Last week I was in Sydney speaking at the new Australian SEO conference Search Engine Room. It was my first time in Australia, which is inexcusable considering it’s just “across the ditch” from New Zealand — where I’ve been living for over 5 years now. For a brand new conference, I found Search Engine Room well-organized and well-attended. All the major players in the SEO business in Australasia were represented. It was a one-day conference, so the conference was composed mostly of fast-paced panel discussions. I moderated the session “Search Engine Optimisation: Black Art or Sweet Science?” and in my 5-minute overview (I think I might have hogged more time than that though) I made my case for SEO being “sweet science” – measurable, attainable, predictable, and so forth. My Powerpoint deck is available for download. The panel covered best practices, favorite tactics, ethics, and more. A few hours after my session, I had to high-tail it back to New Zealand, because, to my surprise, one of my daughters was admitted that day to the hospital for appendicitis. (She’s back home now, minus her appendix, and recovering nicely.)