The Luxury of Research Time

Thought for the day:

Is research time a luxury or necessity?
In my opinion it is both. We all have our work to do (no matter what your industry) but if we take some time to figure out something new your experience will be much more fulfilling.

How do you make time for research and expanding your knowledge in your industry?

David Mihm Visiting SEOinBOI May 30th

Just a quick note to my followers that David Mihm (Co-Founder of Get-Listed.org and Local University search marketing seminars, and now Director of Local Search Strategy for SEOmoz) will be joining us at our quarterly SEOinBOI meeting. We hope you can join us for a great discussion on Local SEO from one of the foremost experts in the field.

In addition, I will be presenting on some Title Tag testing that I have been trying. It is very useful to understand how the search engines manipulate this important tag and how changes you make impact how Google will manipulate that tag.

Please RSVP for this event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/125791437620470/

Happy Friday to Everyone

...Unless you read this on a different day of the week. If that is the case then I hope your day is as equally awesome.  I was playing around on vine and created this:

http://vine.co/v/bEFe0bhtv7M

Enjoy responsibly!

Your friend and blogger,

Kevin

Making Time for Conferences

Finding the time to attend a conference is difficult. Then there is the "Is it worth my time" factor. I think that largely depends on the conference but is more determined by the individual.

Are you the type of person who learns by seeing or by doing? Sometimes a conference will allow for both those people to have a great experience. However, if you are more of a trial by fire person it may be better to monitor twitter and grab the nuggets that other people find interesting.

So how do you find those nuggets from these conferences? Here are my suggestions:

1. Follow the conference hashtag. They developed it for a reason, use it.
2. Follow people in the industry. These can be the head honchos or just the people you know that are going.
3. Don't try to get it all in one sitting. Many people and many different sessions will more than likely be going at once. Divide your time appropriately. Find the sessions you will be interested in and look for that info, then go back and find the nuggets that escaped your first round.

Attending conferences can be both engaging, invigorating and informative but it isn't always available or doesn't fit every personality. Choose wisely but continue your education/knowledge through networking.

SMX Advanced - June 11-12, 2013

I will be headed to SMX Advanced this June. Would love to meet up with any people interested in networking or "talking shop".

As always you can follow me on Twitter.

Look forward to interacting with any fellow Search Marketers.

What are people looking for, based SEO

I am opening this one up to my audience. 

What steps do you take to find out what you should be optimizing your site for? 

Often, our internal speak is not that of our clients. When you are entrenched in your product or site you often have to work very hard to separate yourself from what you know to what your customer knows. 

What are your solutions?

Google Suggestions | 5Ws and an H | 12-10

A weekly look at Google suggestions for common question words - 12/10/12

Below is a fun look at what Google is currently suggesting when you enter in a common question word. We will attempt to modify this list on weekly to bi-weekly basis to create an educational element to this. Once we have a few of these under our belt we will begin looking at the changes that happen from post to post. Is it cultural references that change frequently or what are the consistent recommendations that stand the test of time. 

Let me know if you have any other suggestions. Enjoy!

(looking only at the default 4 suggestions).

Google Suggest - "Who"

Google Suggest - "What"

Google Suggest - "When"

Google Suggest - "Where"

Google Suggest - "Why"

Google Suggest - "How"