Another Las Vegas convention

This past meet I attended Pubcon again at the Las Vegas convention center. Sadly I felt that I learned a lot more last year and heard a lot of the same information. However, I did get to finally meet some people face to face. The person that I wanted to meet the most was Jim Boykin. I've been reading his blog for a while and wanted a chance to pick his brain. I attended a few sessions where he was a guest speaker and over the microphone he sounded exactly like William Peterson from CSI. After the sessions, I was able to talk to him privately and he was gracious enough to give me some pointers.

It was a mixed bag of attendees. I met several people from Europe as well as some people that I had met at last year's conference. I was chatting with my friend Larry Hotz, a Denver Realtor about the changes from last year. We had both switched our web hosting from a large template provider to a more customized solution this year with less than the results we were hoping for. So we were hoping to pick up some good tips at the conference.

One of the things living in Las Vegas, you never know who you'll run into. On the last "official" day of the conference, I ran into David Caruso. He is launching an internet media company and was meeting some people there. He was gracious enough to stop for photos with attendees and was just about the nicest person you could meet. All in all, it was a good convention and I'll probably attend again next year.

A new look

I've been planning to move Jacqui's site away from our old provider and with the help of some friends, that move has finally been made. The site is now using a CMS system, has an integrated blog, some new pages like the Boulder City condos and Solera at Stallion Mountain pages, articles, local rescue groups and floor plans for several developments.

I sincerely hope that I don't have to move it again any time soon. I want to thank Max Chirkov for his invaluable assistance. So please take a look. The design was done in browns since we live in the desert. Most of the photos will open up into larger images by clicking on them (including the floor plans). Hope you like it.

Google updating pr

Google is on the move again. For those of you that have installed the google toolbar (the only toolbar I'll install), you may have noticed that the page rank indicator is showing different results. As of yesterday, not all data center feeding the toolbar have been updated, but knowing Google I'm sure they will be soon.

Las Vegas SEO Conference

Last week webmasters, IT people, marketers and seo's from all over the world converged on the Las Vegas convention center for the Webmasterworld.com's annual seo conference, PubCon.

The conference was held in the South hall of the convention center. Unfortunately, there was a gaming conference being held in the main hall and none of the convention staff had any idea where PubCon was being held. On the upside, I did meet a few of the guest speakers before they were mobbed by other attendees. After waiting in line for about 20 minutes, I finally got my badge and made it in. Topics covered in the various sessions included localized search, landing page optimization, ecommerce, linking structure and of course, organic search.

The keynote address was given by Guy Kawasaki of Apple (mac) fame. Back in the late 80's, Guy was a software evangelist for the Mac side of Apple computer. In his address he hit upon 10 points for success and related some of his own misadventures. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, its definitely worth it. After the keynote, I attended several individual sessions.

The second day of the conference the exhibitors' hall opened. I was surprised at the small amount of exhibitors, but those that were there were all top notch. I was particularly impressed with mountaincommerce.com, a seo friendly ecommerce website provider. One of the things discussed in a few of the sessions I attended was the seo difficulities incurred by ecommerce website owners. Mountaincommerce's sites started at $3,500, so it won't be a solution for everyone. After that day's sessions, Google had sponsored an after hours networking event. They had planned a presentation, but the hall was so crowded and loud I doubt half of the audience heard it. By the end of the night was voice was so hoarse from having to yell to be heard I thought I was coming down with a cold.

The last day of the conference I spent mostly in the exhibitor hall and only attended one session. Probably the most anticipated event of the day was the last session. A "dream team" of seo consultants and se engineers, including Matt Cutts of Google would examine attendees' websites and give them their feedback. To say it was interesting is an understatement. On the whole, the conference was geared more towards a beginner than someone that has been promoting a site for a while. However, I did learn a few new things so it was worth my time and I will be attending next year again in Las Vegas. Hopefully they will post the actual hall next time!