Ask a random person on the street in Boise what’s SEO stand for and chances are good Search Engine Optimization will not be at the top of the list.  In fact, if you ask people in Boise what Search Engine Optimization means to them, you’ll get a variety of responses.

Boise is a unique market in that businesses are not as technically savvy as say on the east coast or Silicon Valley. Due to Boise being primarily an agricultural state and the mass employers being government related Boise certainly does have some challenges when it comes to being a technology leader. However that isn’t to say that there aren’t some technologically savvy businesses within Boise as there are many. Although specific names will not be mentioned the participants at Tech Boise include many of these forward thinkers within the Boise region. The problem that we see is that companies coming from outside areas, namely Utah have many dominant Search Engine Optimization firms. Search Engine Optimization also referred to as SEO is a series of processes taken to build up positioning within a search engine.

The gap that we see with traditional businesses here in Boise is that the education within the tech space is limited and that the term SEO or Search Engine Optimization is nonexistent. In fact we have two interns that are at the top of their classes with Boise State University, and both business major who have prior to working for us never heard the term SEO. While Pay-per click advertising is known and taught, the idea that natural positioning within the search engines through Search Engine Optimization was a foreign concept. Our goal is to change that so when outside companies come into the Boise area to preach Search Engine Optimization services, Boise residents know that companies here in Boise exist that can perform their SEO services.

In helping to bridge this gap we are going to be partnering with several of our clients and other technologically proficient companies here in Boise to hold educational seminars. The basis of these seminars will be to bring business owners up-to speed on what resources are available to them. As we have built up our business here in Boise we have seen that despite having a tight knit community, we lack the education sharing that needs to take place. Search Engine Optimization is just one example of concepts not grasped by many; others include social media optimization (Web 2.0) outside of the top three including Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter and many others. Stay tuned as we post these seminars on our website and on the social networks to bring Boise an unparalleled educational series.

Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds regularly deliver updates from web pages in order to give you the most recent information without having to search through different sites. RSS used in conjunction with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help maintain a high placement in search engine results. Two major benefits of RSS when used with SEO include: 1) Search engines pick up on the most up to date content. 2) RSS is easier for search engines to read as it is written in XML over HTML.

First, RSS feeds benefit SEO in that it allows search engines to pick up on the most up to date content from the web. Whether the updates are additional products and services or an additional blogs, the updated material can be found by search engines which can help result in higher page placement.

Real Simple Syndication uses an XML format which is much easier for search engines to read as opposed to HTML. XML allows search engines to crawl faster through content than it would if HTML was used. However, because XML is not readable for typical web users, the entire site cannot be formatted in XML.

Search engines will find any RSS content that is related to the search query before it finds any HTML content. If the engine is able to find RSS content that is similar to HTML, the engine will list the RSS results first. Online presence for any business must be accompanied by RSS in order to maximize any SEO value your website has.

Webcrawlers, spiders, or a Googlebot, for example, is a search engine crawler. Googlebot periodically traverses the web in record time, indexing content, links – everything contained in page source code – and storing it in Google’s search index. Then, when a user visits Google and enters a search phrase, the index, filtered by the algorithm, is what the user gets. Please note: there is some delay in this process since the results you’re getting are from the index and not the live web.

When your web developer codes your site and pages you must be careful that he or she knows what “trips up” the spider. For example, the spider can not read Adobe Flash content typically. Now there are ways to enable a spider to “read” the content, but it has to be done through an XML file fed into the Flash. If it is not created in this way then the Googlebot does cannot read it.

At times we work with a technology called sIFR. sIFR lets you use your favorite font on your websites by cleverly working with Flash, JavaScript and CSS.On Weyerhaeuser’s iLevel website we used sIFR technology to employ a font used throughout the offline marketing materials – a font defined specifically in the brand guidelines. On the Performance Tested Lumber page the headline is an example. The font used is not typically found on computers and we wanted to maintain brand consistency so tFIR was the solution to the problem.

The point is that using rich media technologies, Flash, or writing the code in incorrectly will cause the Googlebot to abandon your page, which makes all of the search engine optimization effort for not.

“…does Twitter have any SEO value?”

This question came to George via Twitter last night about the value of using Twitter as a part of your SEO strategy.  Twitter is a great social networking tool to create relationships with your ‘followers’ about the activities of your business.

From a structural standpoint, Twitter creates a “nofollow” tag advising Search Engines to ignore all posted links.  While it is not primarily an influential SEO tool, it is an invaluable SMO (Social Media Optimization) tool.

Twitter and other social media tools, like Twitter, are primarily extensions for your branding and awareness strategy, which will allow you to manage your credibility as a source for influencing the generation of SEO opportunities.

From a traffic perspective, many bloggers and businesses are using Twitter as an incremental source of traffic and link juice with varying degrees of success.  Twitter’s primary benefit is the ability to create a viral marketing tool delivered to a willing audience.

Take, as an example, @ricksanchezcnn.  In July Rick Schanchez of CNN began to use Twitter as a means to communicate with and market to his viewers.  As a result he has claimed to have seen a rise in his ratings as a result of the interactivity between himself and his viewers via Twitter.

Rick Sanchez has been able to convert his Twitter activity to an increased audience.  If you follow Mr. Sanchez, you will notice that his posts are not just questions about news items.  Often times you will find him posting about his family time, or impressions of something he just saw on TV.

Social Media tools allow you to put a personality behind your brand, learn more about your customers through interaction.  When thinking about Twitter as a source of traffic, think about how your personality builds the type of goodwill and awareness into business.

It is telling how the further we stray from the corner store, Social Media has inserted those concepts and values that made the corner store the engine that drove our commercial decisions.

In short, Twitter is not an SEO tool. Twitter is one of the great online PR and marketing tools that can be used to build your brand and client base through “word of mouth” and personality.

Many small businesses do not rank high enough in the search engine results pages (SERPs) to be found. Yet, more than 70 percent of internet users start off with a search engine before they buy a product or service. To put this in perspective, there are 157 million active internet users in the U.S., and 127 million of them are active search engine users, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Can you really afford not to be exposed to such a massive audience?

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