Guillaume Bouchard of Montreal’s NVI Solutions, talks to Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR about the changes search engine optimization (SEO) has brought about in Canada. The Search engine marketing game has changed over the last couple of years: the market is becoming more local as users employ more geo-specific keywords, and Canadian companies are seeing dramatic shifts in traffic and conversions by shifting their search optimization keyword strategies. On the search engine users’ side of the equation, people are becoming more aware of how to search on google and as a result their searches are becoming more refined and growing to two to five words longer. The big corporations in Canada are jumping on the search engine marketing bandwagon as well by translating their portals into French instead of using ‘english’ as the assumed default. As it stands there are a lot of opportunities for seo in Candada.

This week, Rand discusses good ol’ Pagerank. How has it evolved, and is it still the same fickle curmudgeon we all know and loathe love? PR has certainly seen its share of tweaks and updates over the years, but how much does it even resemble what we saw in the patent apps of yore? Let’s explore, shall we? Feel free to chime in with your thoughts and concerns about the topic and how you feel it could impact SEO in the future.

Jill Whalen, a pioneer in search engine optimization, and founder of High Rankings, talks with Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR about the importance of copywriting for websites. Whalen highlights the fact that technical quality and editorial content have to work together to appeal both to search engines as well as to readers: words are important to sell your products and services, but you also need to make sure that your website is crawlable by search engines. The right conent as well as the right technology is the key to succeeding online.