DrumGit, Curtis Cunningham’s blog.

Tonight I attended Mixergy, a kind of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) type talk at the Edgemar theater in Santa Monica, featuring knowledgeable folks like Michael Dorausch of Planet Chiropractic (more info on Dr. Michael’s site here), Elmer Thomas of Thinking Serious, MrBabyMan over at digg.com.

Things I learned from tonight’s talk include..

1. A great thing to do to get your site ranking is to join popular social media sites like technorati.com (me), digg.com, reddit.com (me), sphinn.com, mixx.com, amazon.com (me), youtube.com (me), stumbleupon.com (me), myspace.com (me, me drumming), propeller.com, create profiles, submit articles, post reviews, comment, link to your site, etc.
2. Track your website traffic to see how the changes you’re making are working using tools like google analytics, awstats, etc.
3. Read and stick to the google webmaster guidelines.
4. Google for, and read read read all the great online sites that gives lots of SEO information away for free, like SEObook.com.
5. Google lists search terms that are hot right now over at Google trends. Find any you can tie to your core business, come up with an informative article on one of these hot topics, and you’ll scream to the top of the google search results listings for those terms.
6. Use WordPress, and use it with plugins that allow easy submission to social media sites, like the Share This plugin. Even Matt Cutts of Google recommends using WordPress as your blogging software as it’s well optimized for Google SEO right out of the box.

These are some key points I came away with. I’ll add more as/if I remember them.

All in all a great learning and networking event, really worth attending. Even though I got a $35 parking ticket, a $25 ticket for no front license plate, and paid $25 for the event after Dr. Mike supplied a code to get me free access to the event. D’oh!