This month “google,” the verb, (not Google, the company) was chosen as Word of the Decade by the American Dialect Society. Not surprising when you consider that more than 90% of all buyers start the process by “googling” their object of desire–even if they use Yahoo or Bing to search for it.

One of the final frontiers in search engine optimization (SEO) is local search. That’s how retailers, service businesses, local consultants and sales teams can level the playing field with everyone else on the planet who sells what they do by mastering local search, “even if they don’t have a website,” says Will Hanke. Will is a local SEO practitioner and founder of MarketSTL, a local conference designed specifically for teaching local businesses the fundamentals of managing their own SEO.

Will started MarketSTL after teaching SEO repeatedly to overflow crowds of small business owners at the local public library. Not every business wants to hire out their SEO because they don’t understand it well enough to know what they’re paying for. But to take on SEO duties themselves, businesses must commit to the process and have the time to do it right, Will says.  Here’s Will’s top 8 SEO tips:

1. Post new pages regularly. Will recommends posting at least 1-2 articles each week. “Companies often don’t connect the dots as to why fresh content is necessary,” he says. But search engines love quality and quantity. Warning: SEO is kind of like dieting. Once you start, you can’t stop. Your site will go back to where it was before all the activity.

2. List your site on the major search engines. Will especially recommends getting listed on Google Maps and Yahoo Local if your company relies on the metropolitan area for business. In fact, Google just released its smart phone option for “Near Me Now,” a new feature that shows local listings in every mobile search.

3. Blog. But set up your blog on your own domain, not Blogger.com or a hosted WordPress account. Build your own brand, not that of your host’s.

4. Track your results. Read your website metrics or set up a free Google Analytics account to find out where your traffic is coming from, which posts are most popular and where you’re losing visitors.

5. Twitter with a strategy. “I take the approach of, “‘How can I help?’” Will says. “Many companies blast their specials. This is a big no-no and a way to kill your community. I just picked up a new client on Twitter by answering a question.” (FYI from me: The American Dialect Society also named “tweet” as 2009′s Word of the Year, and Twitter is my #3 traffic source!)

6. Get a Facebook Fan Page. More than 300,000 people a day are starting fan pages, so it’s getting impossible not to have one for your business, Will says.

7. Email marketing. Will reminded me about this one. I suppose I no longer look at email marketing as an SEO tip…it’s just part of my overall marketing strategy. But I do get a definite spike in website traffic each week when my newsletter is published.

8. Be patient. “Allow at least 6 months to see the results from your SEO efforts,” Will says, “but it depends on what you’re trying to rank for. I’ve seen a lot of fly-by-night SEO companies promise front-page search results for obscure, no-traffic terms. That’s not hard. Most companies rank on page one naturally for their own company name, for example, but that doesn’t mean anyone’s searching for them.”

MarketSTL  will be held on April 1, 2010. Conference presentations will focus on generating visitors to your website, increasing online revenue and mastering search engine optimization. There will also be sessions on what SEO is, how to teach the search engines about your business, and how to utilize Twitter and Facebook to keep those customers coming back. Oh, and, of course, how to keep your customers coming back to your website with email marketing, taught by moi. Tickets are on sale now, and Will expects a sell-out. Hope to see you there.

Learning new social media skills makes my head hurt. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, yada, yada, etc., who has time?

For me, it’s like going to the gym: just one more job. Plus, everytime you add something to your plate, you must eliminate something else, right? And if it’s not sleep, then…what?

Unfortunately, I am very curious about all this new stuff. So learning the *why* of social media has become a compulsion for me. And even though I read about it, try it out and sign up for teleseminars that promise to “explain everything in 3 simple steps” so I can “make $13,000 by tomorrow morning (in my underwear),” I’m still very slow on the uptake.

So I was intrigued to discover St. Louis’ first BarCamp. It looked like bloggers, developers and social media types were gathering for an informal, unscripted meetup. In fact, the name BarCamp is a derivative of FUBAR, a well known military expression (look it up yourself).

The event was billed as, “Let’s get a bunch of St. Louis geeks and friends together and do something.” I wasn’t quite sure how I would contribute anything of value to these early adopters. Alas, I thought, I’m only a B.I.T. (blogger in training) and not technical. And there were “rules”, which, frankly had me pretty intimidated: “No spectators, only participants.”

But after tweeting facilitators @ryankeeter and @tojosan and receiving their encouragent, I went (and dragged my completely clueless sister with me so I would be only the second-most clueless person in the room).

#BarCampSTL, as it’s now commemorated on Twitter for those who want to follow the stream of conversation about this event (I now know how to do this!!), was held at City Museum in the Cabin Inn bar. I’m almost certain there’s no rule commanding that a BarCamp must be held in a bar, but it was a cozy venue and quite ironic to be discussing new media in Daniel Boone’s son’s log cabin. But, I digress.

This is how speakers presented: You added your presentation topic to the whiteboard whereever there was an opening. The clock strikes the time, you speak. Your time’s up, the next person gets up to present.

After introducing myself around, I figured out what I could talk about, and decided to go for it. I would be the bridge between the technology and the business opportunity. Read a recap of my presentation. I got the only presentation slot left–the first one of the morning.

BarCampSTL was fascinating. I met @lolololori who blogs about everything St. Louis (even knowing where to go on Hampton Ave. for a drive-thru doggie washer); Jim Durbin @smheadhunter, the world’s only recruiter for social networking; @whereisciau who drove in from Kansas City to attend and gave an amazing introduction to e-textiles (picture the back of your jacket signaling a left turn with a blinking light as you get in the left lane on your bike) and Karen Goodman (@karenstl) who’s one of the new frontier of blogging real estate agents.

There were high-intensity presentations (the event was sponsored by Network Solutions) and we also learned about Fedora Linux (no clue but got a great button) and OAuth by @Mike_Austin. But there was also plenty of schmooze time where I got to chat with Aravind Kannan @netcitizen from Madras, who’s currently working for Maritz.

Twitter, which launched not even 2 years ago, already has more than 2 million subscribers to its free service. They’re anticipating 9 million in 2009. When Barack Obama, the first Twitterer to reach 100,000 followers (I have 91 today), gets elected using social media and actually says the word “website” in his first press conference, you can take it to the bank that new media is the future of business marketing.

Time we all lost our virginity to social media marketing technology tools.