?;
- ideas for creative and modern link building;
- a special section of the training devoted to eCommerce;
- showing step by step how to put the theory of acquiring links into practice
And this is what it looked like. Below I give some subjective opinions about what I can treat as a plus and what as a minus. In general, the advantages and disadvantages. Mainly advantages, because there were more of them ?
Advantages of Jon Cooper’s training
- At the beginning technical issues:as a plus I include the location of the training. I am glad that it was in Warsaw and not somewhere at the end of the world. It was easy to get there and you did not have to spend time and money on travelling;
- it was technically well organized, the room, the place and similar issues
Conceptual issues:
- describing tools used to evaluate links after harvesting;
- describing CRM tools for managing link builders’ work;
- showing how to build footprints (queries to Google in order to select the best spots for the customer’s site);
- showing examples of e-mail templates sent to webmasters;
- describing the use of plugins in the browser in order to facilitate manual work of a link builder;
- discussion about risky places to get the link for the customer;
- a detailed description of link building tactics for eCommerce;
- assessing links’ relativity to the sites on which they are placed;
- discussing ways to diversify links in the profile;
- presenting ways to gain links from university websites in the USA “for scholarship”;
- developed case study for Local SEO – by a photographer from Florida;
There are many advantages. This is primarily a consequence of high-level training and approaching the subject in a different way compared with what I’ve seen before.
Disadvantages of Jon Cooper’s training
- First – perhaps the most important – there was no meeting with Jon Cooper during the afterparty and knowledge exchange behind the scenes ? It’s to be forgiven, because our speaker, even though he drank two Red Bulls, was beaten by fatigue (8 hours of talking, not so simple) and time zone changes. Maybe there will be an opportunity one day ?
- Second – addressing the training itself – this form of link building and associated techniques presented by Cooper has little applicability in Poland. In my opinion, it is mainly affected by:
- customer budgets and archaic thinking about marketing and ways of building links to websites
- lack of customer awareness in POLAND about the value of
for their business - restrictions in links acquisition associated with lack of proper thematic sites for links in Polish
In these comments I’m still repeating myself, because I’ve mentioned them in reports from other trainings, but this is my opinion. It’s hard to create a world Link Building not having the right conditions.
In total, the disadvantages mentioned above do not relate directly to the training, so we can assume that it was successful and I do not regret it, on the contrary – I recommend it.
Final conclusions after reflecting upon the subject
Each of the training participants got access to a link building course worth approximately 250 zł. A nice gesture, right? ? After the training and doing the course I can say that the US is a totally different market – both in the approach to marketing, and because of customer awareness.
Has this training given me anything? I feel so. I think that if I get a client interested in unconventional SEO services or Link Building, at least I’ll know how it’s done across the ocean and what it should actually look like.
In Poland there is no company with strictly link building services and it’s probably not by accident. I believe that this requires a lot of work, considerable knowledge and perseverance. Our local market is not really pristine in this matter but simply not ready for such solutions yet.
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