Wed 5 Mar 2008
Irish IWTC Conference 2008 > An Introduction To SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Posted by Shaun Anderson
So readers of the blog will know that Michael and I were invited to attend and speak about SEO (search engine optimisation) at the Irish IWTC Conference in Dublin on Friday 29 March 2008, and we really enjoyed ourselves - at the conference and during the following 12 hours (until 5AM) we spent in the Dublin Temple Bar area doing… er… research on the national tipple ![]()
A big thanks to Martha Rotter at Microsoft Ireland for the invite and to Director Barry Alistair of IrishDev.com (with a special shout out to Support Services Manager Patricia McGill who organised things for us when we got to Ireland). My only regret was that we couldn’t attend earlier sessions in the week on subjects like web accessibility and blogging, both of which I have a keen interest in.
In an intimate session, the powerpoint presentation Michael was up all night making went right out the window and it degenerated into a quickfire question and answer session that I thoroughly enjoyed, and the feedback we received since was very positive. In fact so positive, I think we’ll be leaving the powerpoint presentation at home at the next conference and just get stuck in - I’m a seo, not a professional powerpoint presenter - I hate powerpoint and much prefer the Q&A conference sessions - in fact - decision made - no more Powerpoint (or at least a lot less of it!).
An apology to the audience because in the end I just had to fold my laptop away and push off without putting up the last slide with the web addresses of the sites and tools I recommended (apart from the Hobo blog of course) were worth investing a fair bit of time reading, although I know I mentioned them all during the presentation - so here we go:
- SEOmoz - especially Search Engine Ranking Factors and the SEO Tools
- Wiep Knol SEO Blog - especially Link Value Factors
- Jim Boykin - Just about everything on his link building blog and keep in mind the Internet Marketing Ninja Program for dedicated future seo in the audience!
- Aaron Wall’s SEOBook Blog & SEO Tools
- Brett Tabke’s Google Webmasterworld
- Search Engine Land & Sphinn
- Search Engine People have just posted a great post on Free Keyword Research Tools
- Most of the better seo blogs also appear on the TopRank BigList Of Search Marketing Blogs and are worth reading too
Hope you all found the conference session on seo as enjoyable to attend as I did speaking.
PS - A quick apology to Ivan MacDonald of Rococo Software and developers of Dial2Do.com for over running in our slot - 40 minutes - eek - thankfully there was a gap in between sessions! I wish I knew what Ivan’s presentation was about beforehand and I would have stuck around - Voice On The Internet seems very interesting indeed, although the allure of the Temple Bar in Dublin was a little too great for Scotsmen to resist!
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I was at the IWTC 2008 Conference in Dublin last week and saw your presentation on SEO. I thought your presentation was edgy, fun and very helpful at explaining the basics of Search Engine Optimization. Your presentation style was great - the question and answer session really helpful. By the way, yours was the only presentation I attended over the three days that actually had such an active audience participation and ran overtime. Just thought you might like to know that.
I learned some interesting points about SEO from you and as I received such benefit from a one hour presentation I was hoping you would be able to help me with something else (in the future). I also found your article “SEO Theory - Optimizing Your Internal Website Navigation & Architecture” a very interesting read. I loved your visual explanation of how ‘heat’ is generated between pages and how stingy or generous to be with that ‘heat’. It was very easy for a non tech to understand your conceptualization.
Comment by Sarah Jane Rood — March 6, 2008 @ 12:54 am
Thanks Sarah - you might also be interested in my Google Heat Theory Analogy too! Thanks again for the kind comments.
Comment by Shaun Anderson — March 6, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
Hi Shaun,
Barry here from http://www.IrishDev.com.
Thanks for your post on the Irish Web Technology Conference, and I’m very pleased that you and Michael had a ‘good’ time in Dublin. It is one of our missions for speaker’ participation!’
I see Sarah Jane enjoyed your extended Q&A
and we had great feedback on your session from the attendees - we’ll send this on to you in due course.
Thanks once again for coming over and sharing your knowledge, and we hope to see you again.
best
barry
Comment by Barry Alistair — March 6, 2008 @ 8:02 pm
Many Thanks Barry - it was our pleasure. Dublin’s a beautiful city to experience, and I’m sure the IWTC conference will only go from strength to strength in the coming years
Comment by Shaun Anderson — March 6, 2008 @ 8:12 pm