Here are the tips that the SEOs shared when we went around the room for introductions at the June 2009 DC SEO / Social Media Meetup. I’ve grouped them by category for your convenience…ooh, another tip—subheadings are a great place for keywords.

Tips for Getting Links and Ranking Better

• You don’t want to be #1 in the SERPs (search engine results pages), you want to be the page. (Dominate the listings with your site, your blog, your LinkedIn profile (mine) and SEOmoz profile (mine), etc.)
• Bloggers don’t want to pimp your press release, but they will feel like they’re doing a community service to write about your upcoming events. (This came from a diamond seller.) Reach out to them about events you sponsor and make sure the main URL includes your RSVP information.
• Chat me up at an SEO Meetup and I’ll throw you some link love. That’s what Chris (@trentiles on Twitter) did. So, let me just say, are you looking for healthy recipes? Check out www.keepitsimplefoods.com.  Chris highly recommends it. While you’re at it, if you’re looking for VW, Audi, BMW forums—especially in Buffalo—check out http://www.dubsinthebuff.com. And if you like to grocery shop for healthy food in a fancy schmancy car, check out both sites.

OK, back to our regularly scheduled post.

Google SEO Tips

• Create a Google profile (mine) as another way to get your name higher in the SERPs. www.google.com/profiles
• When adding new clients or sites, link to them from your highest public Page Rank page, such as shown in Google Webmaster Tools. (I’d add do it from your home page as well.)
• Add Google Analytics to your site so Google will visit you regularly — even if you use another analytics package.
• Similarly, run Google AdSense links on at least some pages so Google visits your site regularly. (Along the same lines, upload an XML sitemap regularly.)
• The updated AdSense policy might require a change to your privacy policy.  Generate a new one using (kudos to our host @1p for finding that link during the event).
• Google Search Appliance Version 6 is out.

Blogging SEO Tips

• Guest post on a blog for traffic and a link to your site. Make sure you have some good posts lined up for newcomers who check you out as a result – this might be your only chance to wow them. On your own blog, expand on your guest post or cover another aspect of the topic.
• If you’re going to use Blogspot, make sure you register your dotcom name and use it on the site. A few attendees who started with Blogger later switched to WordPress with some difficulty. But if they had used the Blogspot address instead of their own domain name, they wouldn’t have been able to redirect traffic to their new host. (Hmm, maybe the lesson is really to start with WordPress in the first place.)

Site Tips

• Get Internet liability insurance for your startup. Bonding yourself might not provide enough coverage. (Can I say “bonding yourself” on a site visited by church web teams?)
• Use a flat site architecture with good, descriptive bread crumbs to help with spidering.
• Try the Thirty Day Challenge to see how you can make money online [I’ve removed the direct link at the insistence of WordPress.com, which tell you what WordPress thinks about the site]. My natural reaction is to be suspicious, but the tip was greeted with some affirmative head-nods by other attendees. Your call. Let me know how it goes if you try it. (But not if that’s asking for some sort of Amway-type invitation.)

Social Media Tips for Twitter

• Register all of your brand and product names on Twitter (defensively). Try to make as many active as you can.
• Register “yournamesucks” as a defensive move on Twitter. (I’d treat this one carefully or with humor since you risk the page ranking for your name.)

DC Job Outlook for SEO

• A corporate recruiter in attendance said that the DC area job market is picking up. 80% of the openings she sees are Web-related in some way, such as programming, SEO, copywriting, etc. (Secondary tip, if you’re looking for a job then show up prepared at a Meetup; sometimes recruiters and hiring managers are here.)

There you go. It’s almost like you were there, at least for the introductions.

Last time, my write-up of the SEO Meetup was primarily tips I had shared with others. This time the round of introductions helped all of the attendees participate in the information sharing. So what do you think of these tips–are you going to try some? Any that you think you should skip?

SEO Answers From the May 6, 2009 SEO Meetup

The conversations at the May 2009 DC SEO / Social Media / Affiliate Marketing Meetup (whew, that’s a mouthful) covered a range of topics. Here are the questions I heard along with recommended answers.

How can my law firm’s events show up better in the search engines?
Submit to eventful, upcoming.org, zvents, craigslist and Google Base.

• http://eventful.com/washingtondc/events
• http://upcoming.yahoo.com/place/Fz2_YE6bBJ2_FxtS
• http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/cal/
• http://www.zvents.com/search?st=event&city=Washington
• Google Base – DC Legal Events (URL is too absurdly long to show–we’re talking Lotus Notes link long)

What’s that URL you just shouted across the table – is it plural or singular?
Someone asked our host, Miles, whether his security alarm systems in Washington, DC domain was singular or plural. UrbanAlarm.com is singular, but after taking a look at the handy dandy mobile version of AjaxWhois.com, we saw the plural was available and Miles snatched it up.
Tip: If a plural of your domain name is how someone might hear it, grab it.

How can I get links to my blog?
Come to the next Meetup and chat me up! I’m always happy to share some link love and drop some sweet anchor text.

• Remember Dean Megginson, NovaHomeGuy.com, who we profiled before? He’s added DullesHomeGuy.com to his publishing empire. Take a look.
• Looking for graphic illustration in Washington DC? Check out Will Carroll’s http://www.Geoill.com

Why is your hand resting on my thigh?
This one wasn’t directed at me, but I think it’s best if we move on to another question.

How can I tell if I have duplicate content penalties? I have an old site I copied from one platform to another. Both sites are still out there, but I change the headlines and added pictures to the newer one.
It’ll probably take more than that to look different in the eyes of the search engines. One way to tell is to conduct some searches on unique phrases from an article that appears on both sites. Do both show up in the results? If so, you may be okay for now. If you see the following, you may have problems:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the x already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

It’s always good to 301 redirect, but that’s not always an option if you’re using a free blogging service rather than your own hosted site.

How can I get in touch with the social media scene in DC?
Follow @1p on Twitter. Paul hosts a bunch of social media events and is usually at these SEO Meetups.

How can I tell how well the search engines are picking up my Flash pages?
Search for site:yourdomain.com to pull up all of the indexed pages on your site.
Do you see all your pages listed? Are there descriptive headlines and blurbs that would make a newcomer want to click? If so, that’s good.

Or, are you seeing

[FLASH] Loading:
File Format: Shockwave Flash
Loading:

If it’s the latter, go fix it.

How do I handle SEO for Flash?
How can I make Flash show up better in searches?

• Embed Flash using SWFObject and JavaScript. You’ll have one version for Flash users and a back-up one for search engine spiders and other HTML-only visitors
• Fill in meta tags in Flash editor
• Read How to SEO Flash http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml
• Review: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/documentation
• Read: http://searchengineland.com/080411-101105.php 
  http://www.beussery.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/google-flash-seo/
  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html
  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/flash-and-seo-compelling-reasons-why-search-engines-flash-still-dont-mix

How can I leverage my photos better for SEO?
Label them well in Flickr, geo tag them, include links back to your post, pick appropriate rights for sharing (Skelliewag has a handy overview).

I’m trying to get more leads from PPC. Any other ways to track these?
Try displaying a unique phone number or extension used exclusively in your PPC ads. Or a coupon code.

What’s the conversion rate for real estate agents using social media to generate leads?
One attendee reported about 5 percent of contacts become actual clients.

What’s the best way to learn HTML?
I recommend http://w3schools.com/html/ because you learn by coding HTML on screen and immediately see the results.
(I’ve heard good things about http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/gettingstarted/ , too.)

Is there a course or program I should enroll in to learn SEO?

• Use SEOmoz.org’s expansive free resources to get a great understanding.
  • http://www.seomoz.org/articles/difficulty/1 and the blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog
  • Beginner’s Guide to SEO (an oldie but a goodie)
  • Beginner’s Checklist
• Try SEOBook if you want to invest a little money
• The best way is to learn by doing. Start your own blog or website.
• Another attendee recommended Hubspot http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-resources/
  I follow Hubspot’s Mike Volpe on Twitter, who shares some good stuff.

There you go — you get all that for the cost of a Cosi sandwich along with a dollar donation to the Meetup facilitator.

Anything you want to add? And are you gettng questions ready for the next SEO Meetup?

The most recent Washington DC SEO Meetup was a joint session with the DC Social Media Meetup. Here are 12 lessons I learned from the people I met and the sites discussed.

1. When evaluating the suitability of a domain name, make sure it can be heard in a loud bar. I heard a lot of “What was that?” “Is that plural?”
2. You can collect participants’ contact info using co-host Paul Graham’s method of passing around a laptop with an Outlook email already open for attendees to type in their name, email address and site(s). I would’ve been inclined to use a text file for easier backing up along the way, but with the Outlook approach the URLs are automatically hyperlinked and the message is ready to go to the group. And since Paul knows his way around demos from LaunchBoxDigital, I’ll defer to him. (The Washington Post covered LaunchBox a week after the Meetup so coming to the Meetup keeps you ahead of the mainstream media.) Paul also has a great Twitter ID, @1p, which is almost as good as Rex Hammock’s @r who you should follow, by the way.
3. Wherever you are in your career, you’ll fit in at these Meetups. Attendees included a mix of noobs, professionals, job seekers and those hiring (including HyperOffice.com, which I learned is Sharepoint plus Microsoft Exchange ).
4. It’s possible to get separate checks in DC. The Meetup’s venue, James Hoban’s, seated us in an airy, separate section downstairs. The staff graciously handled individual separate checks for everyone – a rare sight that’s so appreciated at these types of events. A few orders were missed in the confusion, but the staff worked it out.
5. It’s easier to score an alpha invite face to face. Saw a demo of Diditz.com, as mentioned previously, a social networking around events without the hassle of having to join a group or pre-agree on tags. It’s definitely worth checking out.
6. Meet people from cool companies, such as navteq.com, supplier of data for Google Maps and others. Hmm…maybe I can get my church’s location corrected. (Yes, I’ve used the hand editing option–which someone else made a further adjustment to–but I’d like to get to the source.)
7. Gotta throw out a link for our co-host Miles from UrbanAlarm.com…even if he’s not totally convinced by my suggestion to use leading caps to avoid an UrbAnalArm.com misinterpretation. (Do’s and don’ts of URL names.)
8. Don’t chicken out about leaving contact info. Someone noted “for email, see Meetup” when the sign-up list went around, which goes against the “optimization” and “social” themes of the night.
9. Blog with passion and enthusiasm. Who do you want to write about “the Northern Virginia Real Estate market focusing on the Dulles areas of Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William Counties”? How about Dean Megginson, who blogs at novahomeguy.com backed by his years of experience as an appraiser, real estate consultant, land-use expert and Fairfax government worker. His enthusiasm for real estate shines through in person and in his writing.
10. Learn an interesting way to solicit Diggs for your best content. Check out Phil Weslow’s FeedbackSecrets.com for online business strategies for eBay and beyond.
11. It’s a small world. The week before I took out some advertising on EdWeek.org at work. Who do I run into at the Meetup? Paul Hyland, the executive producer of the educators news site who also blogs at Paul’s Web Space 2.1.
12. Some people are happy when gas jumps over four bucks. Well, at least one person was. That would be Steve, who owns hypermiling.com, the site dedicated to extending your gas mileage that just happens to have some very relevant ads running on it.

Bonus tip: Read DCist. On the way home, I walked by the scene of a recent DCist Photo of the Day, and was able to provide details about the street musicians at Dupont Circle as a group of us headed back to Metro.

The evening worked so well that we’re going to do another combined session in September. Hope you can join us.

P.S. Just across the river is the Virginia SEO Meetup. The August meeting was cancelled, but you can read Debra Mastaler’s summary of a recent session.