This week, I was fortunate to appear on a conference panel with two other Colorado SEO’s who I respect and admire, Robert Wright, also of Glenwood Springs, and Mike Belasco, of Denver. We spoke at the business conference for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association at the Inverness Resort in southeast Denver.

Most of the attendees were small entrepreneurs on playing field dominated by the likes of Yahoo!, Disney and ESPN. Their primary concern was how to compete against those big boys online.

The tips we gave them apply to people in nearly any industry who find themselves in similar circumstances. The hot topics were links and social media. Here are some of the things we discussed:

• Linking has changed, but don’t stop trying to get good links pointing to your website.
• Reciprocal links are fine if they make sense for your industry, your website and your web site visitors, but don’t over do it and don’t participate in link networks.
• You can get mad links from social sites. However, this is time consuming, takes effort and requires learning how to play the game on each site. It was even suggested that the online space may be ripe for a fantasy sports social site based on the Pligg platform that Sphinn uses.
• Online video is here to stay. Learn how to optimize your videos, so that they rank well in vertical and blended search. Not many people of doing a good job of this, so you can gain an advantage quickly.
• The little guys can gain an advantage over the big ones by figuring out what they can do better and playing to those strengths. They have the natural advantage of staying nimble and being able to respond quickly to news and changes.

While some of the audience seemed a bit lost, others were furiously taking notes at all the right times. These are the ones who will go home and get to work making their websites better.