Caydel’s SEO Blog

So, today begins my ‘official’ job hunt.

I will be graduating in a few months with my B.Sc. in Computer Science, with a Minor in Mathematics, with a good chunk of Physics in there. I am hoping to get a job either as an SEO, or as a programmer utilizing my talents in Java (SE or EE) or Ruby on Rails. I think I have a lot to offer employers, so we will see how it goes.

So far, I have a Monster.ca account created with my resume on it, and I have applied to a few jobs through it. I’ve even fired off a request to the Canadian Forces to see if they have anything suited to my education. There don’t seem to be tons of openings so far for entry-level jobs though - most listings I am finding on job sites require a minimum of 3-5+ years of experience.

The main problem I am trying to overcome is a lack of professional related job experience - since I am fresh out of school, I only have a coop and a consulting gig to place on my resume. While I have held a number of other jobs over the summers while I was in school, none of them are related. Should I put them on my resume?

Most of my resume information is available on my LinkedIn Profile as well. If anyone knows of any openings that could use a bright, talented, and flexible CS grad with a good knowledge of a bunch of different disciplines (SEO, Programming, Web Design, heck… beekeeping, treeplanting, cabinet making, construction and more!), or can suggest any other places to look for jobs, feel free to pass on the information to me, either by commenting or emailing me at br_ia_n@cay_del.c_om. (remove random underscores :p).

Since this is my first serious job hunt, I really appreciate any and all help and tips! I would really appreciate hearing from any recruiters about any suggestions they could make!

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Ever felt the need to modify your company’s equipment to have some fun on a slow day? Check out the video below:

Man does that guy come close to smoking his head on the concrete…

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One of the most useful plugins I have on my blog is Dax Hererra’s Referral Feed plugin for Wordpress. I’ve used it since last fall on my blog, and totally love watching the different incoming search queries show up live.

At any rate, I just saw a rather disturbing search query come in which led to my site. Seems someone performed a search for ‘Killing People on Instant Messaging‘.

I’m not sure what surprises me more - that there is some anger-ridden kid out there who wants to knock off one of their MSN ‘buddies’ or the fact that my site is ranking high for that…

Edit: Aaron from the City of Angels Children’s Home in Tijuana informed me that Google offered him a list of scholarly articles related to the query….

Google is so weird some days…

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A bunch of bloggers have been commenting today on the ‘misspelling’ in Google’s Valentine’s day logo this morning, which seems to say ‘Googe’ rather than ‘Google’.

The Puget News decided to do a quick bit of research into ‘Googe’ to determine whether this was a mistake or not, and they discovered the following:

1. ‘Googe’ may refer to the 16th century poet Barnabe Goorge who is mostly famous for the line, ‘I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die’ which is obviously in the romantic, Valentine’s spirit
2. ‘Googe’ could be a reference to bassist Debbie Googe of My Bloody Valentine, an Irish-British rock band from the early 1990’s.
3. Lastly, it could be referring to the word ‘Googe’ as used in the Urban Dictionary. Warning: possibly NSFW, and just nasty anways…

So, hopefully that sheds some light onto the mystery. Once again, hat tip to The Puget News!

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Andy Beal and Barry Schwartz are reporting today that there is yet another Toolbar PR update.

When the Jan. 9 update hit, it only appeared to affect older, established sites. Most of my sites 18 months or older had some changes last time around, but none of my newer pages had any changes. This blog, for instance, which is nearly a year old remained at a solid PR0.

This latest update appears to affecting more sites. *All* of my older, established sites dropped PR by a point while new pages, such as this blog, finally got their first Toolbar PR value.

The fact that the PR dropped on the older pages, which have only been growing over time, leads me to wonder if perhaps the displayed PR values have been normalized differently this time around. For example, does a new PR3 signify a higher ranking than a PR5 may have a year ago?

Many of my pages which were previously PR5 are now PR3-PR4, despite major increases in relevant links from a variety of *trusted* sources. I find it hard to believe that these pages could have *lost* value over time in the eyes of Google. I am not so confident to believe that it is totally impossible that my pages could ahve gone down in quality over time, yet the fact that this trend appears across *all* my pages seems to indicate that something has changed.

Have you noticed anything different? What kinds of gains / losses have you seen this time around.

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A study was released yesterday indicating that the vast majority of Canadian teens are unaware of the dangers and privacy issues of the internet. The study, performed in partnership between Microsoft Canada and Ipsos-Reid, surveyed a large number of teens of ages ranging from 10-14 years on a number of privacy-related topics.

The results are staggering. 70% of the teens questioned indicated that they believed that the information they put online and sent to friends would be private. Of this 70%, it was found that 37% of females and 22% of males had emailed a picture of themselves to somebody else on the internet.

Other statistics pulled from the survey:

• 33 per cent of children age 10 to 14 spend 6-10 hours a week online while 26 per cent spend more than 10 hours a week online.
• 25 per cent of children would feel safe getting together with a person they have only met online and talked to for a long time online.
• 17 per cent of children say they have used the Internet in the middle of the night.
• 11 per cent have been asked by a stranger for personal information while online such as their full name, home address and phone number.
• One in 10 youth do not know all of the people on their friends/messaging list.
• Two in five 10 year olds always participate in instant messaging when online.
• 26 per cent of children age 10 to 14 have seen hateful messages.
• 96 per cent of parents have spoken with their children about dangers to be aware of online.

What do you think? How could parents do a better job to keep their children out of harms way on the ‘net?

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I just got this through the e-mail, and had to share it with the rest of you:

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