There are several sessions but the one I’d love to see is “Past & Future of SEO” a Presentation Face-Off: Todd Malicoat vs. Rand Fishkin. Now that’s gotta be interesting.

The Details:
Where: Seattle, WA at the Westin Hotel and Conference Center
When: August 24th and 25th
How Much: $599 for PRO Members (That’s $300 off of the regular price)

We’ve cherry-picked some of the best SEOs in the business (you can see a full list here). They’ll deliver two days jam-packed with priceless hints and secrets, covering topics like linkbuilding and search engine penalties.

Guarantee your place – Our original allocation of tickets sold out very quickly so we’ve opened up this block of 50 just for PRO Members, but once these are gone, that’s it, there are no more seats to offer so don’t hesitate.

One of the things I always recommend in deciding which search marketing training class, seo or sem, to attend is to see who the instructors are and consider their background and depth of knowledge. That’s why I’ve included the background on the instructors, Greg Jarboe, Amanda Watlington and Matt Bailey, as listed on the website.

Greg Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm and public relations agency with offices in San Francisco and Boston. He is also a partner in Newsforce, developer of an integrated suite of press release SEO tools.

SEO-PR is one of 10 companies that Larry Chase’s Web Digest for Marketers named to its Who’s Who in SEO Experts. SEOmoz.org has put SEO-PR on its Recommended List of SEO Consultants, Experts, Firms and Service Providers.

Greg is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld’s PubCon, and public relations conferences. He is also the news search, blog search and PR correspondent for the Search Engine Watch Blog.

Gord Hotchkiss, who writes the Out of My Gord blog, has called Greg “the guru of cranking up web visibility through effective optimization of press releases and leveraging news search.” Lee Odden, who writes the Online Marketing Blog, has called Greg “a pioneer in the field of using search engine optimization in combination with press releases.” And Matt McGowan, Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media, has called Greg, “the industry’s top expert in press release SEO and social media relations.”

Greg has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, marketing, and search engine optimization at Lotus Development Corp., Ziff-Davis, and other companies. He graduated from the University of Michigan, attended the University of Edinburgh, and worked on his Masters at Lesley College.

Amanda Watlington Ph.D., A.P.R. Before setting up Searching for Profit, Amanda was director of research for a leading Search Engine Optimization firm. Her consultancy focuses on how businesses can leverage search engines and new media such as blogging, RSS and podcasting to achieve marketing objectives. She has over twenty years of experience as a communications, sales and business strategy consultant, and ten years as a Web marketer.

Amanda has developed award-winning print, web, training and presentation media. She has developed patent-pending language-based analytic tools and methodologies to support search engine marketing campaigns. She is a renowned expert on blogs, podcasting, and the language and psychology of search. The clients she has worked with include Fortune 500 companies, search engines, publishers and e-commerce merchants.

Amanda is the author of two books. Her most recent book is Business Blogs: A Practical Guide. Amanda is a sought-after presenter and a recognized industry thought leader. She appears regularly as a speaker at Search Engine Strategies and DMA’s Annual and Multi-Channel Marketing conferences. She serves on DMA’s Search Engine Marketing Council, of which she is the past co-chair. She is the chair of the Web Analytics Association’s research committee and has served on the search and research committees of IAB.

Her education includes a Bachelors Degree in Classical Civilization from Douglass College in New Jersey, a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Eastern Michigan University. She is a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the Web Analytics Association (WAA), the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and has an APR accreditation.

Matt Bailey is president and founder of SiteLogic Marketing and an internationally-recognized authority on search engine marketing, website analytics, usability, and accessibility. As a consulting and training company, SiteLogic focuses on helping organizations take control of their websites and their web marketing plans. Sought after worldwide as a seminar presenter and teacher; Matt speaks regularly for The Direct Marketing Association, Search Engine Strategies conferences and training, the American Advertising Federation, and many private training seminars. Matt is known for his conversational, entertaining speaking style and his ability to make technical topics both understandable and practical. Matt oversees The Direct Marketing Association’s SEO training program and is the trainer for the DMA’s web marketing seminar. He has consulted with hundreds of companies, including Goodyear, Hilton International, JCrew, Gradall, Moen Faucets, American Greetings, and Samsonite.

July 25, 2008 SEO Class – No seats available
August 15, 2008 SEO Class – seats available
September 12, 2008 SEO Class – seats available

Here’s what the website says regarding these classes;

What you will learn as it pertains to your website:

SEO Myths Dispelled
Diagnosing Technical Website Problems
Creating Your SEO Strategy
Keyword Research
Site Architecture Makeover
How to Map Your Keywords to Your Website
Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Killer SEO Copywriting

Links, Publicity and Social Media
Web Analytics for Measuring Success

Register here for the High Rankings SEO Class.

UPDATE: See the original post on the launch announcement of these classes

…..The survey also did not attempt to control for any particular biasing, so there is certainly over-representation by those more likely to read SEOmoz, those more likely to take surveys, and those more likely to have found information about the survey itself (via email to SEOmoz members and posts on sites like SearchEngineLand and SERoundtable or others).

Nevertheless the survey reveals some trends and provides some insights. I’m just looking at the seo training here but head over to SEOmoz and take a closer look at the entire survey to get a better understanding of the seo community.

In general, we can see that most respondents are self-taught, followed by on-site training and formal classes. However, this graph breaks down responses by the type of company a respondant works for, and helps to answer questions like “If a respondent works at an SEM agency, how likely is it that he or she learned SEO and how does that compare to respondents at other types of companies?” The chart indicates that respondents from SEM agencies, and non-self-employed respondents in general, received on-site traning more often than, for instance, self employed consultants. This is probably not surprising, but knowing this kind of difference in source of SEO education might indicate broader differences between self-employed and non-self-employed SEOs. We’ll look at differences between these groups in more detail below, and this might be a great starting place for further analysis of the data by the reader.

Search Engine Strategies is offering sem training in Denver, Colorado on May 6th. The courses and instructors are listed below. Costs are $745 for half day and $1,345 for the full day. You can register here.

Local Search Engine Marketing 101
Mary Bowling, Blizzard Internet Marketing

Search Engine Optimization Workshop
Shari Thurow, Omni Marketing Interactive

Advanced Keyword Research
Ron Jones, Symetri Internet Marketing

How to Effectively Use Social Media for Search Marketing Campaigns
Liana Evans, KeyRelevance

These workshops will provide you with the practices, applications, and hands-on exposure you need to become (and remain!) a top performer in your field. In the end, you will not only walk away with the knowledge and skills you need to be a successful search engine marketer, you will also jump-start your career and enhance your professional know-how

There’s a pretty impressive lineup of instructors for the SEO Class in Troy, New York on April 11th including;