Well it was really nice to be back in a humid and hot climate, even if it was just for 3 days. This was my first time in Fort Lauderdale but I had been to Florida in the past for a holiday/Disney Land themed trip. This trip was for corporate reasons and I spent most my days and nights working. It wasn’t all bad as it did allow me a chance to meet some really talented people and gives me even more hope for the future. Lets face it is sure will be nice to have the potential to do some remote office work down here in Florida during the winter months.
Fort Lauderdale is surprisingly full of canals and it has the nickname the Venice of the West, but unlike Venice there are huge 150 foot yachts. The city is really flat as there are very few large buildings and it makes it nice as even from the 10th floor of the office you can see for mile and miles around. Also the amount of money and high-end social life around downtown makes for interesting people. To give you an idea we had breakfast at a place that had Dom Perignon on the menu, while I have had some expensive meals in my time a $299 breakfast would have been a first.
The Fort Lauderdale beach was something odd as it had a very steep drop into the water, almost like they pile the sand 2 or 3 feet higher on the beach then the tide can support. But the beach was nice and Dave (my fellow co-worker) and I where able to get a little wet the first evening. The other evening was all work for me as I needed to complete a website review and training seminar for the SEO team here in Florida and now I am at the airport waiting for my flight. Hopefully next trip I will have at least a day to relax but actually at this point I am so happy to be heading home as in just a few days I will have an official place to call home.
In the next couple weeks I will be planning out my trip into China for SES, but it is looking like I will arrive in Asia on the 19th and depart around the 26th depending on the request from management in terms of looking at developing out things in Asia. So I will let you all know when that is confirmed and looking forward to seeing you all again soon.
Thursday, May 3
3 Days in Fort LauderdaleExpand this Post: 3 Days in Fort Lauderdale |
What Does it Mean to be a Professional SEO?Expand this Post: What Does it Mean to be a Professional SEO? |
Many people, including most of my own family, have no idea what I do or how it’s of any benefit. This is common--most people think SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is just a matter of changing some magical code on the page, and that any website can get the benefits of SEO. This general misunderstanding is also why there are so many people able to offer SEO services; the average buyer has no idea what they are buying, and they end up buying the general idea of SEO than an actual SEO product.
SEO, when done properly by professionals, is very complex and involves much more than keywords with fairy dust. I would say that most website owners are not ready for true SEO. When I ran my agency I turned away over 90% of the clients that approached me for SEO services--there is no point in taking a client’s money and giving him or her something that will never work. Yes, they might be very happy to be #1 for their company name. You might be pretty tickled to have them think you are the king of SEO. But does it really drive their business forward?
Within my industry I have held true to the idea of “do it right, do it for long term, and do it for the right reasons.” I add the last one in because I have had offers from companies that have the right process the right long term goals but the methods of monetization go against my better judgment. I am very proud to say that in 10 years I have never promoted a gambling, pornography, or pill website.
Keeping this focus has given me less market share, but I have had some of the bigger companies come knocking on my door asking for my expertise: Alibaba, Dell, eBay, Expedia, Global Sources, Microsoft, Tesco--even the almighty Google has come looking for my services. But keeping a selective nature also means I don’t make the insane amounts that the "fairy dust" SEO sellers do. It’s much more profitable and easy to have a few hundred clients that you are charging $10k a month to simply change some META data once in a while (and advise them what you read on WW the night before) than it is to manage a project that involves dozens of departments and countless employees.
Being in the industry--and working with so many companies--I have seen "fairy dust" go for as high as $150,000/month. If you look around the industry you will see a lot of the SEO world more focused on creating a blog post then doing actual SEO work. This is because skill level in this industry, for some reason, has become based on the number of blog posts you make rather then your technical expertise and experience. If I was hiring a SEO professional I’d rather hire the head of class coming out of applied mathematics of Harvard then any of the SEO bloggers.
In a lot of my public talks I relate search engine optimizers to stock brokers, and search engines to stock markets. This comparison comes from search engine optimizers having millions of people that claim they can bring in returns--like stock brokers—but a lot fail and lose clients money while others simply just live off the natural flux within the markets/search engines. There are also the day traders and the DIY SEO’ers who believe they have the system beat. Then there are the elite who can not only to guarantee returns but are already making enough money themselves that the only reason they take on a client is to be able to make even more money using their personal formula for success. The formula for success in stock markets, like search engines, fundamentally never changes; and, it’s simply based on what the client wants to invest and how much they want to get back out.
The only real difference between a stock broker and an SEO is that, unlike a stock market, a search engine is a 100% mathematical puzzle--ultimately there are no unknowns in the search engines, so a true SEO professional has no reason for failure. While I don’t claim to know everything about the ranking formulas at Google I do know that there is a set formula, and with the right set of people (note to self: hire some ex-WWII code breakers) the formula can be fully understood. But for now I just live off of 10 years experience in dealing with the formula. Although you may never see my name on the Internet if you use Google you have definitely seen my work.
Tuesday, May 1
1 Month AnniversaryExpand this Post: 1 Month Anniversary |
April was the first full month for for the website Gwelf.com and the response from friends, family and people around Guelph has been great.
While I am nowhere close to a busy site or anything that is worth bragging about I did manage to get 3,859 readers last month. The interesting part of this number is where everyone came from as 3,070 came from Canada (1,464 from Guelph), 260 from Singapore, 237 from the United States (40 from Google) and the rest from various other countries, a total of 57 different countries make up my readership.
I didn’t think I would get as much local readership but it is nice as a few people within the community in Guelph have referenced me to my blog and even the founder of the company I work for has found my blog thanks to Google.
I promise to eat out more often once I am downtown and do more reviews of businesses and restaurants in Guelph as I think it is nice to share this wonderful city with others and help the community maybe even find something new.
Over the last month a few interesting stories have come from the blog:
The first one that sticks in my mind is the founder of the company I am working for emailing me and commenting on the blog and then during a meeting making a direct reference to me not living on Willow road. While I had and will keep the blog clean this gives me even more reason to do so.
The second one that was interesting was when I was looking for a place to rent I had people on the other end of the phone ask if I was “Stephen the Blogger who ran Gwelf.com” as they had been reading the blog. It was interesting that simply saying my name was Stephen and I was looking for a place to rent immediately they thought of my blog. Wonder if any other “Stephen’s” where getting the same treatment over the last month.
Third thing that referenced my blog was even stranger and actually had a nice result. Seems the Fido store that I reviewed had several bad reports back on its staff and about Paul the person that served me and was really helpful, which I mentioned in the blog. Somehow the management of Fido found my blog and read my post on Paul and Fido and used it to help them validate that Paul is a good employee and while everyone has a bad day Paul does have good days. No idea if my blog had much weight but it did manage to get back to me via 3 other people that Fido was happier with Paul thanks to my blog.
Other things that have happened thanks to the blog is that some of the staff within the company I work where able to learn more about me and have initiated friendships thanks to reading it. I have even had people from outside of Guelph that where just looking to see if they also wanted to move to Guelph read, comment and email me about my blog and Guelph.
I glad that I moved to Guelph, glad to be working with the company I am with and happy that I have taken the plunge into the Blogging world and started this blog.
Sunday, April 29
First Month in GuelphExpand this Post: First Month in Guelph |
Very happy to say that life in Guelph has been great and my gut feelings on Guelph where very correct. Sadly on the working in Guelph side of things a combination of confusion, uncertainty and the general stress of the move has made it a little rough. Not all that bad just try and think about doing the following:
- Get less then 30 days to: move to a new city/country, hire movers/pack, say goodbye to friends, manage 5 other unassociated trips, deal with office rentals, apartment rentals and related services.
- Arrive at a new job where you have 13 people reporting to you all of whom are eager to learn everything possible and are in need of that knowledge ASAP, but you also have dozens of other people asking for help. (If anyone wants a genie pig for a cloning experiment I am game.)
- Attend meeting after meeting with different people/departments all asking for the same thing but not being in a logistical position to give it to anyone of them.
- Come home night after night to a hotel room and have random eating habits.
That’s my life over the last couple months and its catching up to me but I do know that in the coming couple months I will have a better time both in Guelph and at work.
May will be an interesting month as I have to be in Florida and China for meetings and more interestingly I will be moving into my new home on the 8th of May. No house warming party planned for May as I won’t be around long enough but in June I hope that I have the place ready for guests.
Going to Florida for 3 days for a quick meeting with the corresponding SEO department within a company we just acquired. Will see what tools and knowledge they can bring back to the Guelph SEO team. I know that some of them SEO team in Guelph like the possibility of having a remote office in Florida to make use of during the winter months, but don’t know if that’s possible.
My trip to China in May will be for the Search Engine Strategies conference and I will be speaking on the Advanced SEO track. This year I will expand out my presentation on the top things a webmaster/SEO can do to rank better in Google. I will post a link within the blog to allow you to download a version for those who are interested. Post more on that later in May.
Wednesday, April 25
Atmosphere CafeExpand this Post: Atmosphere Cafe |
While I have not gotten a chance to get out for many dinners I have made it to the Atmosphere Cafe in Guelph and have to say the food was really wonderful. For an entree I ordered the Pear Salad which was my first time having a pear salad and I was presently surprised, while it is not a garden salad the pears really add a nice flavor.
For a main course I had the Pacific Salmon and I have to say that this is worth coming to eat at the Atmosphere Cafe. The piece of salmon was large and was atop of a nice array of fresh vegetables and everything was cooked just right, the vegetables where still crisps and the salmon nice and flakey.
If these items don’t interest you the Atmosphere Cafe has a great website ( http://www.atmospherecafe.ca ) that have there menus online so you can get a great idea of the other items they serve and I can say that your are going to enjoy which ever item you select. My friends who joined me for dinner had the pizza and they really enjoyed that but for me I prefer to have a meal over pizza when I am in nice restaurant like this. But the pizza still is very gourmet and just as enjoyable.
If you want some more opinions of the Atmosphere Cafe there is a great website that offers up Guelph restaurant reviews at http://www.restaurantica.com/restaurants/1094/
Swiss Chalet in GuelphExpand this Post: Swiss Chalet in Guelph |
Many of you are asking me what I am eating since I have been back in Canada and while I not getting out for dinners at restaurants I am staying away from Mc Donald’s and opting for Swiss Chalet delivery.
Swiss Chalet has some great chicken and even has porgies. I order the porgies, chicken sandwich and an apple pie for dessert. While kind of costly it is at least a really nice dinner and it defiantly is better then some fast food option.
Amazingly ordering Swiss Chalet is really easy and they have an interesting system. You can visit their website at http://www.swisschalet.com/ and order online or call their 800 number either way they guarantee that you order will arrive in less then 1 hour or its free. I don’t know if even the pizza companies offer this guarantee anymore, so it is nice to see that you can get a great meal and get it rather quickly. For me I try to call while I driving home from work which times everything nicely.
But I am really looking forward to when I am living downtown and have access to a lot of nice restaurants and can further stay away from the fast food diet.
Monday, April 23
First PaydayExpand this Post: First Payday |
I have been working in Guelph now for 3 weeks, even had my first payday and so far it has been really eventful and fun. But a lot of changes are happening considering I was hired to be an "advisor" to the team and now I have 13 people reporting into me you can get the general idea of the restructuring within the company. But for you over at GS in Singapore the grass isn’t all that greener as even here I don't get an office, guess that gives me something to work towards.
My new team is not as experienced as some but they are all really eager to learn, plus there are a couple people within the team that do have some experience and hoping they can help in my mentoring of the rest. Also in the coming months, maybe even weeks I hope that I can further grow the team even more. So if anyone reading this blog is interested in doing SEO in Guelph send an email to me and I will put you in touch with HR.
Other then work, life in Guelph is getting better along with the weather. Last weekend I went out to a Stag and Doe (my first) and it was a lot of fun to see a bunch of laid back Canadians having fun. Really looking forward to moving into my place in May and I have found myself a Sofa, dinning room table and some kitchen items just wish I could move in sooner.
As for my plans for heading to SES China I haven’t gotten clearance on things yet, but have my first meeting with the CEO on Thursday so will bring that up then to see what his thoughts are as its getting close and I really like to know when I would be back in Asia. Wish me luck with the meeting with the CEO, don’t think I will need it as he sounds like a good guy, but still thanks for the good thoughts.
Thursday, April 19
Thanks to My Guelph ReadersExpand this Post: Thanks to My Guelph Readers |
Want say "thank you" to all my Guelph readers who took the time to email me or leave me a comment on my question on where to live as it really helped me out. Without your feedback I could have easily taken the apartment on Willow Road and while it would have been a home by the sounds of things it wouldn't have been the most suitable place to call home.
Sunday, April 15
I Need Your Help: Downtown or Silvercreek Area?Expand this Post: I Need Your Help: Downtown or Silvercreek Area? |
These are the two locations that I have narrowed down my home search to but I need your help. Since I do not know much about either areas I could use your feedback on downtown and/or Silvercreek (across from Willow West Mall).
UPDATE: I decided on the downtown location, BIG THANKS to all those who gave me their feedback it was really helpful.
Both have pluses and minus on the side of the apartment itself but if someone can give me some feedback on the area maybe that will help me decide. I will make my choice by Wednesday so please take the time to leave me your comments.
Its good news that I have found a couple choices as I gave up on getting a house and living in some acreage, so it is going to be apartment life for me at least until I decide to buy something for myself.
Tuesday, April 10
Stressing Out on Tax in CanadaExpand this Post: Stressing Out on Tax in Canada |
The other day I was in with HR and we were just going over things like getting OHIP, life insurance and taxes. She pulled up a program that showed the tax deductions from my salary and wow it was shocking.
POST UPDATED: I had to update this post as I have had a few negative comments and some not so nice emails about my comments on tax. So I will explain my logic on my issues, but please note Canada is a great country and I am happy to be back. But in a country that we strive for equality I don't see equality in the tax system, a basic idea of a equal tax system would be: take the average salary of everyone within a province and then assign a cap to the tax paid based on that. So if you make the average salary you pay the normal tax, if you make less you pay less tax but if you make more you are not further tax simply because your paid more. This also brings more money into the communities and back in the the salaries of the workers. To me this is a equal system but in Canada if you happen to make a high salary you are heavily taxed and shockingly instead of paying less tax the more you make it is the opposite the more you make the more you are taxed. Anyways I am very happy to be back in Canada and will happily pay my taxes where required, but I just think the system is a little strange.
Other then stressing on the taxes I am stressing on finding a place to live as I have now contacted about 200 people that had a place for rent and seen a number of them. But there has only been one place that is interesting and there is an offer currently on it so if it is accepted then I am out of luck. But wish me luck as it’s a beautiful 3 story house that has 7 bedrooms, 5 washrooms and even a room for a theater, my only problem will be trying to furnish 7 bedrooms (hehehe anyone want to rent a room).
