SEO Blog

Pity the poor search marketing expert. The days are spent in meetings or lecturing in some strange city while the nights are sent sleeping off the excess of the evening before in some strange bed in a hotel room one really can’t afford but stays at anyway. That nervous twitch? Somehow one gets used to it. Many of us spend more time in the air than we do on actual roads. I’ve traveled many more miles in airplanes the past few years than I have in automobiles, trains, ferries or buses added together.
I am sitting in my parents’ backyard in the west end of Toronto. I am however working, not relaxing as I truly need to. The Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008 conference ended 36-hours ago and my brain, body and soul are still reeling from exhaustion, elation, excitement and outright fear. Yes, you read that last word correctly, fear…

It’s not because Toronto is a tough town. I grew up here and am thus already too jaded by the nightly chaos to really care about the brutal headlines published each and every morning. I ain’t scared of that sort of stuff, I’ve lived with it most of my life. It was weird seeing one of our own (whose name is not going to be mentioned) beaten and bruised from a bad experience with a bouncer but, again, I’m sort of used to that sort of thing. This place isn’t Rome and doesn’t pretend to be. Compared to gentle New York, this place is Sparta.

But I digress. Toronto’s violence is not what I am feeling fear from on this cool Canadian morning.

I spent the earlier part of the week at the only major search marketing show currently held in Canada and I think it might be the last of the series held in Canada. That depresses me but, again, it’s not what I am fearing the most this morning though it comes close to touching on the roots of my dis-ease.

It was a great show. I truly love the SES Toronto show because it is smaller, more intimate and reminds me of the SES Chicago show. Because it is the only major search marketing show in Canada and it is in my home town, I’ve always felt a special need to act as host and guide to my international colleagues, most of which feel more like cousins. That sense of responsibility has given me the opportunity to meet with and speak with the best and the brightest of brains over the years on my home turf. This year, I only got to speak with half of them though. The other half didn’t bother showing up. Neither did the vendors or the major search networks. With the exceptional exception of Yahoo! Canada, the major search engines don’t really care about SES Toronto. The domestic market in this, the largest city in Canada, appears to be dead or quickly dying from apathy.

Now, one might think I fear the death of the Canadian search market. I don’t. To be honest, I’m not even certain it ever really existed. Aside from the few firms that got far ahead of the curve early, Canadian corporations simply don’t understand search; their corporate heads are firmly buried in the sand. Like surviving our -40 degree winters, I’ve grown used to such conditions.

What bothers me this morning is a lack of clarity. I usually leave these conferences feeling a little bit wiser and far more informed. This time, I feel confused. That scares me silly.

Traditionally, Canadians have always been the best bell-weathers when it comes to technology. We were among the earliest adopters of the Internet and had nearly universal broadband access four years before our American cousins did. We’ve led the world in telecommunications mostly because Canada is so vast and the population so small. We’ve had to learn to communicate over enormous distances quickly in order to simply survive as a nation. Historically, the ability to bridge that distance is what made Canada a nation in the first place. In other words, we’ve been the quintessential canary in the coal mine of technology.

I am often asked why Canada produced far more search marketing experts than any other country, per capita. My answer has always been a mix of high education and early adoption of technologies. That doesn’t cut it any longer. Everyone has the technology and anyone who wants to can get educated. The world, to quote my intellectual mentor Tom, is truly flat. That, as a Canadian search marketer is what has me frightened this morning. As a technologically advanced nation, we’ve lost our way and thus have lost our lead.

That loss is reflected in the absurdly expensive mobile data plans offered by Rogers, Shaw and Telus. That loss is reflected in the nearly universal shrug SES Toronto was received with. There was not a single story in the Toronto mainsteam media about SESTO. There were few stories in the tech media. It was our game to lose and, my fellow Canadians, it appears we are on the precipice of actually losing it.

Now it seems that canary is dead. It’s not merely resting, sleeping, or pining for the Norwegian-like fjords of beautiful BC. It died of starvation and neglect, not because the environment turned deadly. That’s the saddest part. That’s what has me feeling fear this morning, even though the song-birds are singing and the sun is finally poking its face out from behind the clouds. Canada has lost its place at the front of the line and nobody noticed until it was too late.

Fortunately for us at Metamend, we serve an international set of clients, including many of those Canadian firms that got ahead of the curve early and those wise enough to jump in more recently. I don’t fear for the firms I work with or the other Canadian search marketers serving the international market. I fear for my own country this morning and that does not feel good.