Secrets to Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website
May 14, 2008 by Bethany
Here is an interesting Free online event. This one is on making your site search engine friendly:
Secrets to Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website
Time and Place Date: Thursday, May 22, 2008
Time: 10:00am - 11:00am PDT (that’s 11am for MST)
Location: Online
PRICE: FREE
I was so excited to learn about this event that I signed up immediately upon seeing the invite. I am always interested to hear what the experts are saying about creating a search engine friendly site!
Though it is a field I am involved in, search is not my main focus: I like to focus on the visitor experience (after all, if the site is enjoyable for the visitors - who you are ultimately trying to get - it will help your search rankings, as well, because they will come back often and share your site with their friends.). But that doesn’t mean I ignore the search engines.
There are definitely proven steps you can take that help both the visitors’ experience and the search engines’.
That’s why, many of my clients’ sites get ranked quite well. In fact, I just got an email from one today (Read an excerpt from his email below and click on the screen shot to the right - just taken a few moments ago - to see a larger view of his current Google Results):
I am really happy with the work you’ve done on the site/seo. I get a lot of great feedback about the ease of use of the site, and that it is highly informative, and looks great. And I am hearing from a lot of folks (due to people finding the site in Google).
Another client sent this note after we posted a newsletter related article on his site:
Now indexed! Took all of about 4 hours from the posting.
-Adam from Lingoport
For those who don’t know, it used to take months to get your site indexed by Google and Yahoo. Fortunately, things have changed and now search engines send out crawlers all the time, to look for new content. Also, today, there are ethical ways to get indexed immediately. The above is an example of that.
What did we do? Simple, we built both these sites on the WordPress.org platform, which means when you post something, it doesn’t wait for the search engines to find it, it submits content to them, but that’s a post for another day.
To be able to share these kinds of results with my clients, I have to stay up on the changes happening in the industry.
Now, I am not an expert at SEO, and I have never claimed to be (in fact, if the client’s budget allows for it, I often recommend they hire a proven SEO firm to work along side me).
Since I am often creating my clients’ sites (whether with an outside firm’s assistance or not), as well as handling their marketing needs, it is critical for me to be as informed as possible of the ever changing world of search.
See, it is like this, the rules for search engine optimization are ALWAYS changing. So, if you are reading an article or a book that is more than 1 year old (maybe even 6 months old), chances are some of what’s mentioned has changed.
That doesn’t mean you won’t get ranked, but it Could possibly mean that you won’t get ranked well.
I don’t say that to be harsh or critical, I say that to make sure you understand that you either have to hire someone who is on top of these changes or (if you have a small or non-existing marketing budget, which is why I created MarketingAndWriting.com - and who I am trying to help here) you need to take the time to listen to free seminars, like this one, from (and this is equally important) reliable sources like the SEMpdx (which is the Portland Search Engine Marketing group).
They are doing this free webinar with Stoney deGeyter, President and CEO of Pole Position Marketing.
I registered for this great event so quickly, I didn’t even look at the calendar, to see what I had scheduled for that day. Turns out I am going to be on a road trip that day, so I do hope they record it (they usually do record webinars)! Just in case, please come back here and share all you learned!!!
