Archive: June, 2007

Anyone with a few hours to spare and an interest in the virtual real estate domains represent will want to listen in as WebmasterRadio.FM covers the TRAFFIC Domain Auction live from New York this afternoon.

Domaining is an enormous industry with an equally enormous impact on how the commercial web evolves. Many people do not understand that there is a legion of investors out there registering, buying and selling domain names. They keep vast portfolios of domain names such as, Historian.com, Lips.com, Clock.com and Phones.mobi. They release them when interest in the product, service or idea they represent emerges or when they themselves no longer have use for them.

Most domainers monetize their efforts through AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing programs that allow private webmasters to split advertising fees with Google or Yahoo! in exchange for allowing contextual advertising on their sites. Because they run a volume based business, they need to churn out as many PPC-laden sites as possible. Some PPC advertisers have suggested this as a factor in lowering the quality of counted click-throughs. Google recently moved to restrict the practice known as MFA’s or Made For AdSense site-building.
Nevertheless, a great deal of money is about to exchange hands in a most interesting way… Check out some of the names up for sale:

Every site designer uses templates. HTML Templates are base files used to create new pages in a site. Think of them as pre-branded blanks containing information that is supposed to be visible on every page in a site. Content for any new page is thus either placed on or called to a document made from a common template.
Websites are increasingly designed to be used within a content management system (CMS) in order to make simple tasks easier in order to allow general office staff to make text, pricing and other basic updates. That makes it fairly easy for the office to run its website without relying on the original design company or the transitory IT skills of individual employees.

Two common problems are shared by many businesses. The first is a lack of skilled, full time webmasters. The second is continued lack of standardization in web design techniques.
In the course of business, changes happen. Major changes in the life of a business often necessitate universal changes on a site. Information ranging from address, inventory, key staff members, or services often need to be altered on all pages of a site.
Similarly, there are more ways to easily spread information online than ever before. It is not uncommon to find video files embedded in with text content as parts of an overall message on tourism related websites. Many newspapers such as the NYTimes and the Toronto Star are embedding video streams into their front pages.

Conventions are ALL work. When one attends a convention, they are representatives of their companies 24/7. Though it really is all work, often work on search marketing tour is a lot of fun.

Here are some shots of Metamenders and Enquisitites having fun while working hard. For context’s sake, these images come from a dinner party thrown by Epiar.com, an Edmonton based firm specializing in the deepest of deep-blue keyword determination. These guys are recognized super-specialists when it comes to keyword research. They are also renown for their superior sensibilities when it comes to throwing a great party.
The dinner party was attended by many of the top search marketing minds in Canada along with a number of speakers and writers from the States.

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I am finally back in Victoria from SES Toronto. I’ve had a few days to contemplate the experience, (which was wonderful) and to think about the state of Canadian search marketing, (which isn’t). It feels odd writing the word “the state of” in relation to the search marketing sector in Canada. For the most part, the word up here is “provincial”.

That’s an awful thing to say about such brilliant, passionate and intelligent people, especially so since I am not really talking about SEO/SEM service providers themselves. I’m just trying to catch and describe the vibe. Like Mary Walsh, “I’m just foolin’ around is all. ”

Besides which, it’s not our fault that the corporate and small to medium sized business sector doesn’t get it? Is it? It’s not like we haven’t used the strength of American and international media to inform our home-grown business sector. We have a disproportionate number of world-renown search marketing talent in the country, many of which have appeared on CNN, BBC, FOX, NBC and msnbc. We’ve been there and done that eh? I’ve seen articles written by Canadian search marketers appear in Wired, the New York Times, DM News, and even in publications I couldn’t read because they were written in Cyrillic script, which is totally Greek to me. I also know for a fact that virtually every large online search marketing publication has published thousands of articles from Canadian writers that have served to define the search marketing industry.