SEO Tips from Kevin Barnes
Last week, my social media class at Marquette hosted Kevin Barnes of Creatonomy. The topic of the day was SEO! For such a complex subject, he did a great job of breaking it down for a classroom of beginners. Here are the highlights from his visit:
When talking SEO, most people think Google, and rightly so. Google dominates the market with roughly 80.8% of all browser usage. While no one knows the exact algorithm Google uses to rank websites, we do have some insight into the process. It starts with “robot” or “spiders” that mine websites for keywords and links. The information they gather is then inserted into the algorithm, which in turn calculates search engine ranking and what keywords searches return your site.
Now, the first step in optimization is to decide which keywords to target. From a business perspective, keywords should stem from the organization’s name, product/services lines and even names of key employees. The goal here is to pick terms that are actually being searched… Google’s Keyword tool is a great resource for this.
Next, insert these keywords into your webpage title, headline tags, and page text. In general, good writing directs SEO: important words appear a couple of times at strategic places. Do be careful of keyword stuffing; beyond a certain number of mentions, Google ranks content less relevant. Inbound links (when another site links back to your content) are also important for SEO. Think of links as “votes” for your website. Simply stated, if your content is interesting, people will link to it.
Once you cover the basics, the rest is a bit of guess work. That’s where specialists like Kevin Barnes comes in. So, there you have it! SEO 101.
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