The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Industry conference will be in Vancouver, British Columbia on June 8-10. This is a long running and very authoritative meeting within the domain investment industry, and is billed as a great way to learn the business side of domains. You can read the official announcements here or some press coverage here. I have been to several of the TRAFFIC meetings, and consider them to be among the best conferences I have attended overall, especially when it comes to making connections and learning the real behind-the-scenes business aspects. Where search marketing conferences are often a lot of fluff and filler, these meetings are very much true-grit business gatherings.

Vancouver is a beautiful city, just under an hour from the US border north of Seattle. Amtrak runs 2-4 trains per day between Seattle and Vancouver, direct from downtown Seattle to downtown Vancouver (a few city blocks from the conference hotel).

To cross the border and return hassle free, you need a passport plus driver license or other ID, or one of those new enhanced driver licenses (Washington State offers one) or a Nexus pass which gives you a fast lane through the checkpoint (read the tips about usage).

Looking for a content strategy for your SEO blog? Learn from the best! Scour the SEO feeds and twitter lists, and notice what works for the SEO crowd. I did, and I compiled this Top Ten list of SEO Blog Content Strategies.

Top Ten SEO Blog Content Tips for 2010

1. Make a “Top 10 List” of interest to beginner SEO consultants with little business experience. You can do it! You really can! Just pick any micro topic, and focus on it like a laser. Make up ten possible  things and list them as a “Top Ten” list. Don’t go into detail… you don’t want anyone to notice you don’t really know what you’re writing about. Just a line or two for each. I see people fail at this over and over, but for the sole reason that they add too much detail! Just make the statement, repeat it with a nte or two on how it *might* work, and move on.

2. Make a “Top Ten SEO Myths” post

Same as #1, just pick any ten things that peopel disagree about. Call them “myths” and viola… great content!

3. Make a Top 101 List

Same as #1 above, just super long. More than 100 so that it’s remarkable (101 is better and 103 is even better.. you get the idea). Prevailing SEO wisdom says many people can easily memorize Top 10 lists and so they read and move on. But tose same people will fail to get past 23 on your list, and so they will bookmark it. The truth is, they don’t actually book mark because they have no intention of coming back. Instead, they send it to someone else to try and extract some social proof value out of it. Go ahead.. test this for yourself! Or.. just write a Top 103 list!

4. Make a Top 10 List of SEO Posts

And yes, it can actually be a Top 10 List of Top 10 Lists. In the SEO field, even that will work! Go ahead.. try it! Consider doing it weekly.

5.  make a Top Ten List for off topic things for SEOs

SEO people pay to much attention to themselves and their friends. Exploit that, by showing them there is more to the world than what they already pay attention to. How easy is that!  Pick 10 things out of a gazillion things on the Internet. Cats, dogs, cakes, bacon… whatever. Don’t spend any time on picking… just DO IT. And do it on Friday or Monday.

6. Make  Top  10 Things Not to Do in SEO List

The contrarian route.. works great! Be sure and include “Don’t Publish Top 10 Lists” because, well, it needs to be there.

7. Make a Top Ten List referencing a celebrity and SEO

Something like “Top Ten SEO Tricks Jason Mraz Doesn’t Know” or “Top Ten SEO Mistakes Ashton Kutcher Makes”. Then take one of your previous “Top Ten” SEO lists (or contrarian lists) and add one line to each item, mentioning Jason Mraz or Ashton Kutcher. No one will actually read it… so just make sure you don’t write much.

8. Make a Top 10 Ways post for SEO

There is a little known physiological tendency among SEO people (believed to be genetic, but possible environmentally exacerbated e.g. beer, hard liquor, excess oxygen) to cite and refer Top Ten SEO lists. You can try it for yourself. See 9 and 10.<

9. Make a Top 10 Reasons why your should NOT Read This Top 10 List

Again, if it works, why argue? Success on the web is all in the execution.

10. Make a Top 10 Reasons why your MUST Read This Top 10 List

Seriously. Are we done? Lesson learned? Awesome. Now Happy Friday. Enjoy your Happy Hour. See you Monday!

John Andrews is a Seattle SEO consultant, and all around Digital Marketing consultant specializing in Competitive Web & Internet Strategies and SEO.

I’m not an experienced professional but I have more websites and blogs on the topics of my career than any of the other people at my workplace do. That might be because they spend a lot of time actually doing the work, while I am an inexperienced young newbie with lots of free time and mad web design skillz. Or it may be because they know so much about the topic that blogging disconnected bits and pieces that might do more harm than good doesn’t make sense to them.

But it makes great sense to me, because every little thing I discover (usually because they showed me) is cool and interesting and (to me) seems to solve all of my problems (at least until I run into the next one).

Therefore I blog “how to” tips all the time. Even if they are often short-sighted, usually incomplete, and mostly lacking in sufficient detail. My blogs get hella traffic. I’m kind of a big deal on the Internet (amongst my Facebook friends). I might even get a raise because of that.

Today’s post is about Advanced IT Topic “A”. I had no idea about this stuff until this week, when my plain vanilla install of Open Source MegaPackage broke. It was throwing error messages like a circus monkey. Most were crazy incomprehensible but one caught my eye. I asked the old dude in my department about it, and he gave me a wicked smart command to run from the command line of the web server. I posted it below, so you can use it too. It might totally fix your broken MegaPackage install, especially if you get error messages like the one I got (which I used in the title of this post, so you could find it via Google).

So if you got that error, just try this command. It might work for you, too! If not, just keep trying stuff, because you might eventually come across a command that works for you, too. That’s how you learn! Or else you can just try a different open Source MegaPackage and see if that one works. No sense wasting hella time if the bugs seem too strong.

Oh and be sure to blog about your experiences, to help others!