Seth & Brett Tabke: Past, Present & Future of Pubcon

Today, Seth is joined by Brett Tabke, the founder and CEO of PubCon. Brett announces the exciting news that PubCon will be back in person on August 3rd - 5th for its conference in Florida! The two discuss the history of the conference and how it has grown to become a “must-attend” event for SEO marketers and practitioners, whether they’re advanced or just starting out in the industry. Brett also gives his insight on how PubCon curates and fine tunes their selections for speakers to make sure that attendees get the absolute most out of the experience! Seth and Brett continue the discussion by looking at future changes we may soon see in the digital marketing world and government’s potential influence on it.

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Transcript

BluShark Digital

Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host, Seth Price founder of Blushark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.

Seth Price

Welcome, everyone. We're so thrilled to have Brett Tabke here, the founder and creator of PubCon. Welcome, Brett.

Brett Tabke

Thank you for having me on Seth, I appreciate it.

Seth Price

Well, first, before we talk about PubCon, we have some exciting PubCon news to disclose. It sounds like drumroll, that we may in fact be able to meet in person once again. What is the great news?

Brett Tabke

Yeah, first week of August, we are going to have our long lost Florida conference that was scheduled last year that we had to postpone three weeks before the conference because of COVID. So we are good to go the first week of August, three, four and five. That's awesome.

Seth Price

So, so excited. It's so it's going to be the day of trainings and then two days of obsessions.

Brett Tabke

Yes. And it looks like we're gonna have everybody back. We put out the call to speakers, and everybody is excited about it now and now. emails today and yesterday, people when are you going to have it? When are you going to have it? So clearly, there's pent-up demand to get back together.

Seth Price

People are so excited a lot of people double vaccinated. The first big conference in the legal space is coming in May. And I will say it's in Miami. I'm excited. We've been huge conference I've been really going to for over a decade or for a decade. And it's very, very excited to see to see that in play. But, you know, August, you should have a lot more certainty in the world than May.

Brett Tabke

Yep. That's that's kind of what we thought, you know, we could have pulled the trigger and headed in May or June and you know, fortunately, I'm married to a doctor of nursing and she sees a you know, you might want to wait just a little bit. So we decided to go ahead and wait until first part of summer there middle of summer.

Seth Price

So that's awesome. Well, for a lot of people watching their their regulars or PubCon for some of our viewers. They're not they they sort of they geek out from afar. Talk to us tell us how the history of PubCon I you know, I love it. I love the story of just how did this sort of crazy idea turn into something that is a must attend amongst us geeks.

Brett Tabke

You know, we started out, this is our 20th anniversary, 20 years 2001 A bunch of guys off our forum site WebmasterWorld got together in London, just to talk about SEO because nobody was talking about this stuff back then we had no idea. You know, we were still talking about search engines like Alta Vista, Intune, Yahoo. Microsoft was actually pretty popular back then. So we got together in a bar in London. And somebody said it's a conference said no, it's a pub conference. And so pub conference stuck. And that's where the name comes from was PubCon. Every time we had one since then we tried to do something a little more a little better. So we started having sessions. At the third one. We had Matt Cutts there in Boston. And then we started having them spring and fall ever since. And we're up somewhere between 30 and 35,000 Total attendees over the years. So

Seth Price

When did you get yourself to Vegas?

Brett Tabke

2006 I believe in the fall was was our first one there. It just so happened I went out to look at space late in August, maybe early September. And I said hey, any space and they said, funny you should mention that a little conference called Comdex just canceled on us the second week of November. And so we took we took the old Comdex slot and they made us a deal we couldn't refuse. So we jumped in, in three months we put on our first Vegas conference, it was just amazing.

Seth Price

That's awesome. There is definitely something special and unique about the conference. What do you think it is? It's kept it fresh, and sort of full of energy over the years, you know, there are plenty there are plenty of conferences in the space. But there seems to be something about this one that has held people's attention.

Brett Tabke

You know, we attract the real practitioners of the craft, not just the marketers who are coming in to make money coming in to, you know, sample it and move on. We have the practitioners we got guys, everybody from folks down on turning wrenches on websites to executives who make decisions that big SEO agency. So we've got this big broad audience, we started out with just the guys turning wrenches on websites, just the affiliates and the mom and pops. And over the years it became clear we needed to attract the agency. So we started that and then we started having these search awards every year and that that brought in the agency crowd because lord knows agencies love to win awards. So in fact I got one on my on my shelf back there.

Seth Price

Somebody good guy got a Facebook notice. Hey, you want to you won an award today? Your top 10 Yeah, it's it's kind of cool. Like as an agency, you know, you work hard every day you put your head down. You know you're doing right by clients, but when somebody else outside notices, it's kind of cool.

Brett Tabke

We've got that core group of folks who just love hanging out and talking and learning. And they know you got to get together to learn some of this stuff because you know, our relationship with Google websites and Google, it is adversarial. We tried to say, Oh, we were partners and all this. And, you know, AdWords will buy it. And we're on this great partnership. But baloney, it's, it's still adversarial. And the guys,

Seth Price

but that's one of those things that it was, you know, when you when you did have much more Google representation from the search side, which which was, which was great in one sense, and always seemed very odd, like they were coming in sprinkling sort of like, almost like a biblical scholar would give you some hints of what's out there. And you have to connect the dots. So when was that? That was awesome, because it was primary source, and nobody else was giving it to you. But there was it to me, it always struck me as like, here's your overlord coming to talk to him, which is exactly what it is. But did you ever have those moments where you're like, This is awesome that we haven't, but this is insane. This is how the information is being disseminated. Exactly. And then

Brett Tabke

they then they go and sit at the bar and listen to all the inside stories after a few drinks themselves. And you know, Matt Cutts. So you still have a say, I come to pub conduct to listen not to talk to listen, talking is my entrance fee to get into the conference, I come to listen, to hear what you guys have to say and what we're doing wrong, what we're doing right, they get to do 1000s upon 1000s of dollars worth of market research by coming to these conferences. So it's definitely

Seth Price

a special, you know, you get them there. And they're the VIPs. Because they because you like it. At the same time, in a perfect world, they would be paying a super premium 100x Because of what they're able to get from market research during those first few days there.

Brett Tabke

Exactly. And the relationships they build, you know, we regularly have people on our exhibit hall floor that do seven figure contract sales at our conference. What's Google doing? You know, are they doing eight 910? You know, some of these guys are spending 50, 60,000 a day just on one client? And I know they got a dozen clients. So what's Google Making it these conference? No, absolutely.

Seth Price

It was widely 10 people. But that was the other thing that I thought that differentiate this conference from others was the fact that you know, many conference, I distinctly remember this, I went to New York for another brand new space. And I you know, it was very good. It was it was sort of a road show of the advanced track from there from one of their other, you know, sessions. But like, at the end of the day, the end of the the thing, everybody's gone, I'm sure the inside, inside baseball people would have a place that they went and met up at and right. But the idea of PubCon that, look, there's official events that everybody goes to watching you from the from the stage at these, but then afterwards, being at some really bad Mexican places, and being next to people, the interactions at those events are as valuable as anything, and seem still unique to the people that are going to your conference compared to others that there is a after hours component not ticketed, not part of the ethos of the daytime. But And again, there's there are events at night, but you know, beyond those, that that seem to be part of that learning, exploring and networking, that I think really has set it apart.

Brett Tabke

Yeah, the networking, sitting at the bar, like we've done for 20 years, talking, talking shop and learning, you know, the, the last PubCon in Vegas. Somebody from Google whispered to me, Hey, we're going to start this thing called discovery, you want to have a look at it before we launch? And I said, Sure. So had a look at it. And we started talking with some people behind the scenes. And as soon as it launched, it became so apparent how much traffic this thing had, how much you could generate, Google discovered. So our guys were ready to go with this from the day one, and it's just generating insane amounts of pageviews for these folks. So staying in staying in the loop. It's everything in this business.

Seth Price

You know, one of those things that, you know, you've also done is the sort of intro intro days, which again, not unique, but you seem to have figured out a formula where whether it's an intro track, whether you know, different interest tracks, leading into the conference itself. Tell me a little bit about how those have come about because I find those to be what I have noticed, right as I got into it, you know, I was an early lawyer who came and geeked out started the intro days, once the main sessions, I now watch other people, people that I know, who are let's say call them lay people that are not advanced SEO people that have their teams or add outsourced agencies like our own, that love coming to PubCon but those those days really seemed like a great platform for people that don't know where to start.

Brett Tabke

Right, right. Well, you know, one thing we learned from the pandemic is how much information is available online. And there really is a lot of information about SEO online. So we don't try to start with the barebone stuff because you know, people already know. You know they can read. And they can come to the, the SEO, the training tracks and jump right into a step by step. Okay, here, we're gonna take you on this path of a campaign, here's how you're going to launch it. Here's how you're going to find your keywords. Here's how it's going to mature, here's how you read your analytics to go adjust it again. Yeah, we really want to bring people into that we don't want to bring them in for for new user standpoint, because they're just starting to users anymore. There's folks coming out of college. And they're what we would call advanced SEOs 10 years ago. So we tried to give it big and broad, and one of the criticisms we always had probably the last five years, I've heard repeatedly is that we have so many speakers that are repeat speakers. You know, we've got speakers have been doing this stuff for for 20 years, and what was working 20 years ago, is still working today, the basics are still the basics, they're still applicable. So yeah, we're gonna have that guy back that knows how to do this stuff and stays current. So it cuts both ways,

Seth Price

right? I mean, once if the question is, are they and like any, like every industry, I could take law, there are some people that end up on a top 100 List locally, that are way past their prime haven't had, you know, are not the people you'd want to go to if you're really in trouble or needed help. And yet, the name is still out there. And that's sort of my question to you. How, how do you vet because you seem to do a pretty good job, but there's always politics and inside baseball, and this and that. But with every organization, this is new, you're not unique. This is this is any, you know, any from a fraternity to, you know, a nonprofit, they all they all have their mishegoss, so to speak. But, you know, one of the things that I think that is particularly difficult is figuring out where the goods are still being delivered, and who's sort of like resting on laurels and figuring that out? How do you go through that? So you know, as a vetting process? Do you have like an inner core of Joe and others that I know that? But how do you sort of figure out how to sort of curate or fine tune? Because there are times where once you get a name, it's some people, like you've seen in every industry, their names, and then their names with the goods? And just curious how you guys get that?

Brett Tabke

You know, it comes down several channels, one of the things we do right after a conferences, we survey the speakers and find out, hey, what do you think this new person? Did they really bring this bring what we wanted to have them talk about, so we lean on the speaker start first, they they're great at vetting, when we make a mistake, say hey, don't have this guy back, don't have that Scout, girl back woman back. So that's number one, we make sure we follow up so that we get the problems out before they become long term problems. Number two, we look at pedigree coming in the door. Do they work for a major corporation? Is this person working for IBM? Or are they working for fast Eddie's marketing service down down the street? So we look at that, and then we look at their history, people with agencies, we look how big their agencies, who spoke for them, almost everybody knows somebody in this business before they come to us before they put their name and to speak. And, hey, what's going on on Facebook? Are you involved in these groups? Are you involved with these people? So we do we look quite a bit and we ask around and people know, people know, to know, but

Seth Price

then as an ongoing, so then they're there. Again, for those that have not been this is a huge operation, you have panels and panels and days, there's no way that you could have your year to each of these panels. And again, using the speakers is brilliant, because it's almost like a vetted group of people that you that you have. I don't know how to sort of without, you know, have there been moments where you've gotten people you taking a shot, like, oh my god, this is amazing. And have there been any moments where somebody who comes in with pedigree from a fortune 500 company, you're like, What the hell are they talking about?

Brett Tabke

Yeah, we've Yeah, yeah, definitely. We've had a few that, like, how did they get that position? You know, they just didn't, didn't bring it. And then we've had a few, like, you say, Yeah, older folks who are past their prime, you know, their best days are behind them. We've had a couple of people come in and just give off the wall talks. And we're like, okay, next time, you're gonna have to bring back your A game. So yeah, we do look at it. And surprisingly, we look at all the decks I look at every single deck from every PubCon that might be 150 decks, but I try to look at every slide at every deck. Now some people you can I, you know, I don't need to look at Bill Hunt's, I know Bill Hunt is, is, is gonna be a number one stuff or Eric Ganga, but I do look at all the decks and I especially look at all the decks all like anybody who I might have a question about real close. So

Seth Price

well, I'm gonna I'm gonna pivot this from sort of the the, the event itself. You know, one more question there. You know, what have you learned as far as the conference planning? Right? I've noticed that over the years you've never done a sort of conference hotel with, with a special locked in rate. You've kept it very disassociated, where you have the conference, and there's a place, Hey, you want to meet up here, but you've, you've taken out some of the risk in doing this. Talk to me a little bit about what you've learned over the years and some of the things that you think of, because I think part of is what allows it not just to be a one two year thing, but you've had a pretty solid run here.

Brett Tabke

Well, you know, one thing we noticed in Vegas, there's certain hotels were well established conference will go through it one year, two years, and then they're done. Like, how can we not coming back another year? How can we run it off to San Francisco, or New York or something? And it became very apparent there definitely is relationship issues with these hotels, being able to contract with them, they're used to in Vegas, especially they're used to working with big corporations, you know, you go into The Win they just had a conference there for Wells Fargo, you know, multimillion dollar conference, and here comes a little marketing conference with 1000 people. To them, that's hardly a snack. So sometimes they treat you well, sometimes they don't. The biggest thing we've learned is to get everything in writing. And to make sure you don't take quotes you take you take final bills before you take an invoice before you take a quote. Because Vegas, though, they'll love to hand you a quote for 50,000 For AV and then they'll put a one in front of it when they hand you the bill. So

Seth Price

right I can only imagine talks about pivoting out of the conference itself, but just to the industry in general, what excites you these days, what are you seeing because you get the front row seat to just about everything, right?

Brett Tabke

Well, there's such variety, across the entire marketing spectrum, from content marketing, to SEO to social media, and just every time you think we're done every time you think everything's matured, there's nothing new along comes a Tik Tok, along comes clubhouse along comes something new. So we continue to have these new things pop up that people never thought about. Some of it's as a result of quarantine, some of it is just evolution. But I keep getting excited about all this new stuff coming around. And I think we're in for some changes from the search engines here in the next five years.

Seth Price

What is your what do you think the biggest changes will be?

Brett Tabke

I don't know. But the government's gonna have an influence on you know, this, this antitrust stuff isn't gonna go away.

Seth Price

And it's it's so funny. I was speaking at a legal conference a few years ago. And there were a bunch of judges in the audience. They start like heckling me during the q&a, which was very uncomfortable. And they're like, why don't you sue them? Like, how can they how can they you know, they were hearing about what Google Ads were and the fact that we really live and die by the organic results. Like, why are you allowing this, like, I'm just speaking here, like, I think, Google, that's your business, but like I gave up playing in their sandbox. Exactly. And all of a sudden, and you see this very often, all of a sudden, it didn't, it started to catch fire, and then COVID hits. So it sort of I think didn't get the legs. But the states are starting to take interest in the fact that like this, you know, and so whether or not you think that there'll be some de monopolization, the irony is coming for the legal space we just talked about at the last PubCon. The LSA's are taking up more real estate, not less, right, just saw a Two-pack being displayed in some results. I don't think it's stuck. But a lot of people were seeing two packs out there, which means that like, each of these things are like limiting the non paid version of Google. And you're sitting there and like, you know, there's got to be a counterbalance at some point. But what it looks like or when it happens is anybody's guess.

Brett Tabke

Yep. And aside from the we call them zero click searches increasing. Look what happened down in Australia, I was stunned that Google decided to pay Australian news publishers for content that, you know, in Western society, that's the first time they did something in France, but it wasn't published. We don't know exactly what they did, what agreement they came up with. It was not public record. But down in Australia, that's public record. They're now buying content, you know, you know, Murdoch, they went in Murdoch, in a moment said, we're gonna we're gonna charge you for this. And I was stunned that Google, bellied up and so did you know, after Facebook actually banned, and now they're talking about doing the same thing in the States. So I think this is a remarkable radical departure for Google.

Seth Price

One of the things that I've always loved and most of my times was found in the Vegas event has been the fact that you talked about this before the people there fundamentals, and some of those haven't changed. Good links are still good links. Great content is still great content, and that there are bright shiny objects that have come and gone. And you mentioned a few of the current bright, shiny objects, not that people don't make a buck on them. I'm sure there are people that could have case studies on making money. clubhouse. And there, I know some niche players that are making money with tick tock. But those things, you know, you're already hearing about a Twitter version of clubhouse and you know, everybody else is trying to replicate tick tock. The question is, you know, one of those things as you're putting these things on, how do you sort of allocate resources and your thoughts on, you know, bright, shiny objects while they're sexy, and they may be a great name for, you know, for tracks and panels aren't necessarily if you want to be there year after year. If you dive too, if you spend too much your time following bright shiny objects. There's downsides that talk to me about the balancing of tried and true versus what what might be the next big thing.

Brett Tabke

You know, Matt Cutts told me about a decade ago, he said, you can never have too many links, panels at PubCon. And so we always have one links track I just didn't honor Matt Cutts. And you know, the sessions are always packed, they're always full, doesn't matter, we can have 20 Link sessions that will be packed, every one of them will be passed

Seth Price

to to quote one of our good friends, Gee of the show, you know, a friend of the show, you know, man links, and he's like, it's links. It's a huge, huge freakin deal. So I do a pre and that's why when you go there, you know, I'm always like, as I'm planning a day, I'm like, Okay, well, I'm need to get my fill of this. And this one doesn't apply to me as much. Okay, so I can go to something else. But it's one of those that that has got to be a determinative. You know, it gets, it gets you on a plane out there to check it out. What do you think about sort of, you know, we've now seen both in the workplace going virtual, for many people, as well as conferences, you know, there's definitely the desire and the X factor we talked about earlier of people getting together. But from a content perspective, you know, for the corporate people that come out and don't go to the bars at night and are going to learn and take notes and come home and show their boss that stuff. You know, do you see a world? Where conferences was the genie out of the bottle? Are we going to see a two track where whether it's live or the stuff being sold afterwards? Is there now a secondary market that didn't exist before? Or do you think it's gonna bastardize the in person? How do you think it's gonna play out?

Brett Tabke

Yeah, there's definitely a secondary market there. And I think we will see more hybrid events like that, you know, part of every meeting planners Association, there is North America. And pretty much everybody is talking about the fact that these virtual conferences, number one, they're not profitable at all, nobody's making money on these virtual conferences. Even the big ones that have 3, or 4000. Attendees at them, just are complete failures. It's almost impossible to find any conference planner that's holding virtual events that says that their events are profitable right now. So I don't think we're gonna see a big shift towards that. We have seen a big shift towards education, you know, education online. Clearly, it's, it's taken off, and people are much more comfortable learning remote, when it's purely educational. But conferences, they just haven't been a huge success. Regardless, all these new platforms, everything from stream yard to hoppin, in fact, happened just bought stream yard sale did a really? Yeah, yeah. So it's just not functional. The way people think it's functional. The way attendees think it's functional. Everybody says, Oh, that's a great conference. But do they go attend? No, they don't, you know, you have an event and you have 2000 people signed up. Most of these are running about 50% attendance, 50% of people showing up paid attendees showing up 50% on the virtual, it's just not happening. But this idea of, you know, hybrid, that's got legs that's got legs, been able to do both has got legs for people, I think.

Seth Price

So I mean, I think that part of it is I mean, the two or three factors, right? There's the socialization, networking, serendipity, right? You can't do that, that has to be in person. On the flip side, when you really want to, you know, be able to skip how many times you've been at a thing and the preview, you watch the decks. I wish I'm very impatient ADHD guy, I wish I had a TiVo remote to be able to say, okay, you know, what, your kids and family get me to the good stuff, you know, and so the beauty of the of the digital stuff, if it's if it's not live as you can get to that, but that middle piece is the ADHD at home, family, that extra room, we got a new puppy running around, like it is so hard to sit in focus so that while it may not be nearly as efficient, and the fact that you don't have those distractions, or minimize through a phone is a pretty significant piece that you know, is not there when you're so anyway, that's the reason to get on a plane is that it gets you out of your work mindset.

Brett Tabke

Right, that opens you up to the possibilities.

Seth Price

Very cool. Well look, Brett, I really appreciate it. Taking the time, you know, thrilled to be a part of your last event excited to hear about Florida. And you know, my fingers are crossed that sooner than later. Vegas that's the question I get most is when is Vegas coming back and said I would ask you about it today? And you know, the answer is when that when Vegas tells you they're ready. It sounds like

Brett Tabke

Yeah, you know, they just opened back up about a month ago and middle of March they opened up. And they got to give all these big shows all the CMO's, you know, the car show, it's got 150,000 attendees, they've got to give all these big shows first bite at the apple and right now the big shows are like, do we go don't we go? Do we do it don't do it, what's happening with this and that they're just not sure yet. So as soon as they, they take a take a you know a date, we get the leftovers.

Seth Price

Prediction, my prediction is somebody is not going to pull the trigger at the last minute. And they're going to need to fill like a like a Jenga puzzle, they're gonna have to fill the that space and you'll so that, but my prediction is assuming that we see that you're gonna it may be like the old days where you have three months to plan.

Brett Tabke

What you know, but the big problem is the international travel most of these big shows have a huge international attendance. And right now international travel is so tricky that they they're just scared to death to pull the trigger. It's

Seth Price

One thing to say domestically, maybe you could pull it off, but you just don't know what where things are going to be. But this has been tremendous. Thank you so much. We'll put the links for registrations in the comments, so that people are there. And, you know, keep keep keep up the great work. We we appreciate what you have done for the industry and can't wait to see in person.

Brett Tabke

Hey, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for being part of it.

BluShark Digital

Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. episodes are available to stream directly on Blushark Digital's website.