Doyouseo, the association of Quebec SEOs

Kristof Maret

11 years ago

A little promotion at the beginning of this year for DoyouSEO, the association of SEO of Quebec of which I have been a member since its beginnings and which has just elected me secretary for 2018.

We know how important it is to keep up to date in our business and how essential the reliability of information sources is.

What if you went looking for the best information from experts who still believe in sharing?

The DoyouSEO association meets every two months:

SEO specialists (whether independent or from agencies)
Entrepreneurs
Programmers
editors or
simply curious

Who have in common problems of Web optimization, AdWords or UX to be cleared.

Participation in these “5 to 7″ costs $10, which is largely offset by the beer and snacks usually served during the meeting – conviviality is the key word of these ” camps “.

How does it work?

It happens as in many conferences on SEO or e-marketing

Two topics dealt with by experts – often via concrete cases – at each meeting;
The meetings are open to all, whether annual members or occasional visitors;
A Q sequence takes place after each topic;
Meetings of reliable specialists;
Networking of the different Web professions;
You have a voice in the choice of topics covered in meetings;
Other benefits are offered to members such as privileged access to certain tools.

The association that brings together SEO professionals has been in existence for 6 years, it organizes one meeting per month and has proposed 28 topics to date. Access to these meetings is open to anyone with an interest in our business, webmasters, programmers, marketers or website owners looking for information.

It was Arnaud Mangasaryan aka Ramenos (the Bullywug of Dungeons Dragons), a newcomer to Quebec at the time, very well established in the French SEO community who, on October 6, 2011, took the initiative to create an association of SEOs and set it up in Montreal.

The name of this associative entity comes out of a Facebook poll (it’s true), the logo delusional, from a brainstorming too drunk (my interpretation). I will pass over the use of English, an inevitable import of “French from there”, as Bill 101 has not yet put a grip on the camps (the monthly meetings, quite simply).

Don’t worry though! You don’t sit around a fire with marshmallows to melt…

The primary objective of DoYouSEO is to regularly exchange on topics related to web referencing, more or less technical, editorial, but always specific to the business.

(that’s a quote)

Launch of DO YOU SEO

On November 24 of the same year, the DoYouSEO association was launched, about thirty insiders remember it.

SEO specialists, web analysts, developers, social media experts, project managers, copywriters, but also web marketing directors, the audience is varied, proof of the openness desired by the founder.

In December, the website – a pure blog – went online, announcing the first “camp” on January 18, 2012 at the offices of TC Media. The site remains to this day the body that announces the meetings and makes an assessment of them.

In this regard, I deplore:

the absence of a list of members on the website, or even
a minimal presentation of them,
the lack of promotion of the profession,
the absence of technical articles, resulting from the presentations that are given at each meeting, for example.
The site would thus take on a “professional” and informative dimension, likely to reflect a slightly gilded image of the profession, which a large number of scammers strive to rot every year.

The meetings are more or less monthly, there are “gaps” at holiday time. Once or twice a year, an aperitif more focused on conviviality and networking is organized.

Two presentations per Camp

The meetings bring together an average of 40 participants in rooms lent by various companies or SEO agencies in Montreal : the Ecto cooperative, Web, marketing or SEO agencies such as NVI / Iprospect, for example.

Meetings are open to all, on a first-come, first-served basis (via evenbrite), non-members pay $10. If you take into account the drinks and pizzas that are served during the meeting, it is a ridiculous cost. Members of the association ($35/year) enter for free

The topics covered are chosen each month by survey of the members and the speakers, always volunteers, “come out” to take charge of the subjects.
This results in interventions of uneven quality, not that the speakers are bad – no negative interpretation please – but rather “in restraint”, leaving the fact that there are secrets that cannot be disseminated… which always makes me smile a little.

We come to share, but not too much…

Various motivations

The audience has changed a lot over the past three years, and the assembly is far from bringing together only specialists. Many companies send their webmaster to collect information. This provokes unequal debates, which is not without bringing certain colors to the evenings.

In fact, I think that if there was only one thing to learn during these two hours, we should not deprive ourselves of it.

That’s why I participate with interest and recommend these presentations to my clients and the participants of my SEO café.

Working alone and relatively cut off from the “milieu”, I like this opportunity to meet and appreciate colleagues that I would only know via a Linkedin profile or a G+ file, it humanizes a little my status of “old-independent-consultant-who-doesn’t-leave-out-of-his-den“.

Only twice were photos taken and posted on flickr, while the presentations are made available to the participants but do not remain online, with the exception of 3 of them on the slideshare page.

doyouseo “4” at NVI

Topics covered over the past 3 years

Real-time research and SEO impacts and
Evaluation of your SEO performance via Webanalytics
The interest of rich snippets for SEO
The presentation of SEO performance measurement according to the different types of customers
To put an end to pocket reports (still online on slideshare, thank you Adrien)
Business Intelligence and Risk Management: How to Keep Up with Industry Changes
Recognize and deal with over-optimization of your backlinks
Link acquisition and use case
SEO in project management
Discussions and feedback on link building
How social can have a direct impact on SEO
Google’s social shift, a “plus” for SEO
Case study on the use of social media in an SEO strategy (on Youtube, thanks NVI / Iprospect)
Anatomy of a successful landing page
5 actions to double the conversion of my landing pages
Effectively measure traffic from “Not provided“
Effectively measure your SEO performance with Google Analytics
Different practical ways to analyze SEO performance via web analytics
Issues related to “not provided” during web analysis (intervening remotely via Skype)
SEO in several languages (intervening remotely via Skype)
Adword and PLA campaign
Adwords vs “organic”
Content creation and planning from an SEO perspective
SEO content promotion: for a quality process
Strengthening internal linking, a universal solution?
The problem of SEO within an eCommerce site
Parallax and infinite scroll
Progressive implementation of an infinite scroll adapted to SEO
Optimizing a large Ecommerce platform by Julien Berard
Reflections to be carried out in order to have the right reflexes to get started with the viral video
Referencing and promoting your videos correctly (Julien Beaulieu)