11/12/02 RMIUG Meeting - Search Engine Optimization Demystified

The Tuesday, November 12th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group (RMIUG) will feature a panel discussion called "Search Engine Optimization Demystified-- the Google Dance, PageRank, Pay-Per-Click, Spiders & other strange critters." Every day, 150 million searches are done on Google. How many of those find your website, products and services? In addition, an NPD Group study found that 55 percent of online purchases were made on sites found through search listings, while a mere 9 percent were on sites found through banner ads.

- What are the most important factors when optimizing a web page for search engine traffic? (If you do nothing else, what's the Number One thing you should do?)
- How many pages on the web are currently linking to your site and how does that affect your search engine ranking?
- What is pay-per-click marketing and how effective is it?
- What keywords and keyphrases are people using to search for your products and services? (BTW, how many people search for the phrase "widget xyz" each day on the Net and how do I find that out?)
- What are the (almost) undisputed #1 and #2 players in the world of search engines that you can't afford to ignore, and why have most web surfers never heard of #2?

Find out the intriguing answers to these questions and many more as our expert panelists discuss how search engine marketing works and what you need to be successful in getting web traffic from the engines. As always, plenty of time will be given for interactive Q&A, so bring lots of questions.

Bob Bandy (bbandy@actis-emarketing.com), Partner of Actis eMarketing, will be giving us an overview of search engine optimization and discussing what factors affect how your site is ranked in the engines. He will be covering which search engines and directories are most important, how they work, and giving some recommendations
on the "do's and don'ts" of search engine marketing. Bob has more than fifteen years of experience in technical sales and marketing, and is a past Board Member of the Colorado E-Commerce Roundtable (COECRT). Actis eMarketing provides marketing strategy, website development and redesign, search engine optimization, pay-per-click ad campaigns, targeted email and newsletter ad campaigns, affiliate and link programs, and in-house e-newsletter programs.

Les Reaves (LesR@rtp.com), President of Pyramid Media, will be speaking on pay-per-click (PPC) search engine marketing and how it integrates into an overall search engine optimization effort. He will cover which search engines are important PPC players, how they work and give us an in-depth look at this interesting aspect of search engines. We'll find out why some companies are spending $100,000 and more per month on PPC marketing, and what those of us with more modest budgets can hope to accomplish. Les has been working with PPC marketing since it's inception and his company, based in Vail, offers consulting and services in online marketing including an automated bidding service for Overture PPC and revenue tracking for each individual keyword.

We may also be joined by one more speaker, who is a business manager utilizing search engine marketing to drive his online sales. Details to follow.

URL's of interest:
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Actis eMarketing, http://www.actis-emarketing.com
Resort Technology Partners, http://www.rtp.com
Search Engine Watch, http://www.searchenginewatch.com
High Rankings Advisor Search Engine Marketing Newsletter,
http://www.highrankings.com

The meeting is Tuesday, November 12th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm (with optional 6:30 pm start for refreshments and informal networking). The meeting will be held at The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at 1850 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder. To get to NCAR from the Boulder Turnpike (US 36) or Broadway (US 93), take Table Mesa Drive west towards the mountains for approximately 2.5 miles into the foothills. NCAR is at the top of the hill. For door-to-door driving directions, go to MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/ ), click on Driving Directions, enter your starting address, NCAR's address, and voila! Park in the NCAR lot, go in the main door, and ask the guard to point you to meeting, which is held in the main auditorium, right off the lobby. The meeting is free and open to the public, but we may pass the hat to help defray expenses.

Our meeting location seats about 120 people. That is usually enough room to accommodate all attendees, but it's impossible for us to predict how many people will show up for any given meeting. Seating is always on a first-come, first serve basis, and in the event of more attendees than seats, we won't be able to admit additional
people into the auditorium after all seats are filled.

Thanks to our two sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
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MicroStaff (www.microstaff.com) which provides Creative and Technical Talent for Web, Interactive Media, Marketing Communications and Software Development projects, is the sponsor of food and beverages for RMIUG meetings.

ONEWARE (http://www.ONEWARE.com) -- a Colorado-based software company that provides semi-custom web-based applications, sponsors the RMIUG meeting minutes.

Consultants and companies are invited to bring Internet-related Product information, brochures, and business cards which will be displayed on an information table.

There are email mailing lists set up for this group. To subscribe or unsubscribe, see http://www.rmiug.org/maillist.html You can also reach the RMIUG "Executive" Committee at rmiug-comm@rmiug.org. Our web site is at http://www.rmiug.org/

Tentative schedule of upcoming RMIUG meetings:
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Jan 2003 - "Starting an Internet/Software Company Today"
Mar 2003 - "Domain Update - Legal Issues & Technical Changes"
May 2003 - "Nonprofits on the Net - A Web of Activism"
July 2003 - "E-Learning: Did the Hype Ever Pan Out?"
Sep 2003 - "Instant Messaging vs. Email vs. Web"
Nov 2003 - "Web Technology - What the Present and Future Holds"

(To suggest a topic, send your idea to rmiug-comm@rmiug.org)