The Tuesday, January 8th meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users
Group (RMIUG) will discuss "The Secrets of Search Engine Marketing."

SearchEngineWatch.com termed 2007 as "The Year that Search Grew Up."
Search, as a means to navigate the web, continues to be the dominant
portal to the World Wide Web with Google, specifically, owning the
lions-share of the market (65% according to HitWise), and still growing.

But beyond the incredible traffic that Search Engines have, Search as
a tool has matured as seen through some trends including:
* Blended Search Results - Launched initially by Google and followed
by Ask, Yahoo, and MSN, search is no longer about "10 blue links" made
popular by Google several years ago. Now search results include
images, video, and audio to provide a multidimensional search result
experience.
* Social Media Sites as content aggregators - Social networks like
Facebook and MySpace, Social News sites such as Digg and Netscape all
have shown that the masses are just as valuable at organizing around
content as the algorithms of Search Engines at getting at content.
How many times have you noticed a Digg article come up in a search result?

All in all, it means that optimizing your content (and I mean all of
it, including videos, images, and audio) for the search engines is not
just important, it is essential to get your brand and message across.

To help us understand the ins-and-outs of search engine marketing
(SEM) and optimization, and the critical steps to take in developing a
search-friendly website, we will have two speakers from a local search
engine marketing firm. We'll consider the website development process
and SEM best practices that blend a good user experience with high
visibility.

Kelly Hall (kellyhall@...) is a Project Manager with
90octane. She has been with the interactive marketing agency for three
years and has experience in the strategic development and execution of
both online lead generation and search engine marketing programs. She
has led successful SEM programs in the manufacturing, technical and
nonprofit verticals, with a focus on integrating new search
technologies. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of
Colorado at Boulder with a major in Communications.

Peter Samland (petersamland@...) is the Senior Systems
Engineer with 90octane. He has been doing web site development since
2002. He has his Bachelors in Computer Science/Philosophy and Religion
and is currently finishing his Master of Computer Science remotely at
Kansas State University. While he has worked with a variety of web
technologies, he has always been a proponent of open source,
accessible technologies and standards based development. At 90octane
he has driven micro-site development that is search engine friendly
and fun to use.



Links:
http://www.90octane.com
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627989

The meeting is Tuesday, January 8th 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 three sponsors who help make RMIUG meetings happen:
---------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Copy Diva (http://www.copydiva.com) which provides marketing project
management, marketing communications consulting, and web content
development is the AV sponsor for RMIUG.

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@.... Our web
site is at http://www.rmiug.org/


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Please note that RMIUG is hosted at NCAR and we are their guests. NCAR
has security regulations in effect that we must follow in order to use
the facility. If any RMIUG attendee is unwilling to follow these
simple regulations, I would ask that he or she not attend and instead
read the minutes after the meeting.

Here are the NCAR security policies that must be followed:

1. No weapons.
2. Must sign in at front desk and provide name.
3. Cooperate with security folks including providing ID if requested.
4. We are guests of NCAR so cooperation and courtesy are expected when
dealing with NCAR staff.

If there are any questions or concerns with this policy, please
contact me directly.
Thanks, Josh Zapin (josh@...).
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