Searching...searching. This makes me feel optimized

It’s funny how chance works. This week it happened to work in my favour as I travelled to Edmonton on Tuesday to attend a job fair at the Shaw Centre. As it turned out, I would be substantially delayed in attending that fair, but it was a good thing.

I walked in to the Shaw Centre and noticed a sign for the Massive Technology Show. Whoa, what’s this? And look, a panel discussion on search engine marketing. Hmmm, interesting.

I talked to the right person, Lindsay Smith, and she invited me in to check things out. It was more than worthwhile doing this. There were a number of interesting booths at the tradeshow, and even better, I attended a panel discussion called Search Marketing for Dummies. Considering I’m taking a course in search engine optimization and would like to work in this field, I was in the right place at the right time.

The panel included Martin Byrne of Yahoo!Canada and David Cree of ClearpathSEO, an Edmonton search engine optimization company. I managed to talk with David after the panel, and I might have some opportunity to work with him in the future. The panel was informative, interesting and certainly not sleep inducing. The focus was on the basics of SEO, but then so much about marketing seems to be about focusing on the basics. It’s something people tend to lose sight of.

I’ve always been a huge fan of tradeshows and conferences. I get a lot out of them. If you’re going to attend any of these kinds of events, you definitely have to go into them with the right attitude. My view is that they’re an incredible opportunity to learn and make great contacts. I suppose you could take the cynical view that it’s just an opportunity to get a bunch of schwag, free drinks and a day or two off work. : )

During the panel talk, Ken and David told everyone about a number of useful sites and organizations that would be useful to people interested in SEO. I think I was the only guy there who had half a dozen pages of notes. I guess it’s the journalist in me. I can’t help it!

I am definitely going to be looking to attend this show next year and search out other such shows to attend.

I’m doing well in my search engine optimization course so far and I am really enjoying it. I’m planning on signing up for another course on writing for the web. I think it would be a useful one. I am, in my opinion, a pretty good writer, but it’s always nice to get a different perspective on different kinds of writing. I believe that courses and books help to cut down the learning curve.

Job fair

I did finally make it to the job fair, and I have to admit to being a little disappointed. There really wasn’t much there that interested me. There were few information technology firms there. I guess as techy as it got was doing phone tech support for Dell. “Dude! You need a new computer!”

There were tons of oilfield jobs (go figure). I could work for the Edmonton Police or I could become a corrections officer. I doubt I’d really want to do those jobs. My passion really has been about marketing, the Internet, business and writing. I want to do something that incorporates those interests.

Other developments

I stayed the night at my parents’ house in Edmonton. It was nice to visit for a while. I also enjoyed eating some of the bread my mom made in her breadmaking course over at NAIT.

While I was there, I also had the opportunity to try and sell my mom on starting a website writing about health issues. She’s quite knowledgeable about health eating, healthy living and alternative medicine. My wife is already looking at developing a website on topics she’s interested in. It’s like I’m a cyber-pusher. “Psst, wanna start a website? I can help you out. It’s easy. You’ll love it.”

Both my wife and my mom have said they’re “not writers.” They should do a bit of surfing. There are lots of people who really aren’t writers, but they give it a shot anyway. Sometimes we wish they wouldn’t, but the web is a democratic medium.

It’s a shame to hear people say that they’re not writers and they don’t take a chance. I think the key is to have passion about a subject and that will help to overcome that mental block. Just ask someone you know to review what you’ve written. Get them to critique it: is it understandable? Free from major errors? Interesting? I’d say those are the fundamentals.

Maybe I just want everyone around me to develop websites so I can help them get lots of traffic and put my skills to use. : ) I’m sure I’ll be doing that soon enough anyway.

I am planning on revamping my series of websites in light of some of the new knowledge I’ve gained. I’d probably do that anyway, even without the new information! I just like doing that kind of stuff.

On that note, I spend a little time every day reviewing the traffic that comes to my journalism jobsearch site. I always find it fascinating how people find their way to it. Even more interesting is seeing just how high I rank for certain search phrases. I’m in the top 10 for a number of them, and sometimes in the top spot out of hundreds of thousands or millions of search results. Not bad for not really having put out much effort in the design and writing of my site. I just did a lot of things right at the time without really knowing it. I’d love to help others do the same, now that I know more about what I’m doing.

I think my background in business (accounting, marketing and entrepreneurship) along with my journalism degree (major in public relations) and journalism experience, really fit in nicely with search engine optimization and search engine marketing in general.

This weekend

Considering we’ve been doing so much work on our home here in Caroline, it might be appropriate to take a bit of a break and head up to Edmonton this weekend and check out the big home show.

I think we could use someone to help clear up the clutter, but we’ve been doing not a bad job of that so far. We’ve been working on clearing out our large storage locker and incorporating all of it into our small home. It hasn’t been an easy task and we’ve had to be pretty brutal in deciding what we want to keep and get rid of. It’s a good thing to do, because next time we move, it’ll be way easier after we’ve gotten rid of so many possessions. I doubt we’ll get rid of everything to the point we’ll be like hobos with a bag on a stick (nice ideal) but life will be easier.

Besides, who wants to get rid of DVDs like Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter series? God knows I need to unload a few books. Okay, a lot of books! My daughter seems to have taken after me in that respect.

Hopefully we’ll have the energy to continue the purge. It will be worth it in the end.