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Target Audience: Anyone involved with running a web site (small business owners, corporate IT staff, web marketing, etc.) – You do NOT need to have a technical background to learn SEO best practices at this seminar, and no programming experience is required.

Training Seminar Goals

• Learn what SEO really is, how it works, and why it’s so critical to web success
• Examine industry jargon and learn what you really need to know (and what you don’t)
• Identify critical optimization factors, secondary SEO factors, and the “if you really want to do it right” advanced factors.
• How to avoid common SEO mistakes that actually hurt rankings (or get you banned altogether
• Learn the SEO basics, such as determining the best keywords, having a solid SEO site infrastructure, learning the value of content and inbound links
• Build on those SEO basics with expert tips, techniques and tools of the trade
• Demonstrate real-world case studies that show what works and what doesn’t
• Determine, measure and track site-wide Key Performance Indicators
• By the end of the day, you will know everything that you could want to know, or need to know, to get a site ranked well for targeted keywords
• E-Commerce SEO advice, including Interspire SEO and Big Commerce SEO
• High end SEO advice, inclusing IBM WebSphere Commerce SEO and ATG SEO

Agenda

• Check-in for pre-registered attendees
• On-site registration
• Collect materials, books, swag bag, t-shirt, etc.
• Coffee, juice, soft drinks, danish, bagels

8:30am – 10:10am Session 1

Intro to Search Engine Optimization

• Welcome
• Intro to SEO – the basics
• What color is your hat? – and other SEO lingo
• SEO is a competition, and the stakes are high

Why SEO?

• Understanding Search User Behavior
• SEO is not One Size Fits All – Building a Plan for Your Needs
• Site Analysis – Live site analysis of site of one attendee’s choice

Content is King

• Role of Content in SEO
• Understanding and Determining keywords

10:10am – 10:30am Break

• Coffee, juice, soft drinks, danish, bagels

10:30am – 12 noon Session 2

Page and Site Architecture Considerations

• Site Architecture – It all starts with the foundation

• • Taxonomy
  • Ease of crawl-ability for search engine spiders
  • Directory Structure
  • Robots Exclusion
  • URLs
  • Domain Names
  • Redirects
  • File names

• User Interface
  • Internal linking strategies
  • Site maps are your friend – how to do them right
  • Pull-down menus – It all depends on how you use them
  • AJAX – Sounds cool, should we use it?
  • Flash – is it really that bad?
• Page Construction
  • Frames – The forbidden ‘F’ word
  • Images and Page size
  • HTML coding requirements

• IP Cloaking
• Improper Redirection
• Page Bait and Switch
• Keywords Stuffing & Keyword Stacking
• Font tricks
• Mirrored content
• Doorway Pages
• What is Improper Linking?

12noon – 1pm Lunch

• Lunch will be provided – and we will be performing live site reviews during lunch for sites suggested by attendees

1pm – 2:20pm Session 3

Linking Strategies and Tactics

Link Building and Target Site Identification

• Why a Well Thought-out and Executed Linking Strategy is Essential
• “You will respect my site’s authority”
• Finding directories and search engines for your industry
• Anchor text and how it affects the links that affect your rankings
• Paid links: Good or bad? Yes. We’ll tell you which is when, and why
• How & why to get deep links
• Linking opportunities your competitors don’t know about
• Linking Tactics Gone Bad – Keeping friends with Google
• Link Bait – Who’s up for fishing?

Traditional Advertising meets SEO and Link Building

• Getting a new web site or new content noticed
• Submitting your site to search engines – wasted time you’ll never get back

• Maximizing the effect of online press releases
• How to get your site reviewed (and more importantly, linked to) by the right people
• How to use “The Blogosphere”, RSS and forums as your best search partners

2:20pm – 2:40pm Break

• Coffee, juice, soft drinks, cookies and brownies

2:40pm – 4:00pm Session 4

Tools of the Trade

• Tools and the trade… the good, the bad and the hit or miss stuff in between
  • Free tools – yes, you can run a large corporate site on free tools
  • Google Sitemaps, Trends, Analytics – wow, this Google place has a lot to offer
  • Yahoo Site Explorer
  • SEO Toolset
  • SEOmoz
  • Firefox – the browser for web marketing pros and the plugins you need
• Web Analytics and Measurement
  • Coremetrics
  • ClearSaleing
  • Google Analytics
  • Your basic stats and what to look for

4:00pm – 4:20 pm Break

• Coffee, juice, soft drinks, soda, cookies, brownies

4:20pm – 5:30pm Session 5

Optimize for more than just your site

• Local Search
• Shopping Search
• Images
• Videos
• Music

What’s the Future Hold?

• Chasing the algorithm
  • What is important now, and in the future – Good SEO will last forever
• Social Media – Facebook and such – not just for kids anymore
• Web 2.0 and how to make that good for you
  • Consumer Generated Content
  • Del.icio.us, Technorati, Digg and more.

Best Resources to keep you up-to-date

• Websites
• Forums
• Blogs
• Podcasts

Industry Players, Organizations & Events

• Who’s Who: Important Industry Players & Luminaries
• Industry Organizations
• Search Industry Tradeshows

5:30 pm – midnight SEO After Party for those that want to attend

We can talk SEO all day long, so join us and we’ll prove it

• Dinner and drinks at the hotel bar, general SEO Questions and Answers, individual site reviews, and peer networking session