Workshops

We offer workshops on a variety of marketing and Internet topics through the Redwood Empire Small Business Development Center.

Looking to have a workshop at your facility. Give us a call at 528.8711 to discuss your requirements.

Upcoming Workshops

We are offering a 4-part series designed for Web site owners who have questions about their sites and have no one to ask or who are having trouble interpreting what their web developers are saying. A web site is an important business tool and asset that every business owner should understand.

These workshops are held at the Redwood Empire SBDC
606 Healdsburg Avenue
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

The workshops are $25 per session or $75 for the complete series.

How a Web Site Works (part 1 of 4)
Wednesday, Oct 15
9:30-11:00 am

You put up your web site and no one came? You can’t find your web site on Google? Your web developer talks to you in a language you don’t understand?

Advertisements for web site tools make it sound so easy- “Build your web site tonight!”-but the truth is building and maintaining a web site is a lot of work. And, you must keep up with the fast-paced changes on the Internet.

In part one of this four-part series, we take a look “under the hood” to see what makes a web site work. We use real sites as examples to show the source code of the site, how the site looks in various browsers and how it appears in Google.

Who Will Benefit From This Workshop

Keys to Successful Web Sites (part 2 of 4)
Wednesday, Oct 1
9:30-11:00 am

In Part 2 of our series we take a look at the factors that make a successful site from a human visitor’s perspective.

A great web site:

Makes a great first impression
Is easy to use
Has an attractive, appropriate design
Offers functionality that people want
Is full of content, content, content!

In this workshop, we review a number of sites -perhaps yours!- and discuss what separates the good ones from the not-so-good. Leave the workshop with armed with a checklist for you to use in evaluating and improving your own site.

Don’t Play Hide and Seek with Google (part 3 of 4)
Wednesday, Oct 29
9:30-11:00 am

In Part 3 of our series we take a look at the factors that make a successful site from a search engine perspective.

We talk about how to make your web site search engine friendly and demystify the technical aspects of:

Keywords
Meta Tags
Relevancy
Popularity

Leave the workshop with an understanding of how to improve your organic search ranking and tools you can use to evaluate your web site, as well as your competitors!

Who Is visiting Your Web site (part 4 of 4)
Wednesday, Nov 12
9:30-11:00 am

In Part 4 of our web site toolkit series we take a look at viewing your web site traffic statistics.

Almost every web host provides free traffic reporting Every web site owner should be watching these statistics, but it can be hard to know what is important and how to use this information.

We will review what information is usually available in standard web traffic statistic reports, focus on those numbers that are most important to the small business owner and then look at ways to build an easy to use tracking system.

Leave the workshop with an understanding of how to access your web site statistics and how to set up a free Google Webmaster account. You will also have a worksheet to use for documenting your site’s traffic patterns.

Have questions? Email us today!