Help Your Customers Find You

Startups and enterprise-level companies are on an even playing field when it comes to being found in search, so whether you are an entrepreneur or a CTO of a large corporation, you need to know how to build search engine optimization (SEO) best practices into your development processes. The O'Reilly Found Conference, happening June 9-11, 2009 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott, will change how developers create web applications so that search connects their sites to their potential customers.

The way to online success is through being easily found in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. While developers have historically thought of search as a marketing activity, technical architecture has now become critical for search success. Found is the authoritative place to discover best practices for this nascent industry and gain a thorough understanding of why search-friendly architecture is absolutely mission-critical to businesses of all sizes. No spammy tricks. Just solid foundational coding tactics and actionable data that will ensure search engines can easily crawl, index, and rank your site's content. Read more about the O'Reilly Found Conference

The Call for Participation is Now Closed

Thank you to everyone who submitted a proposal to speak at the inaugural Found Conference. We are now reviewing the proposals and and will notify you whether or not your proposal has been accepted by the end of January. Registration for the conference will open in February. To stay updated as the program develops, please sign up for the Found newsletter (login required).

Sample Topics and Themes Found Will Explore:

Found's content is aimed at web developers, but web designers, user interface and usability professionals, product managers, and anyone who works with developers on SEO-related issues will find valuable information. Topics include:

• How search engines work and why search is important
• How to architect pages for maximum crawlability
• Technology platforms and languages (including IIS/asp.net and LAMP)
• Building SEO into the development process
• How to make rich internet applications (such as Flash, Silverlight, Ajax, JavaScript, video, and images) searchable
• ROI and conversion through search metrics and analysis
• Structured data and optimization
• Tools and diagnostics
• Working with marketing and understanding online marketing best practices
• Social/Viral elements to web applications
• Building online communities and customer engagement
• Site search, including tactical elements

Found, the new O'Reilly search acquisition and architecture conference, provides strategic tactics for making content on the Web findable. Join us to discuss best practices, set standards, and start a conversation about what's still needed for search-friendly web development.