The major highlight of SMX Advanced for me was Danny Sullivan's rant about links in the ask SEOs session. It was so good that people are still talking about it today and will likely talk about it for the next five years.
In short, his message was that search engines do not want you to build links - they want your content to earn links. So this doesn't mean you should rename your "link building" service to a "link earning" service - it means you should build a site, content, tools that deserve on their own merits to earn links.
Jeremy posted on his blog the audio of the rant, here it is:
It was so good, Danny did a write up on Search Engine Land to summarize it after calming down a bit. He wrote Link Building Means Earning “Hard Links” Not “Easy Links” and posted also on Google+ where he said:
Search engines don't want you to build links. They want you to earn links. People are clearly confused about the important differences, so I've sat down in my old man chair, cracked open a few beers and written this post to explain it more.
This rant and the necessary message it sent through the industry will be cited for years to come.
Forum discussion at Google+ & Cre8asite Forums.
