In Brisbane, the going rate seems to be $895 dollars and that is for a DIY course.  How ironic a company is offering to take your hard won marketing dollars from you and in return, they will teach you Black Hat techniques that could potentially cause your website to be banned in the search engines.

Unfortunately I was not suprised when I received an email from a Gold Coast/Brisbane "Business networking organization"  promoting a one day "seminar" which included in the agenda Black Hat SEO and minimize your risk of being caught.  There have been past "workshops" endorsed that have featured "Google Experts" with secret inside info directly from the search engines themselves.  They of course were willing to part with this clandestine priceless info for a few bucks and then take your pay per click business for a few more.

I was tempted to contact the organizer to object on ethics grounds for what her organization is promoting as it just gives the SEO industry a bad name.  But after a bit of thought decided there was little to do that would change their mind, so I decided to anonomously use them as an example to contrast the efforts our company is making toward legitimate conferences.

It is increasingly important that small/medium businesses that are trying to get a leg up and implement an online marketing strategy on limited budgets are not tempted by Snakeskin Oil Salesman dressed up as providing educational information that could effectively send their business bust.

Any quality seminar is going to be sponsored by a reputable organization with experts in a variety of specialities that are there to provide a informational exchange.  There will be a fee charged by the promoter to cover venue, food/beverage, printing and a reasonable margin of profit-not by a company that is looking to fleece the flock and then come back for more.

I will highlight an upcoming reputable seminar in both Sydney and Melbourne that is targeted for those companies that want to gain a broad knowledge of different online solutions to determine what works best for them.  Stay tuned tomorrow.