An enormous apology to all readers for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been city hopping for the past two weeks from search marketing conference to search marketing conference to search marketing conference. It’s been a long fourteen days and I have literally crossed the continent twice in the endless quest for better information about search, search marketing and online business.

There is a lot of flux in the search marketing marketplace right now. The economy is wrecking havoc on US based SEM firms, some of which are starting to see the extremely rough conditions their clients are going through affecting them. The wonky economy has not effected Canada nearly as badly as it has the United States and, unless one is down here talking to business owners, it is difficult to fully grasp the enormity of the economic crisis.

I am exhausted so I am only going to make a couple notes here before taking a few hours to sleep. Tomorrow is the opening day of WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon.

Pubcon is THE show for webmasters to exchange information with other webmasters. It is always the most informative conference of the annual circuit. Though it does not offer sales and marketing opportunities, serious search marketers make it a point to attend Pubcon because of the high quality of information shared amongst the community members there. I am likely going to have tonnes of information to share in this blog in the coming days.

There is a movement amongst notable bloggers within the search engine optimization community to finally deal with the problem posed by scrapers and sploggers who steal our content. I am hoping to have information to share about that in a few days as well.

I was in New York City last week attending Ad:Tech. Ad:Tech is by far the largest Internet marketing show, encompassing virtually all forms of Internet marketing. Of all the marketing channels available to the brightest minds in the business, search engine optimization continues to be seen as the #1 option for return on investment. That’s among the best brains. Among ad-buyers however, PPC is seen as the most important channel, likely because it is relatively easy to explain and quantify. Aside from my professional bias, I remain convinced that SEO is the cornerstone of good search marketing because everything comes down to the visitors’ impression of a website or web content.

Ok. That’s it for the night. Travel takes it out of you but if one wants to stay on top of the ever changing world of search marketing, travel is mandatory. More soon.