searchability

Before reading these articles, I didn’t realize that seo or social networking were an industry all of their own. I thought that coders just threw a few keywords into their alt tags and that was that. They are important fields, too. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website design is or how pertinent the content, if it doesn’t show up in people’s searches it will all be for not.

I found one site that was particularly helpful in telling you when and where to enhance seo in your site: http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php
There are some really useful tips. One that I wouldn’t have thought of before is to add common misspellings or nicknames of words. To increase seo you can also add synonyms, update the site regularly, make sure your site isn’t only images (avoid text images) and include .edu and .gov links if pertinent. On the other hand, it is good to learn that if you have a link to a site that you don’t trust on your page, you can enter “nofollow” to keep that link from harming your site’s searchability.

Other advice I found useful is to use good descriptions in anchor texts. In the past I’ve often written “click here,” not realizing that using more description would increase seo. As a side note, I was equally impressed to learn here that many search engines are often smart enough to know if they are being tricked into thinking that a site is more relevant than it is (for instance, by the use of “doorway pages”).

The conversations about how to apply keywords to images and/or videos for seo are becoming more and more important as greater numbers of sites are focusing on visuals to convey messages. This site offered particularly valuable advice on how to maximize seo with regards to video: http://www.antezeta.com/blog/video-seo-top-tips. The .pdf also reminds you to enter “alt” attribute tags for images in the site (which also helps users with screen readers).

From the research I’ve done so far, it seems that seo is higher on the priority list than social media marketing, though both are important. Social media can be useful in promoting a site, but if search engines aren’t leading people there in the first place, social media becomes irrelevant.
According to this site: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/11/13/social-media-seo/, you should become fluent in seo before social media, but a lot of marketers don’t because it takes a lot of work to stay up on all of the current search trends and the newest, most effective methods. According to the .pdf provided to us, blogs, emails and forums (in addition to social media services) all work to increase traffic to a site.

One last note consider when optimizing a site for search success is not to focus solely on the numbers. At least for the majority of sites, it isn’t just about how many people see your site but how many of the right people see it. A lot of the scams to trick search engines into finding your site aren’t very helpful in the long run. If users are misdirected to site site and then click out right away because it isn’t what they’re looking for, you aren’t benefited nearly as much as when users find the site through a relevant search and want to be there.

There is a lot more to think about in terms of seo than I originally realized, but it is nice that there are a lot of good web resources available. When I create my own site, I will definitely make sure that I have a clear direction/purpose and am simple and descriptive in my language. I plan to learn useful seo methods, pay attention to social marketing outlets, and utilize services such as Google Analytics to further improve my site’s search- and user-abilities.