This weekend, a few folks from the LunaWeb team embarked on the four hour journey through the foothills of Alabama to attend the third annual WordCamp Birmingham conference.

Mitch Canter of StudioNashvegas led an introductory course that served as a crash course in all things WordPress. Those who attended the class were able to learn the difference in WordPress.com and WordPress.org, as well as the difference between posts vs. pages and plugins vs. widgets. Those with little to no WordPress background were provided with a plethora of knowledge on the platform that has become so much more than a blogging platform. Canter provided links for future use that included: Woothemes.com, WordPress.tv, Vaultpress.com, and WPBeginners.com. See Mitch’s handiwork at StudioNashvegas here.

Another favorite was the Web Typography session with Sara Cannon, who pointed out some great resources beyond TypeKit (which we love), such as CUFON and FLIR.  She showed off some examples of advanced web typography, including some beautiful designs at Lost World’s Fairs. Since the sites are using text instead of graphics, they’re getting a lot more keywords hits on a page! Find Sara’s whole slide show here!

Speaking of keywords, Rebecca Morrow let us know just how important they really are (the answer is VERY). Rebecca clued us in on some tools to pinpoint great keywords, like the Google Keyword Tool and SEOBook. Rebecca has also put her presentation up here at SlideShare.

Of course, this only covers a few of the great presentations at WordCamp Birmingham 2010, but here is a full list of the presentations. And here are some links for the presentations that we could find on SlideShare!

• Mitch Canter – WordPress 101: The Power of the Press
• Tammy Hart – Custom Post Types and Taxonomies
• Syed Balkhi – Speed Up WordPress and Boost Performance
• Sara Cannon – Beyond the System Font: Advanced Web Typography
• Rebecca Morrow – How To Let Everyone Know How Awesome You Are With SEO
• Dougal Campbell – The Pitfalls of a Popular Project

If you know where to find any of the other presentations online, please be sure to comment with a link!

If we could have wished for anything, it would be that the wireless had been a little easier to connect to (it was a 3 or 4 step process), but we had a great time and hope they’ll bring the event back next year!

And sure, there are plenty of benefits to real-time search. It’s got lots of sparkle and shine to it – the idea that you can search literally everything that’s being said about a given topic on the web right at this instant. It’s a fascinating innovation, but it comes with huge risk factors.

"Annoying Noises Prohibitted (sic)" by BarelyFitz on Flickr

As businesses become aware that their Facebook page – which may only have a hundred or so fans – is being indexed by Google, the temptation will be great to deck out updates with SEO-friendly terms and inundate the stream to grab that coveted top spot in the search. With search results automatically updating in real time, one post a day isn’t going to cut it. If you update about tomato soup in the morning and someone searches for tomato soup in the afternoon, your update likely won’t appear – it will have been pushed down by all the other people who’ve raved about tomato soup since 9 a.m.

Ultimately, while businesses can benefit greatly from being involved in social media, these platforms were not created for businesses. They were created for individual users. Still, very often a business’s presence on Facebook is a good thing for those individual users – as fans, they get benefits like exclusive deals and discounts and they can keep up with events at their favorite local venues. But Google is dangling a pretty tasty looking carrot in front of businesses with real-time search; if they bite, the utilities of social sites for individuals may soon be overshadowed by superfluous, constant updates that are a huge turn-off for most every user.

It’s certainly not surprising that a business would go to great lengths to nab the No. 1 spot in a Google search. Before now, that might have involved expensive SEO consulting and tedious copy writing to try to get in good with the algorithm. Real-time search is like a secret passageway, letting them bypass the algorithm entirely simply by having a social media presence.

But for those of us hanging out on Facebook, and not on the Google results page? As the Grinch himself once said, all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise! We’re going to see much more of it on Facebook and Twitter. We may soon find businesses posting anything and everything to up their search rankings. But is that ranking more important than genuine fans or followers who are interested in your message or your product/service? If it’s the Google ranking, eventually those fans may go by the wayside, either by removing your page entirely or hiding your updates from their feeds.

There’s a fine line to walk. It would be foolish to ignore the possibilities of real-time search. You shouldn’t completely throw SEO principles out the window. But this does inject one more artificial aspect into the conversation that may push people away if not handled correctly. If it weren’t for the people using these networks, they wouldn’t have any value. If businesses turn up the noise too much those users are going to retreat. The back channel will have truly gone mainstream, and the value for the individual will wane quickly.

As for Google’s motives with this, we can’t help but feel like we’ve run into another snake-oil salesman. Hey, Facebook and Twitter and MySpace! We’ll give your sites lots of search love by listing real-time web updates in our search results. Sound good?

On the surface, it does. But if this results in increased noise, it may eventually be a detriment to these social sites. The habits of traditional marketing are hard to kick, and it won’t take long before businesses start picking up their megaphones. Our word to businesses? Be careful. Be smart and be savvy — you don’t want to get left in the dust — but be careful.