Good and bad news this christmas. Firstly the bad. I returned to my parent’s house for Christmas only to discover that they currently don’t have any Internet whatsoever. I managed to share my 3G internet connection on my Nokia N95 8GB via Bluetooth with my Macbook so at least I have some connection, albeit pinging servers at over 300ms. 

On the good news front, I’ve received plenty of techie books to keep me busy. For 2010, I’ve identified my skills in Excel, CSS and landing page optimization need to be improved. With the latter, we ran a competition on one of our sites in our portfolio, and we sent a huge amount of traffic to merchants, but it became quickly apparent that the quality of the landing page influenced whether we generated £10k in sales, or literally nothing at all. 

My Excel book is probably large enough to kill someone with and has all the information to satisfy my knowledge for pivot tables. Over the forthcoming week, I’ll be cracking into that and my book on CSS. If I am to work on creating landing pages for clients, then knowledge of CSS will be critical. It’ll be helpful for my sites in my personal portfolio. Another book I need to buy in the new year is one on analytics, but I’ve got plenty of reading for now!

No pictures on this post. Not until I have a Broadband connection again!

This screen grab of a search I did is testament to Google’s new real time search results working

I’ve been following some of the SES Chicago 09 coverage and the ultimate battle came up, SEO vs PPC. Representing SEO was David Naylor who I saw speak on the subject of SEO. Once you get past his love for plugging Microsoft services, then he is a very good speaker. Also representing too was Rand Fishkin, a true SEO heavyweight!

What amazes me is that in debating different search engine marketing techniques, so much effort is spent on debating which is better rather than using it as a forum for discussing how the synergies of both methods can be used to deliver value. I believe that SEO can deliver sustainable competitive advantage through excellent organic listings. Looking at the site portfolio I work on at work, I think SEO is the source of our competitive advantage. PPC has some great uses. It requires no investment, and you can deliver traffic in an instant. A particular interest for me is usability and converting traffic, so for that, PCC is great.

Anyway, if you haven’t already, check out the debate that was held. There are some really funny lines in it, especially by David Naylor. I Loved the Bing remark.