My weigh-in on WordCamp 2010 in Vancouver
Seattle's Mark McLaren of McBuzz Communications at WordCamp 2010 in Vancouver, B.C. on June 12
The event included a mix of computer programmers, web developers, and writers (like me) who are less inclined towards tech-i-ness. But the hard-working organizers managed to provide something for everyone – not to mention a tasty sushi lunch, cool WordCamp water bottles, and the usual assortment of conference stickers, pencils, and temporary tattoos. There was also an evening social at the Granville Island Tap Room, but I didn’t go because I wanted to go home to my family, after being away all day.
One thing I learned was how to make this blog appear closer to the top of the list when someone goes to Google and searches “Vancouver BC writer.”
Mark McLaren is the owner of Seattle’s McBuzz Communications and he gave a talk on SEO – which stands for “search engine optimization.” Basically this refers to what I mentioned above (i.e. being easier to find on Google or Yahoo! or whatever you use for searching the Web).
For now, I’ll spare you the details on SEO and, if you want more information, you can visit the McBuzz site, which explains the concept in greater detail. Essentially I followed along with Mark’s suggestions during his talk, updated my “All-In-One SEO” settings, changed the title bar on this blog, and moved up the list on Google right away.
Christine Rondeau of Bluelime Media was one of the tech experts at WordCamp’s Genius Bar (named after the tech support stations in Apple stores). She showed me how to fix the Subscribe tab on my blog – so, dear readers, please do subscribe, if you are so inclined – along with a few other things I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.
I also turned my blog into the first draft of an e-book – thanks to Peter Armstrong and Scott Patten, founders of Leanpub. This platform can be used to “create, curate, edit, publish and sell a PDF book based on your blog” as their site describes. It was so cool to see all these random blog posts brought together in book format – which I called “Your Dose of Gentle Weirdness.”
Peter and Scott are still working out some bugs in their program and finding ways to make it more user-friendly. It seemed to be helpful for them to watch me go through the process of uploading and organizing my blog posts.
Leanpub is free to use, and the creators make their money by taking a 25 percent cut of e-books sales. They cover the PayPal fees, which brings their cut down to about 20 percent.
Thanks so much to all the organizers, speakers, and sponsors for putting on such a fine event.
Thanks for the sweet write-up, Susan. That was a fine conference. Overall reaction was very positive. I hope I get a chance to speak again next year. WordPressers are awesome.
I was thrilled to hear that you experienced some quick success by optimizing your home page HTML title tag. I have to say, though, that just now I did a few searches and did not find your site! So I’m wondering what keywords you searched.
I didn’t have time to cover it in my talk, but included in the very last slides in the SEO for WordPress slide deck (available on the McBuzz Communications home page), I mention Google’s customized search results, which will show you different results than other people see – based on your search history. That might be what put your site at the top of the results *for you* but not necessarily for anyone else.
Fill me in on the keywords you see your site doing well for and let’s see if we can get it figured out.