Spokane’s own Ed Reese will introduce the 2011 edition of Local University, dispel some of the widespread myths about optimizing your website, and bring attendees up-to-speed on some basic terminology that will be used throughout the seminar.

Aaron Weiche will walk you through the basics of how search engine results are generated and some of the major opportunities for small businesses to improve their visibility online.

In this session, Mike Blumenthal will dive into how to rank well for searches in the Inland Northwest.

By this point, your head will probably spinning with some questions. Take the opportunity to ask specific questions to the presenters.

Re-charge with some coffee, take some time to meet your fellow presenters, or pop into our first Site Clinic of the day, hosted by Mike Ramsey & Aaron Weiche, and get some personal recommendations for how to improve your company’s online presence.

David Mihm will dispel some of the common myths and misconceptions about optimizing your website for the search engines.

Mary Bowling will explain some of the REAL signals that your website can send the search engines in order to rank better.

Matt McGee will take us through the world of social internet marketing, including strategies to engage with customers and prospective customers using the most popular social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

The second Q&A panel of the day will again give you a chance to ask questions to the presenters.

Network some more, take some time to return voice mails and emails from the morning session, get your company some personalized advice in our second Site Clinic of the day, or just grab lunch a little early.

Mary Bowling will walk attendees through the step-by-step process of keyword research in our first workshop of the afternoon.

Ed Reese will walk attendees through step-by-step how Google Analytics works, and how to interpret the data that it provides you about your website users and customer prospects.

David Mihm walks you through how to ensure comprehensive coverage for your local business listings, and offers a few ideas for how to get locally-relevant links as well.

The last chance to get your business some personalized advice (without missing one of our panels of course!) in our Site Clinic.

Mike Blumenthal and Matt McGee go through how to create a sustainable review process for your business, how to gain new followers and fans in social media, and how to leverage them for higher search rankings.

Learn some basic Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter techniques for maximizing your budget for a local audience, and also get introduced to Facebook’s demographic targeting platform.

Tieing the entire day together, learn how to set your company’s priorities and where to focus your internal marketing resources going forwards.

Hear straight from Spokane-area companies (some of whom attended our seminar last year) about how they improved their bottom lines in 2010 via Local Search marketing.

Take this last formal opportunity to ask any remaining questions to our presenters.

Time to blow off a little steam! Join the presenters and your fellow attendees for a networking event right at the Northern Quest.