Search Engine Optimization at Your Fingertips
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, would probably be one of the most rewarding things you'll learn. It will bring you money. It will save you money. It will make your daily searching and Googling experience a whole lot different.
Even though there is quite a bit of details involved in a full scale search engine optimization project, learning the basics of SEO does not take long and it is not difficult. And for many websites, the basics is all that's needed.
Search engine optimization is best looked at as a point-based system where there are three main axises:
- Authority (expertise)
- Relevance
- Popularity
The Factor of Authority and Expertise
Just like in real life, whom do we consider experts? Professors, researchers, professionals with years of expertise. Wikipedia says that "In many domains of expertise estimates of 10 years experience or 10,000 hours deliberate practice are common". You would also expert an expert to have a lot of books, articles, magazines and other related materials in their possession. An expert is also expected to publish and produce a lot of professional documents.
Likewise, search engines consider a website to be an expert in its field if it offers a sufficient amount of information to visitors. If your website only has 5 short pages, how can it be an "expert" in its field? Search engines don't have the means to know who is behind the website, they are limited to the physical representations, i.e. your web pages.
The Factor of Relevance
A person can be an expert in Nutrition and know very little about Physics. Likewise, a website can be considered relevant for one field and not relevant for another. How do search engines - who are computer programs - determine relevance? They first scan all the data from your website page by page, starting with the highest level of hierarchy (your URL), and then down to your main menu items, your page titles, tags, image tags, copy, hyperlinks and so on. And then they count what words are repeated most often. So when someone searchers for "search engine optimization", those websites that have the highest number of repetitions of the term "search engine optimization" across the various website elements get prioritized in terms of relevance.
Note that this principle should not be interpreted in a simplistic way. There are many factors that contribute to how search engine calculate relevance, but on the whole this principle does work. Let me ask you, how else can you possibly estimate relevance of any content if you are a robot? Surely, computer programs are very smart and algorithms can be very complex, but they have to have something to go by as the basis, and when it comes to evaluating web content for relevance to user (humans!) queries, this basis are words.
The Factor of Popularity
The factor of popularity is, perhaps, the easiest to understand. We all know that those of us fortunate to have good connections in the right places do better in life than those who don't have such connections. And the more of such connections you have, the better off you are. And the "higher up" those connections are in the social hierarchy, the better it is for you.
Likewise, a website that is connected to many other websites is considered "popular" and gets ranked higher. If those connections come from reputable websites in the same field - bonus. In fact, a huge bonus, and a huge boost to the site's ranking.
So, it is hardly surprising, that link building - especially quality link building - constitutes one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization.
SEO in a Nutshell
In a nutshell, at a high level, this is everything that there is to know about search engine optimization: expertise, relevance and popularity. No wonder Google's search is so good. It approximates our social value system very closely.
Search Engine Optimization Seminars
Doing SEO seminars is my favourite part. I love doing SEO seminars, and as a result, my clients usually love attending them. Check out my testimonials to see for yourself.
The seminars are always targeted to my attendees' topics of interest. This is what some call "tailored to customer needs", I suppose. In other words, I would not use examples from Gardening, if you specialize in Law. And I won't charge you extra for this, even though I know some SEOs do.
Once you understand the basics of search engine optimization, learning the details is a matter of paying attention. If you know how to use Word, you can learn how to SEO your website. You might not become an SEO expert after attending my SEO seminar, but you will be able to work on your site's promotion independently - and successfully.
What is covered in our SEO seminars
- Key metrics important for search engine optimization
- How search engines "think"
- How to optimize your web pages: Step by step
- Why content management systems (CMS) are important and how they affect SEO
- Most important principles of paid-per-click (PPC) campaigns and how to combine SEO with Google AdWords to maximize the results
- What Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategies you can use to complement your SEO
- SEO on a shoe string: What you can do right away without significant investment of time or effort
- What not to do to avoid penalties
- What SEO elements you can skip in order to concentrate on more important ones
- How to build links
- How to build quality links (relevance!)
- SEO user guide with time-tested references and resources
- Practice session combined with Q&As
- 2.5-3 hrs of hands-on training (you need to be awake!)
- $350 plus GST (one person per company, small business only)
- For corporate SEO training and large-scale SEO, contact me for a quote.
To schedule a search engine optimization seminar with me in the Ottawa area, fill out the request form, and I will get in touch with you very shortly after that.
