Back to the world of mommies...

Sometimes, you need to be around people who understand.

I participate in a several forums pretty regularly, but one I'd gotten away from, and probably shouldn't have, is babycenter. It's amazing how much you can bond over children- this site saved my sanity many times while I was pregnant and after I had my daughter. And now that my husband and I are working on the second one, I think I need to go back.

What other forums do I frequent, you ask? Well, like I said, they're pretty random.

To start, I'm an admin on RX-8 Club. Yes, I have an RX-8- it's now 5 years old, but it was one of the first in the US when they were released back in 2003.

I also participate regularly on The Purse Forum- an excellent group of ladies who have not only fed my addiction, but helped me realize my dreams (I'm so cheesy) of owning Chanel handbags.

And don't forget the World of Warcraft board- talk about an addiction. And speaking of WoW, did I mention the fiasco that was the Blizzon ticket purchasing this year? Yikes! Here's the screen many of us found ourselves looking at most of the day.


Somehow, my darling husband managed to get through, however, and we'll be heading to Anaheim in October for this momentous event!


And on a related note, there's always my guild forum, Draco Dormiens.

So that's where I spend my time now- with the recently re-addded babycenter. Looking forward to it guys!

SEO vs Great Web Pages

A friend brought up an interesting point the other day. Why is it that we (normal people with websites, companies, etc) have to work so hard to get the search engine's attention? Shouldn't they be working harder to find out what's more relevant to people and find US? Not forcing us to optimize our sites to match their ideas of what makes a site relevant?

And I agree with my friend. In a perfect world, search engines would find our sites based on actual relevancy- not on how well we create content tailored to be snatched out of cyberspace. In a perfect world, my 3-year-old would not scream "MOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYY!!!!!" 5 seconds after I've put her to bed, either. Unfortunately, this world is not perfect, much to my sadness. And so I'll continue to do the best for my company that I can, and continue to optimize as best I can.

I'd like to reiterate again that SEO is not rocket science, as some incredibly insightful person once noted. It's links. It's relevant content that actually relates to the purpose of the website. It's making real use of your meta data. But it's not rocket science. I find it amusing that there are so many high-level SEO companies out there to "help" those of us who lack SEO skills. It's not hard, people! If you'd just stick with it and try to learn something, you won't have to spend so much money hiring the "experts."

As I've mentioned, once again this year I'll be heading to Pubcon for several days of SEO immersion talk. I have a feeling, that with my company, it will be the equivalent of beating my head into a wall, but I can always hope, right? This year I'm excited that I'll be able to maybe blog from Pubcon a bit- at least, until my husband appears, and snatches the wireless broadband connection from me.

Here I go again...

With another purse.

I am not the kind of girl who you'd expect to carry Chanel. I wear jeans and sneakers if at all possible. I don't like snobby people, and I have no use for clothes that are uncomfortable. But I cannot resist luxury handbags. And since this is my personal blog, and I don't really expect anyone to read it but me(but it's kind of exciting to think someone might, haha!), I can brag if I want to.

On to other news...

SEO, oh SEO- you drive me insane. It stands to reason that people will type in what they think is the best term for whatever they are looking for, in a search engine (did that make any sense??). But what happens when you work for a big corporation, and the search term has legal implications you don't want to touch? Do you optimize for it without using it in the content, and hope for the best? Do you choose another similar keyword, and optimize for that? I'm not completely sure, but I've got legal checking to see if we can even use the "bad keyword" in our meta tags. My hope is that we will change to the new keyword- as that will allow us to concentrate on that keyword, and not dilute the campaign.

In any case, I'm not going to worry too much about the above. Instead, I'm going to concentrate on my upcoming trips to Disney World and Blizzcon. Yes, my husband and were one of the lucky ones in the great Blizzcon Failoc Debacle of 2008. So while most people are sitting at home, raiding Hyjal and moping, my husband and I will be snug in our room at the Anaheim Marriott, or happily frolicing on the demos of Diablo III, Starcraft, and WoTLK, or driving our rented Pontiac Solstice up the Pacific Coast Highway.

I can't wait.