Finally, I get to sit down and contemplate a week without a trade show, or some other major disruption to my schedule. I have recently completed trips to PubCon in Las Vegas, and Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. In reflecting on these trips, I started to think about what the value was of going to these shows.

At this point, I don’t go to learn the basics of SEO or blogging. Sure, I can still pick up the occasional new tidbit about something, such as a neat new tool, or a specific detail about search engine behavior. Our field is complex, and no matter how advanced you become in it, there is always something else to learn.

But the real value is in the networking. The Search Engine Marketing industry is small, and quite social in nature. People share ideas readily, and building relationships is easy. In addition, you can meet representatives from the search engines themselves, including people of surprising seniority.

Meeting the search engine folks can provide you with real insight and value. People like Matt Cutts who is simply a very nice guy, but who is also happens to in charge of Google’s web spam team, and is extraordinarily knowledgeable about Google’s algorithms.

I have also had the chance to meet Tim Mayer, who has been involved in search since the early days of Inktomi, and is now Director of Search at Yahoo.

In addition, I have also had the chance to meet Eytan Seidman, the program manager for search at Live.com. Eytan has been very friendly and offers plenty of intelligent and thoughtful commentary during the panels he sits on.

Then you get to meet your peers, both working in-house, and also at competitive SEO firms. I enjoyed (on no particular order) meeting Liana Evans, with her innovative Hatbait.com site – make sure you vote for me (actually wearing a gray hat – who would’ve thunk it?), Matt McGhee, David Temple, Todd Malicoat, and scores of others that I am forgetting …

Point is that these relationships can (and do) turn into business relationships. These relationships can help grow your business. As always, this works best if you remember to give (at least) as good as you get.

So I guess that means I am in it for the long haul, and will keep attending these shows. The actual travelling s**ks, but the rest of it is quite worthwhile.

1. I finally got to meet Donna Fontenot of SEO Scoop. She has an excellent blog, and today made a point that ties in nicely to the current gambling environment here in Las Vegas. Manage your risk dudes and dudettes. Don’t put more on the line than you can afford to lose.

2. I stopped by the duplicate content sessions because I wanted to meet Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea, another excellent blog for all to read. Bill found some information on a new Google patent today of interest, related to the treatment of ambiguous search queries.

3. While in the duplicate content session, some one asked a question about the “site” tag, and whether or not this would solve the duplicate content problem, when you were syndicating content to other sites. So every one in the audience, including me has a blank look in there eyes, and we are all thinking “what the hell is he talking about?”. Then suddenly, I remembered that I knew the answer!”

So I starting jumping up and down and yelled “pick me! pick me!” … OK, I didn’t really do that. But as the microphone was on the other side of the room, I did explain what the deal was in my very loud broadcast voice.

There is a tag known as the Q tag which is used for short quotes, to which you can append a CITE attribute, where you put the URL of the original author of the page in between the quotes. The specific purpose of this attribute is for someone who is quoting another web page to provide a citation (i.e. and acknowledgement) to the original author of the content. In addition, you can also use the CITE attribute with the BLOCKQUOTE tag for longer articles, such as larger paragraphs of content, and potentially an entire web page. Sounds great, right? If the CITE attribute works as advertised, you now have a cheap and simple way to syndicate content to other sites.

Problem is that the search engines don’t look at it. Witness the fact that the Google and Yahoo representatives on the panel had never heard about it. In addition, I asked Matt Cutts about the CITE attribute about 6 months ago, and until I mentioned it, he had never heard about it either. I pushed the question on Matt 3 different times because I had a major client that was thinking of using this in their syndication strategy.

Matt has since provided me sufficient assurance that this attribute is not used by Google. So don’t rely on it!

So now that I am done with the state of the state on this point – shouldn’t the search engines support this attribute? What a wonderful idea! A simple and straightforward way for someone who is syndicating content to acknowledge the original author. This would provide a simple way for publishers and their syndication partners to clearly label legitimately syndicated (duplicate) content on the web.

Brutal trip out here. No problems really, everything ran on time. But getting up at 4:30 am ET to come out here is hard no matter how you slice it.

But anyway, I have made it our to WebmasterWorld in Las Vegas. And as always, it’s an entertaining show. Since I flew early this morning, I made only the two last sessions. The most interesting one to me was the CSS and HTML session.

According to Ted Ulle, it makes a big difference in site readability and user comprehension if you use CSS to set line height rules. The default spacing used by today’s browsers is 1 line of space between each line of text. Usability studies have shown that the best results are achieved when you set this to 1.25 links of space between lines of text. Apparently, this is something that has been well known in the typographic industry for decades.

Better still, it’s easy to address in your CSS file. Ted also told us that he has seen this affect conversion rates on sites by as much as 20%!

Well shoot, that one may just be worth a try …

Like many others in the search engine industry, I am preparing for the trip to Las Vegas for WebmasterWorld. There are lots of things to look forward to. Catching up with the many people in this industry that I have to know. Just hanging out in some place warmer than Boston.

Then there are the many great sessions and meetings I plan to go to. For me, these events are about networking, building new relationships, and renewing relationships.

I plan to arrive on Tuesday morning. Sessions that interest me are:

1. Feeds and Other Alternative Optimization Opportunities
2. CSS and HTML Coding Today
3. Search Blog and Reporter Forum
4. The Thursday morning at 9:00 am keynote by Danny Sullivan
5. Press and Public Relation Campaigns
6. Viral and WOMM Marketing Management
7. Search Engine Smackdown

During the next week, all our posts will focus on WebmasterWorld related reports. Hope to see you there!