Saturday, January 20, 2001, 1:00pm 

Building the Visibility of Your Online Business by Maximizing Your Standings in the Search Engines 
 

Speaker: Steve Heckler, President and Chief Executive Officer, WestLake Internet Training

Presentation Goal: Teaching attendees how to enable their organizations to maintain a consistent position at the top of the search engines. 

The exponential increase in the number of pages on the Web has made securing a top search-engine ranking critical for organizations seeking visibility via the Web. If your site does not appear in the first three pages of links when a user conducts a search, the user most likely will not visit your site. Steve Heckler will explore how a search engine is indexed, how to build your site to maximize search engine standings, how to file your Web pages with the search engines, and how to track your site’s performance. 

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to--

• Construct pages so that the key words their potential clients are most likely to search on will score well in the search engines
• File Web pages with the search engines so that they are added to those engines’ directories as quickly as possible
• Track their pages’ performance in the search engines via WebPosition
• Act on the information they gleaned from WebPosition to continually refine and improve Web page standings in the search engines

Heckler has a unique ability to make Web development technologies, ranging from HTML to Java, easily understandable even to nontechnical audiences. "Although these Web development technologies may seem intimidating at first, their uses are surprisingly straightforward," he says. "If you can do word processing, you can write HTML code." 

Steve has taught nearly 1000 classes in HTML, Java, JavaScript, ColdFusion, ASP, and an array of other Web-development technologies, as well as related business issues. He also has presented workshops for a wide variety of audiences in organizations including Nasdaq, Freddie Mac, the Association of Women in Computing, the Public Relations Society of America, the American Society for Training and Development, and the American Marketing Association. 

WestLake Internet Training: Founded in 1995, WestLake Internet Training is the only company focusing exclusively on classroom-based, instructor-led Web development training. WestLake Internet Training provides courses and certificate programs in all aspects of Web development from beginning HTML to leading edge technologies such as XML and Java Server Pages. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, WestLake Internet Training also has state-of-the-art training facilities in Boston, Detroit, New York City, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC. In addition to open enrollment classes, WestLake Internet Training customizes any course and offers onsite training to organizations ranging from small Web design firms to federal government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. 

WestLake has been profitable every year since 1996, with revenues growing from $50,000 in 1995 to more than $3 million in 1999. Revenue for the year 2000 will exceed $8 million. WestLake Internet Training's rapidly increasing revenues drove its former parent company, WestLake Solutions, to the number four spot on Washington Technology magazine's list of the 50 fastest growing companies in the region. 

Steve Heckler may be reached at sheckler@westlake.com. 

Agenda
1:00 pm    Welcome
1:05 pm    Accounting Tips/Tax Updates, Jina Etienne, CPA
1:15 pm    Building the Visibility of Your Online Business by Maximizing Your Standings in the Search Engines; Steve Heckler
2:40 pm    Q&A
2:55 pm    Closing announcements
3:00 pm    Informal queries, conversation, networking

Presentation Description | Speaker Information | Meeting Agenda | Location | RSVP

Free Parking: There's construction underway at NIH, so try to arrive a little early. (There are traffic police on the NIH campus--observe the
signs--speeding or rolling through stop signs, for example, can result
in tickets.)  You may park in the inside parking garage of Building
10. Enter from Memorial Drive and park on the P3 level. Watch for and observe the signs, including those about types of cars permitted in
certain spaces (such as "handicapped" driver and "small compact"
only.) Tell any parking attendant you are attending a CPCUG event
(there will be no charge). You may also park in the many outdoor
parking lots.

Metro--Medical Center Stop on the Red Line (about 3 blocks across the NIH campus)

Free (any door prizes are usually for CPCUG members only) 

RSVP: Not required to attend, but if possible, please RSVP via e-mail to bconn@cpcug.org. (Sometimes we have handouts, giveaways, or both, and try to have enough for everyone.)