Search Engine Workshop Las Vegas

I am going to Las Vegas, this week, to attend my first on-site Search Engine Workshop, taught by Robin Nobles and John Alexander. I can hardly wait to learn more from these fine folks! Robin and John are the best!

As some of you may know, I received my initial training in "WebPositioning" (as SEO was called back then) in 1998 from Robin via her original online course. In 2004, I took both the basic and advanced SEO/SEM courses offered at Online Web Training and was re-certified. Since then, I have kept my skills up to date by participating and studying at their Workshop Resource Center. After building relationships with the great folks at the WRC, I have become a chat moderator for their beginning chats and also I am now their webmaster.

There are many industry experts associated with the SEW/WRC operations and whenever I have an SEO/SEM question, I can usually find an answer from them or in the extensive reference and course material. I highly recommend their training to anyone that wants to learn real facts, based on research rather than just some theories.

Jerry West will be there too. He will be teaching several sessions and sharing his tested research with the students. For those of you that aren't familiar with Jerry, he is the author of the SEO Revolution Newsletter. This is a great newsletter where Jerry shares the results of his solid research, which is based on real testing on multiple test sites. When Jerry tells you something, he can back it up with facts!

I will finally get to meet several people associated with the WRC, that I have been working with online for ages. I'm looking forward to hearing Dave Barry, of Computer Concierge, speak about CSS and database sites. I'll be meeting up with Robert Wright, the SEO Expert behind MrWebGuru and affiliate and SEM genius, Ginette Degner. With this much talent in one place, I'm sure I will learn a lot.

I'll give you a report after the workshop.

Odds and Ends:

I am still seeing a lot of PR fluxing between Google's datacenters, so I am going to hold off another week before I update my free directories review data. I have made a few minor review data updates today and moved one directory from free to paid directories.

A special thanks goes out to Kevin Heun, internet marketing consultant and WRC member, for his feedback on some directory changes.

That's it for today. I have to get packed.

As always, I like to hear from you and appreciate your feedback and updates on my free directory reviews. Many eyes are needed to keep this data up to date!

martin

Using mod_rewrite to Exclude https When Redirecting

I previously posted that I encountered a problem using mod_rewrite with https. The examples I had posted redirected the https links, and thus broke a shopping cart.

Well, after looking for a solution in several places, I found the Doriat mod_rewrite forum. What a great place! I posted my problem in their mod_rewrite request forum and Richard, one of their knowledgeable members, worked with me to create a solution. Thanks Richard!! ;-)

I have added this mod_rewrite excluding https solution to my .htaccess and mod_rewrite page. It is important to test your mod_rewrite rules to make sure they do what you intended and nothing else. Also, some servers are configured differently and there are several different ways to use mod_rewrite.

Other updates:

In regards to the recent PageRank update, it still has not stabilized across all the datacenters. Therefore, I am waiting until it does to update my free directory reviews.

A special thank you goes out to Ari, of WSI Internet Consultants, for catching a change on the submittal form at Allthewebsites Directory that indicated that a reciprocal link was now required. Also thanks to Dan of the SEO Friendly List for clarifying that is just a change in language and you can submit without filling in the reciprocal link field.

In order to keep my reviews up to date, it is really helpful to get feedback from you. So please keep it coming.

I will try and add a few new directories later today.

martin