I just attended a very helpful Webinar on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). So I thought I would share a little of this useful information as a way to document what I learned and to be helpful to my clients. SEO is critical in today's marketplace. It is what makes the difference between your prospective clients finding you on the internet or not. If your website is fully optimized your listing will appear on the first page of a google search when someone searches for you by some of your keywords. Very rarely will consumers look beyond the first or second search page before clicking on the link that will give them the information or product that they are looking for. So it is critical to be listed as high as possible in that list so that your prospects will click on your link and then find your site where you will capture their business.

"How do I do that?" is the next obvious question. Well... you could hire an SEO professional and spend anywhere from several hundred a month to tens of thousands of dollars to have them do it for you.... or you could pay for a sponsored ad from Google (google ad words) or.... you could do some basic things to "tune up" your website and add linkage that will really help and many of these things are free!

Metadata - This is data that is attached to your website in the code to describe the content in your website. Metadata includes the title of your website, the description, keywords, the H1 (or subtitle) tag, etc. These are all things that I can update for you as a web designer, but you as the web site owner (business owner) really need to think about what this should be.

• Keywords - You need to make sure that you have key words that reflect the way your prospective clients would search for your business on the web. (Keyword primer pdf)
• H1 - This is a tag that is on your home page near the top that will give a subtitle about your site. This should be a sentence or phrase that reflects your keywords and gives the user a good idea of the content of your site. The search engines look for this tag and use it to index your site for searches.
• Description - The description doesn't show up on your home page, but provides data to the search engines about the content of your site. Again, it should reflect the key words of your site.

I will be looking at the metadata for each of my clients and contacting you if you need to beef up your keywords, subtitles, or descriptions on your home page.

"Content is King" according to the webinar expert. The content of the website is your articles, descriptions, information that you are putting out there for the world to read. It should be between 6% - 10% keywords. That means that you should have really good, quality information, using the keywords that you have already identified as part of your written information. This includes descriptions of images, blog entries, titles of attached documents, audio and video files, etc.

• Blogs are a great way to boost your content. If you have a blog on your site, try to update it at least once a week or so. Current content is recognized by the search engines.
• Video is one of the fastest ways to have your website move up to the first page of the search results. You can post your video on multiple video sites, including but not limited to YouTube. (Email me for a list of video archive sites.) Even if no one actually looks at your video on one of these sites, having the video with the link to your website there will help the search engines find your website.
• Testimonials are a great way to use your keywords in your content to give your prospects confidence in you and also to help your SEO.

Links from outside websites will also help your site come up in the search results.  The more "good quality links" from sites relevant to your business the better. You can ask other companies to do "reciprocal linking" - you place a link or ad to their site and you place one to theirs. (I will provide my clients with ad-sized images to pass along for these kinds of links. I also link to all my clients from my "Links" page.)

• Social networks - I know - some of you will cringe just to think of joining facebook, but this is a free and simple tool to get great linkage to your website. Once you have a personal profile set up, you can then add a business page for free. Then you recruit your friends, family and clients to become "fans" of your business page. Update your page with current news about your industry, specials, sales, etc. and you will be sending free advertising into their emails and links to help your SEO. Linked In, Twitter and others. Here's a great article on social networks.
• Directories are another place where you can register your business with your website url and get free linkage for SEO. There are dozens of directories that you can join. Email me for a list.