Ah, to have proper internet again.

Irrespective of where I lay my swede, I always end up near some wretched foundry. If starting off in that bloody electricity cupboard of an old foundry at Butler Sheetmetal that would warp your monitor with its electrical juiciness and zap you once in a blue moon if you started licking exposed metal filing cabinets. Then I had a little stretch in the ruddy rust belt, where you honestly couldn’t tell a used and a disused factory apart. And now my latest parish sees all manner of heavy industry hiding in the most inopportune of idyllic little spots with the Pittsburgh Steelers 40 minutes down the road. (Although the idea of supporting the Steelers to a Cleveland Browns fan is as abhorrent as supporting Blackburn if you’re a Burnley fan.)

But Pittsburgh is the venue for the Online Marketing: Innovations That Work Conference that I’m currently blogging for. I must admit that it’s nice still being involved with businesses in your more traditional industries. For example, I just popped to the bathroom and had a tug boat pushing a few coal barges passing ingloriously by the window.

Granted, that had nothing to do with actually being involved with any type of business - I was just filling in the industrial backdrop.

So, if you happen to be round Pittsburgh, West Virginia, or even Ohio, take a look at the marketing conference site and reserve your place.

Even if you’re not, you can still come.

UPDATE: Considering I’m doing the calendar rounds, here’s write-up so you can give it the once-over:

Online Marketing: Innovations that Work
Discover how simple, cutting edge marketing tools can help expand and promote your business.

Learn how you can use the Web to increase sales and build brand ad awareness at this exciting one-day event with experts from Microsoft, eBay, WebTrends, and other international and regional companies. At this event, http://www.MarketingConference.org, you will learn:

• Cutting edge Web techniques to enhance public relations
• How you can track campaigns across different channels
• How businesses are improving their customer relationships with blogs
• The best uses of - and uncommon tactics for - search marketing
• Why social media isn’t just for kids anymore
• How to maximize your ad dollars for total efficiency

Reserve your seat at this conference online at http://www.MarketingConference.org or by calling 1.800.979.3177.

Date
Thursday, August 16, 2007

Time
8:15 AM – 4:15 PM

Location
Hilton Garden Inn Pittsburgh / Southpointe
1000 Corporate Drive
Canonsburg, PA 15317

RSVP Info
1.800.979.3177
info@MarketingConference.org
http://www.MarketingConference.org

Price
Event registration:
$125 if booked in advance. $149 at the door

Do you recall me talking about The Tinbasher ranking #7 for the search term The Prices of Potatoes?

Well, you’ll be pleased to know that since that post we now rank #2 for the self same term(it would’ve ranked #1, but I accidently typed ‘price’ insted of ‘prices’ in the title at first), but #1 for the search term price of potatoes.

Now you might think that I’ve finally tipped over the edge on this one, but there’s some method in my madness.

It’s called optimising for search engines. You see, I did it on purpose to see what would happen. I had more than a sneaking suspicion that if I put the keywords into the title, then theoretically it should rank higher in the future when somebody puts those terms in again.

And hey presto, it has.

So, the moral of the story is to tweak your post titles accordingly. That’s not to say you have to do it for every one, but if you’re wanting people to find you on the basis of a product then at least put your product in the title.

That’s also the other nice thing about Wordpress - it’s really rather tweakable with the array of plugins available. I also use a plugin that switches the title so that it appears before The Tinbasher as opposed to after.

I know - I’m a bloody genius

UPDATE:

I’d be mightily non-plussed if I’d found this particular page after searching on ‘how to rank #1 on google’. You must forgive me. You see, I wrote this way back when I was terribly soggy behind the ears and never thought for a second when writing the post that further down the line I might rank well about ranking well.

But you should never underestimate the power of a blog with a sturdy, well set-up backend. These days I get to put all this into perfect practice daily at my new place of work - Direct Online Marketing (where you can yourself a free internet advertising consultation).

Also, we’re currently throwing a search engine marketing conference together in Pittsburgh with speakers from Microsoft, eBay and WebTrends that’ll not only show you how to rank better organically by using blogs, but also how to run better pay per click campaigns and monitor your entire internet marketing campaign.

I hope that makes your click a bit more worthwhile.