We’ve got a great line-up for the upcoming Thought Leaders Summit on search engine optimization that I’m organizing for MarketingProfs.com: Mike Grehan, Barry Lloyd, Jill Whalen, Christine Churchill, Ammon Johns, Eric Ward, Ian McAnerin, Cam Balzer, Alan Rimm-Kaufman, and Brian Klais.
I’m working up a list of questions to send to our panelists in advance. Here are some questions that initially came to mind for me:
- What can/should be done to get rid of search engine spam that isn’t already being done?
- Are the search engines taking the right approach to comment spam with the href rel nofollow tag? If not, how should it be handled instead?
- What is the definitive list of no-nos that an SEO must refrain from in order to be considered ethical?
- Are there any SEO tactics that you think are misconstrued as unethical but are actually acceptable?
- Is buying PageRank ethical? Is it dangerous?
- How would a buyer of SEO services go about ascertaining whether a potential vendor is ethical?
- What is a fair price for SEO services? How is SEO typically priced?
- Is it ethical for an SEO to make guarantees?
- What are your “top 10” most effective optimization tactics?
- What is it that sets a top performing SEO apart from a run-of-the-mill one?
- Who are your SEO heroes? (can be individuals or companies) Why?
- What are your favorite search engines? Why?
- What should one do to make a solid business case for SEO?
- What’s wrong with the SEO industry today?
- What do you think will be the major issues for the SEO industry in 2006?
- The worst kind of SEO customers do what sorts of things?
- What’s wrong with search engines today? Are any search engines doing anything wrong or inappropriate?
- What will search engines look like in 5 years? What will the SEO industry look like in 5 years?
What would you, dear reader, add to this list, if you could pose any SEO-related question to this illustrious panel?