SMX photos!
Freshly back from SMX. What an epic journey that turned out to be!
A combination of sleeping pills, jetlag and the remnants of my nasty flu I carried with me throughout my entire US trip has meant that I just slept for 12 hours straight. Maybe going out and drinking huge amounts of booze 4 days in a row, getting almost zero sleep and then waking up early and trying to do things like think and attend sessions and walk around and see things was not really the best way forward? I think I managed to squeeze every little bit of usefulness and fun out of the conference, even though my Seattle friends I was visiting afterwards had to deal with the consequences in the form of a very sick house guest for a few days.
Is there anyone in the SEO world who still doesn’t know the story about the 36 hours Dixon and I spent trying to get to Seattle? It was really fun telling it to people at the MSN party on the first night when everyone was drunk and jolly and I was so happy to actually be in Seattle, I could almost cry. By the next day when I’ve told the story 20 or so times at least, the novelty had somewhat worn off.
Luckily, the way back was much more straightforward.
I’m really glad I went. I’ve learnt a lot and got to hang out with some really cool people I don’t see nearly often enough. Now I have a few months of hard work ahead, putting to use all the stuff I picked up.
Here are some of my conference pictures:
Rob Kerry & Jay Young at the MSN party
I don’t know who that guy was, but he sure liked playing with the boats
Jay Young, eco warrior
Jay Young (aka raver boy) and a rather blurry Rob
Dixon makes up for lost time with the other frat boys
I’m going to SMX!
For better or worse, I decided it would be a good idea to go. Marks & Spencer are paying for me to go, as in their credit card is . Sadly, I think they expect me to give the money back at some point? Or can I just change my name and move to another country?
Obviously, seeing as I’m paying, it’ll be a jetsetting, no-expense spared affair. I shall be staying here , which I think beats even Dixon “Black Hat” Jones’ record of cheap conference hotels? At least mine supposedly has a shower in the room, although the pictures look rather naff so I dread to think what it looks like in reality without the flattering lighting and angles.
I’ve never paid for my own conference before. It’d better be worth it!
In between sessions, I will be begging for money on the street. Please give generously. I promise I won’t spend it all on crack.
I want to go to SMX!
It’s hard work, no longer having a cushy travel budget. 
Trying to decide whether I can afford to go anyway…
The BBC discover SEO
Shock! Horror! Did you know that search engines can be manipulated? Did you know that “miserable failure” used to link to George W. Bush? Read all about it here.
What can I say, I’m stunned!
Casualties of change
I just got back from someone’s leaving drinks. Not mine, I hasten to add, but a sales guy from an advertising network I buy from who’s packing it in and taking a major life changing step with his GF, moving out of London and completely changing sector. Great guy, great company. In fact, they’re one of the best I’ve worked with and totally deserve the above well-anchored link (and even a similar link on a better ranking blog). I’ve been working with this guy since my very first days of doing online marketing and he was one of those rare people who made me realise not all sales people are slimy, greedy bastards who only look at short-term gain. I’m really happy for him for pursuing his dream, but the whole thing got me a bit introspective (in a 2 double vodkas sort of way).
The revolution will not SUCK
So I kept seeing the ads on the tube about the “information revolution” and was wondering what the whole thing was about. Being somewhat of a nerd (in hindsight) I thought maybe someone had it in for Telehouse or something. Then I saw one of the ads on a website and decided to click and see what the whole thing was about…
My god, how sucky is that? I mean, I know Matt Cutts already pointed out the problems with this campaign from a search point of view, but from an advertising point of you, it sucks even more.
You’d think this massive corporation was suddenly overrun by communists or something. First they ditched the posh butler (obvious symbol of the opression of free will) and now this.
Can you smell the reek of tries-too-hard? I can smell it from here! There’s nothing people hate more than the stench of tries-too-hard. In a month that gave us the lamest PR campaign in the history of mankind the Ask.com campaign may be dwarfed into insignificance (like the product it promotes), but we can’t just let it die without honouring its gross ineptness, can we? Oh, I think not.
SEO for moms
So my mom, who’s a family and couples’ therapist in Israel, has a website, which she had set up for her without talking to me about it first. She gave the designer free reign (*shudder*). So now she has a flash-only site and is not ranking for anything apart from her name, which is in the domain name. I’ve been trying to explain SEO to her and get her to add an HTML site with actual content on it.
The conversation sort of went like this:
Mom: I can’t see my site on Google at all, when I search for “couples’ therapy” it doesn’t come up.
Me: That’s because the search engine robot can’t tell what your site is about. You have to change your site so that it can tell and then get people to link to it.
Mom: ???
Me: It’s like…. Imagine if you had some bananas and you wanted some monkeys to come and eat them, really stupid monkeys.
Mom: Monkeys?
Me: Yes, so you put all your bananas in the fridge, but the stupid monkeys can’t open the fridge, so you have to get the bananas out of the fridge.
Mom: Ok…
Me: And then you have to go and get the monkeys to come and eat the bananas.
This carried on for quite some time, at the end of which my mom accused me of ruining her day by making her understand the amount of work she’d have to put in. My job here is done.
If anyone can beat that one for a lame similie, I’d love to hear it. Save me from my shame.
The saddest reason to be happy
In Hebrew, the term for “pitiful” has a slightly different meaning than it does in English. I always think of the English meaning having more to do with something that should be pitied. In Hebrew it means something that invokes pity. I’ve always thought of personal blogs as somewhat pitiful, in the Hebrew sense. They always seemed to me like little tiny cries for help where people wrote about things they couldn’t relate to anyone in their own lives so that others, far away could pick up on them and give them a sense of belonging. The medium of blogging is full of loneliness and isolation. This is one of the many reasons why I held off blogging for so long. It came as somewhat of a sad surprise to me to discover that my own life is not in itself lacking in a certain element of such isolation and detachment. There are things in my life I want to talk about, but I am lacking in people who’d actually care to hear what I have to say about them.
Today is a good example. Today I’m happy, but for the saddest reason. The little website I made for my book is ranking. It’s ranking after about 2 weeks or so of being up and it’s ranking at #2 on Google UK and #4 on Google US (for queries made in the UK, at least, which is all I really care about). I’ve added some content to the thing with the blog and all and someone’s actually gone and commented too. I knew controversy would sell. Luckily I was born controversial 
So this is a very very tiny cry of “yay”, because even I know that being happy because of something’s page rank on Google is pretty damn sad.