Our Unfiltered Experience at SEO Mastery Summit 2025 Ho Chi Minh

INTRO:
It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Hello and welcome to another episode of the SEO show. We may be a month late, but we're here. I'm Michael Kostner. Yes, about that.

ARTHUR: Since we've last uploaded an episode. Well, yep. Wow, you've really dropped the ball.

MICHAEL: You have really dropped the ball. It would have been sooner, but you got a little bit sick when we went away and we had to wait for you to get better.

ARTHUR: Hmm. Likely story.

MICHAEL: Hey, you're the one that couldn't handle the high octane, high voltage SEO conference that we just went to and had to recover. But we're good now, aren't we? We're ready to chat about what we thought about the SEO mastery summit in Vietnam. Fresh off the press. Fresh off the press.

ARTHUR: What did you think? I liked it. I mean, we were chatting about it off camera, but. It's only been around for a year, right? So this was the second conference that they've run from memory. And I thought it was pretty good. Like I think for a conference, it's only been around for two years. It was well-organized. It didn't have that many well-known speakers, but there was a few in there that were good. And yeah, I think it exceeded my expectations, but I say that because my expectations were probably quite low.

MICHAEL: All right, well, we'll cover what the conference is, and then we'll give our thoughts on the bad, the good, and a wrap up. And one thing to make clear at the start, we have no relationship with these guys. We're not sponsored by them. We're not trying to speak at them. We would never want to speak at conferences, so we can be honest. in what we thought. We're just attendees. So we're not going to be- For now, anyway. No, no, no, no. In my world, I don't really want to talk at conferences. We'll see. We'll see. I have no desire to, so we can be honest with our feedback. We're not, we're not bought and paid for. We are totally unbiased, unbiased SEO podcasters. So the conference was SEO mastery summit in Vietnam. Yeah. It was not last week, but the week before it went for about a week in Ho Chi Minh city, um, at about 400 people or so in attendance. Yep. Seem to be a mix of agency side people, people from e-commerce stores, like client side people, people from software tools, um, largely from, I would say. People based in India, Southeast Asia area in Australia was the bulk of it. There are some Americans there as well, but some Europeans. Yep. Some Europeans, but I would say the audience largely came from Southeast Asia, Oceania area. Um, and it was, where was it at? It was at the ridges.

INTRO: What was it?

MICHAEL: No, the Marriott. The Marriott and the Marriott Chi Minh. Which is a nice venue. Yeah, the venue was good. The location was good. It's in, we've learned that Ho Chi Minh has districts, district one, two, three, four, so on. Yes. And district one, which seems to be where most of the action is if you're a tourist.

ARTHUR: Yes. Like it's a CBD basically.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Smack bang. Smack bang in the CBD. Lots of banh mi, which was good. Yes. Close proximity to the venue.

ARTHUR: Yes.

MICHAEL: Tick, tick, tick. But not that that mattered because the venue, they provide food for you every day as part of their networking thing, which we'll get into in a minute in the good, the bad and the ugly. Yes. And the general setup was for the first couple of days, they're doing like more breakout room. They split the big room into two and they have probably lesser known speakers talking about things. And then the last couple of days, it's bigger, more well-known speakers or speakers from bigger brands in a, everyone joined together in a room. And so the breakout talks went for about an hour each and the main talks went for about half an hour each.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: That's the general gist of it. We missed anything?

ARTHUR: No, I think that's everything.

MICHAEL: Well, we're going to start with the bad because we want to start on a low and then finish on a high with the good. And then I'd give our final thoughts. So maybe let's, let's just go, uh, turn for turn with bads. I'm going to start off with, I felt the lunch breaks. were a bit too long. So it was about two hours. So there'd be a couple of sessions in the morning, two hours for lunch, then a couple more sessions after that. And the lunches were really good. It was like a buffet style food from all sorts of different Southeast Asian style food, basically really good quality food. And you'd sit at like your wedding style tables and It was a good chance to meet randoms because everyone was just sort of sat at tables together, and it was great for networking. I could see why they wanted to do two hours, but for me personally, it was a bit too long sort of just hanging around waiting for more talks to start.

ARTHUR: Yeah, I agree. I remember I recall them saying that they did it intentionally because the feedback last year was that the lunches were too short. And my gut tells me it's because of the people that were like expoing there probably didn't get an opportunity to talk to people because they were all at lunch. So they were probably whinging that, you know, they set up booths there, but there was no one there. So my gut tells me they did that to encourage people to eat and then go back up and actually speak to them. Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Makes sense. So they got to, I guess, keep their sponsors happy, but, you know, we found ourselves, we'd have lunch, we'd chat to people for a bit, and then we'd go walk around the area, just cause, cause, um, we got a bit bored. So, um, yeah, look, it's not bad. Depends. It is what you make of it. If you're maybe if you're a vendor and you're selling your services to people is great. But from our point of view, we were a little bit bored during those breaks. So.

ARTHUR: Yep. Agree.

MICHAEL: What else you got up your bad sleeve?

ARTHUR: Well, I think on the topic of too long, I think five days is a little bit long as well. I feel like they could have crammed everything they did into three days. Do you agree? Yeah, I think so.

MICHAEL: They could probably have culled some of those initial breakout chats. I guess it's up to you whether you go to them or not, but we're looking at the schedule from Australia before we go there, and we think, oh yeah, we'll go check all this stuff out. But once you're there, it is a bit sort of like you're back at school kind of thing.

ARTHUR: Drawn out. I'd say it's drawn out, and I think that if they reduced the lunch break and then perhaps started a bit earlier than 10, 10.30? maybe had some of the lesser known speakers speak at like nine for those that wanted to watch them, you could easily do that in three days. Yeah. I feel that's better because you don't have to invest that much time. You don't have to get there super early. You can just rock up on the Wednesday, finish with those Friday, and that's it.

MICHAEL: And when we went to Chiang Mai, their breakout things were like random venues all over the city. So people sort of organize what they want. It was a bit of a chance to check out different venues, parts of the city, whereas all of this stuff was in the one venue. So it made it a bit repetitive. So maybe that was the problem with it. Like in Chiang Mai, the first few days you're all over the place and then the last two for the big ticket speaks, you're in the actual venue. So maybe that's the way to do it. I'm going to complain. This is a little bit of a nitpick. In the early days, the first couple of breakout speaks, the rooms, people can just come and go from them as they please during talks. It was bloody annoying because we were sat near a door and every literally five seconds you'd hear, as the door opened, people stick their head in, then stick their head out. Click, click. Yeah. Come and go. It was loud.

ARTHUR: It was loud. It wasn't just a subtle, you know, someone opening the door, it was like the bang is the door, hit the other door, super annoying. And it was like no exaggeration every, you know, 10 seconds.

MICHAEL: Yep. So I would say 15 minute grace period after the start of a talk and then you've missed it.

ARTHUR: Yeah, I would have been pissed off if I was speaking.

MICHAEL: Yeah, that would throw me off. Yeah, like these people put time in to prepare their talks. So you either turn up and watch it on time, maybe 15 minutes late. And then if you're not there, you miss it. Yeah, like, I think that would be better. Yeah, I guess maybe they want as many people in the room as possible for these talkers. But yeah, as an audience member, it was annoying.

ARTHUR: I can't remember if it was the last conference he went to, but they definitely did try to stop people coming in after the person started speaking, because it is super distracting.

MICHAEL: The seats are a bit further from the doors in that other venue, too. This one, you're right near them in some of the seats.

ARTHUR: Yeah. And I found, again, a lot of the seats were empty the whole conference. So they must have set it up over capacity, because I can't think of one time where the room, when they did the whole room, was more than half full. Yeah. Yeah.

MICHAEL: You have anything else on the bad front?

ARTHUR: Yeah, I guess we talked about this at the time, the energy was a bit low towards the end of it. I think that kind of ties in with like, I guess, how long the conference was and the breaks and stuff, like spending the whole day there. The energy was just kind of gone, like, just felt a bit dead. And it kind of, it might be as well because the room was set up for, you know, probably twice as many people. It kind of felt empty. I guess if you had a full room or if you used the smaller conference room, it would have a bit more life, but yeah, it just felt a bit dead. Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I agree. And I think energy also maybe comes from an emcee. Like sometimes they have professional emcees. Remember that guy telling jokes and they were bad jokes, but like at least it was working the room a bit.

ARTHUR: That can make a difference. They had that here, but I kind of, yeah, the crowd weren't lapping it up at all.

MICHAEL: Well, I think the emcee was a dude that runs it.

ARTHUR: There was the female emcee, the Carmen from, and I feel bad because I would never want to emcee. I know it's a tough gig, but I just don't think anything she said landed with anyone. It was just a bit cringe. Yeah. A bit too cringe. Cringe can be funny, but when it's just cringe, cringe, then nah.

MICHAEL: No. All right. Well, let's, um, one other thing, one speaker, right. He was meant to be talking about Google maps and like how to dominate Google maps in 2025. Interesting topic, you know, relevant to a lot of service businesses. We go along to it and he goes five minutes into his talk and just turns it into this weird talk about AI and how he's doing it. Was a rant. It made no real sense. Yeah. And it was, that's a bit annoying to be expecting one thing. Cause you look at the schedule, you make your plans for the day, you turn up and you're just, you're hoodwinked. We were hoodwinked. Yeah. Um, so I feel like you should talk about what you, what you, um, what you've put in the schedule. Now he was one of the sponsors, so they probably give him free reign to do what he wants. But from a attendees point of view, it was less than stellar.

ARTHUR: Ooh, I do have another point. I, there was a Q and a after every, um, after every speaker where you could ask a question in the Hoover app, a lot of the time they didn't ask the questions or sometimes they even altered the question to make it easier for the, for the speaker. So I think in that example, didn't someone, or a lot of people, right. What happened to the talk about Google maps and it was upvoted, but they just didn't ask that. Yeah. That was super annoying. And the way I think in that case.

MICHAEL: They're probably just doing that just, you know, they don't want to embarrass him on stage.

ARTHUR: No, I understand that. But there was, there was other situations where we would, the digital, was it the digital PR one where they were talking about people asking questions about, is it more about the relationship with the publishers or is it about the content?

MICHAEL: And it was just completely ignored, even though it was pushed up to the top. So. Well, they, they paraphrase the question and then it lost the meaning of the question that was originally asked. So.

INTRO: Yeah.

MICHAEL: She gave a good answer to the question that was asked, but it wasn't the ones that the attendees were asking in the app. So it's sort of. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know what, some of those speakers were going back and actually answering the questions in the app too. So maybe encouraging all of the speakers to do that because they weren't all doing that.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I mean, you could also speak to the speakers outside the room as well, because they were hanging around. That's part of the good, I guess.

MICHAEL: Well, let's get on to the good. We'll start with that as a point. The speakers were all over the place. out in the hallways in between talks, at lunch, at parties. So if you wanted to, you could go pick their brains about stuff. Which is where a lot of the value in these types of conferences can probably come from a lot of the time, like the speaks. Talks are usually pretty basic and you're not usually learning anything groundbreaking. Well, that's it.

ARTHUR: I always say, I always say that if you have some SEO nuggets of gold that you want to keep to yourself, you're not going to go to a room of 400 SEOs and just spill it. Yeah. Until it's already common knowledge.

MICHAEL: Yeah. But see, a lot of people will attend this conference, particularly from the client side, thinking that they're going to really elevate their SEO or SEO mastery, you know, like really learn what's what at the moment. A lot of the content's a bit vanilla, a bit bland, particularly when you talk to SEOs that if you're flying halfway across the world to attend a conference in SEO, you're probably pretty across SEO in general. So the talks should be high level. Not to say that they have to be the latest and greatest trick that only you know, but more high level, more actionable. Yep. It's like when we went to Chiang Mai, the same sort of deal, a lot of generic stuff. And then the talks that were a bit more interesting, like Chris, when he spoke about the casino side of things and pull on tactics that were working in that space, it just made it so much more interesting and engaging.

ARTHUR: Yes.

MICHAEL: Yeah. I guess we're sort of back on the bad here with the talks, very bland. You're a bit more actionable with it, but yeah, the good, you can network with the speakers as much as you like and networking opportunities in general, as we said, we're very good at this event.

ARTHUR: Yeah. The parties, I think were the best parties, conference parties that I've been to. Even the opening party was great. Like everyone was there.

MICHAEL: Would you say better than the marketer's ball in San Diego?

ARTHUR: I'd say definitely better than the market is bull in San Diego. Um, yeah, I agree. I agree. I, especially the closing party, I feel like a lot of the, even the speakers were there just like getting loose, talking, mingling. Like I found with the AHRFs conference that the speakers and stuff went at the parties. So. At the Chiang Mai conference, they went at the parties and I remember going to the closing party and it was dead. There was barely anyone there. Even at the opening party, the opening party was a bit better. I found that the parties this time around were a lot better.

MICHAEL: Yeah, well the opening, both parties, the venue wasn't too large, you're sort of all mingling together, which is good, because it encourages chatting, networking. So, yeah, both parties were good. I would say The good with this one is some of the talks were from names that aren't on the circuit, so to speak. Every conference seems to have the same names talking at it all the time. Now the pros of that is they're polished in the way they present. You don't have this scenario where someone gets up and totally eats their balls on stage because they haven't really presented much, but it does make it a bit boring. So there were some lesser known names there. For example, there's Stuart Vickers, AKA SEO Jesus has a good SEO channel on YouTube. I haven't seen his name around the place much at conferences. Maybe he is, but this is the first time that I'd seen him pop up and he actually gave a really good, well-polished talk that I thought had actionable stuff in it. And it's just good to see other people talk.

ARTHUR: I find as well that if you go to conferences with the same speakers, they often present the same thing. I remember we went to, like Chiang Mai was one of the guys that was presenting at Sydney, I think. Can't remember exactly who it was, but it was basically the same president he did over a year ago. Some slight changes. They're not going to be refreshing the material every conference, they're going to be talking about the same thing. So having the lesser known names and I guess new speakers, you'll probably find out something you might not know already. Yeah.

MICHAEL: Who else did you enjoy in terms of preserves?

ARTHUR: SEO Jesus, I liked some of the SEO takedowns, although for me they were quite basic, but I could see how they could be useful for people that aren't as experienced, or maybe business owners and things like that. I just like the idea of like, you know, having everything live and then just kind of going through a site, showing people how you audit the site, because it's one thing to say this is what's wrong with your site, but actually going through and having like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog and, you know, all the different tools open, it kind of gives perspective to like how you do an audit. Yeah.

MICHAEL: They, to give the context to people listening, they actually set their computer up, screen share on the screen in the room and just did SEO, so to speak, but did SEO, but, you know, use their tools. They were doing SEO. explain what they were looking at and why and the thinking behind it, which we know from when we're selling SEO to people, that sort of stuff is great because it's bespoke, it's actionable, it's interesting to the person because it's about them and it shows the knowledge of the thought that goes behind it. So yeah, they were cool. There were only two of them over two days.

ARTHUR: Yeah, there was only two. Lauren's from StudioHawk. I thought that was good, even though it wasn't really about SEO, it was more about their SEO agency and how they hire SEOs and their process and recruitment and all that, which I guess is useful for us because we're an SEO agency as well. So getting insights from that. And I think out of everyone, it was those three that kind of stood out.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. I thought the digital PR one was okay as well, but I wouldn't say it was a bit more on the basic side as well. So those ones had a bit more.

ARTHUR: Yeah, I agree. Like it would, they were all okay, but it's all stuff we already know. So, but I guess for someone that doesn't know, it would have been really useful. So it goes back to like, you know, how experienced you are and you know, if you're just starting out, like if a junior SEO or someone that, you know, has been only doing it for two years, when they probably would have gained a lot more than what we have having doing it for a very, very long time.

MICHAEL: All right, well, let's wrap things up. Final thoughts. You know, this stuff was advertised this conference online, social media, building up a bit of hype about it. SEO mastery. What do you reckon? Value versus hype. Value? How much was it?

ARTHUR: I can't remember, it wasn't that expensive. I think it was like 600 bucks US for a ticket. I think for five days of a conference and the opportunity to network and meet the speakers, I think it's good value. Reaching them in is quite cheap. So, you know, flights and accommodation there aren't that expensive, so you can definitely get a lot out of it for not that much money.

MICHAEL: Yeah, you get lunch provided for you every day, and then if you wanted to- Well, that lunch was insane.

ARTHUR: That lunch alone was probably worth $40, $50, unlimited buffet. Not even just rubbish food, it was great. 9 out of 10, I reckon. Absolutely, I agree. And hype? I think in terms of hype, look, I didn't see much hype around it. So for me, I guess it lived up or slightly exceeded expectations. I thought it was going to be a lot worse. So I think it lived up to the hype. If you go in there expecting to learn just absolute gold every day, then you're definitely not going to live up to the hype. But I knew what I was getting into. So yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah. I think to get value from it, you, it's all in talking to people around the place. That's where you're going to learn little nuggets. Like we were talking to people, we learned some things. We chatted to other people who were sort of thinking about things in their business, gave them pointers and ideas that I felt were good for them. So that's where you get the gold from in something like this. So if you're going to get on a plane, travel all the way there. deal with that, get sick like Arthur did, have to recover from being sick.

ARTHUR: You want to get, extract value from it. Wait, don't talk about me being sick. You were sick all of last conference, the whole time.

MICHAEL: Hey, I think we acknowledged it at the time too.

ARTHUR: I got sick on the way back, you got sick on the way there. So, I'm still one up. Very true.

MICHAEL: But what I'm saying is, if you're going to go through all of that, all the rigors of trouble, you're not going to get value just from listening to the talks, is what I'm saying. You need to go out and chat to people.

ARTHUR: Do you think it was worth it?

MICHAEL: Would you go back? Um, yeah, I would. Yeah. For us, it's like our world, so that you're always going to pick up something interesting from it. Um, it's fun to go meet people. Yep. You pick up tidbits here and there and that's what it's all about.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I mean, we, I met a link daughter. from Poland that has been hitting me up on LinkedIn for ages and finally got to speak to him face to face. And it was really good. It was great to put like a real face to the name. So you never know who you'll bump into.

MICHAEL: Exactly. I think the people that are going to get benefit from it most are people newer to SEO or if you're looking for services, vendors to supply you with stuff. then probably going and talking to some of the tools there. But like, that's not to say you can't just go look that stuff up, look up who sponsors conferences and go talk to their sales team. But I know it's a different level of chat, isn't it? When it's face to face.

ARTHUR: Yeah. When you get some cool t-shirts, some jumpers, stickers, some swag.

MICHAEL: Very expensive t-shirt and jumpers. Yeah. But yeah, you get your swag as well, which is what's always good about conferences. Yeah. So, um, look, we've done that one. We've done Changmo. I don't know. Maybe we need to go to Estonia next and go to SEO Estonia, get on the Europe scene. Yeah.

ARTHUR: I think they're moving that to the U S. I wonder if they'll move it every year, like they had it in Singapore this year, sorry, last year, then the US this year, maybe they'll go back to Singapore, who knows?

MICHAEL: Yeah, the Asia area is easier for us, obviously. I don't know that traveling all the way to Europe is worth it for a conference. Well, no, not just a conference, you'd want to do a bit more than that. Yeah. If you're presenting and trying to make money out of it, sure. But as an attendee, I don't think the networking is that worth it because you go talk to all those same people somewhere closer to home.

ARTHUR: So when are you going to start presenting at conferences? That's, that's a million dollar question. I just don't have the desire or need to. So I could see you up there. I could see you up there with a little headset.

MICHAEL: telling my story, people like to share photos of themselves in business class for some reason in their presence. I think maybe I saw three people do it at that conference.

ARTHUR: SEO Jesus did it and then got a standing or not a standing applaud, but he got an applause from everyone in the crowd. Yeah. Cause it's like, I've managed to book my first business class flight. It was just the photo of his little legs sticking showing the leg room. Hey, that's cool. Good on him. Like that's, that's great.

MICHAEL: Sure. But I don't want to be up on stage doing that. It doesn't excite me talking in front of big crowds of people. But I'm going to put your name forward.

ARTHUR: My bold prediction for 2026 is Michael will do or start speaking at conferences. That's my bold prediction. We'll revisit that next year.

MICHAEL: All right. Well, on that note, I think it's a good time to wrap this one up. That's been the first episode of the SEO show in a while. We're going to get back into a routine, aren't we Arthur? We're committed.

ARTHUR: Yeah, we always say that, never do, but we will.

MICHAEL: We've had a stand talking to from our producers and we're going to do what we need to do, get back on schedule. So hopefully you enjoyed that one. We'll be back with another episode at some point in the future, but until then, happy SEOing. Bye bye.

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