Online Marketing Blog

We continue our series of weekly SEO basics questions and answer today with a question that acknowledges the value of approaching search engine optimization holistically, but indicates a desire to keep things simple and focus on the basics.

“… you mentioned to use a holistic approach to aid in a better SEO, but specifically what might be the “top 3″ things can I do or focus on my website to best help improve my search rankings on Google”

Since Google dominates the search marketplace, you can read their “How can I create a Google-friendly site?” recommendations. Or you can read on for more SEO insight.

We continue our Search Engine Optimization Basics series of posts this week with a question from a marketer that is dealing with issues related to moving a web site to another host and possibly updating the content management system and design.

Will changing our web site affect our search engine rankings?

As with many SEO related questions, the short answer is, “It depends”.  The first thing to clarify is what “changing” means. Outside of changes to content, keyword usage and incoming links, common changes to a web site that affect search engine visibility include:

• Changing domain names
• Changing content management systems
• Changing design
• Changing web hosts

Companies change domain names for many reasons including: improved usability or better domain name (del.icio.us to delicious.com) , the result of a company acquisition, business roll up or simply changing the name of the company.

With so many “Web 2.0″ technologies coming in to play with web design and online application development, the effect on the search engines’ ability to find, crawl and index content becomes an issue. As such, this session moderated by Kevin Ryan included deep dive advice from Chris “Silver” Smith, Lead Strategist from Netconcepts and Ambles Kwok, a Senior Engineering Manager from Yahoo Canada.

Chris Silver Smith was first up and gave examples of Web 2.0 technologies including the idea of folksonomy and tagging by showing a tag cloud from Delicious. It’s an alternative method of navigation based on user defined keywords assigned to a piece of content.

Social Media Keyword Research is Here
Whether it’s a phrase entered in a search box on a standard search engine, on a video sharing site or tags assigned to your friends’ shared social bookmarks and shared images, the meaning and intent inferred by keywords is paramount to any kind of “pull” online marketing effort.

For search marketers, that means using keyword research tools on an ongoing basis in order to adapt to trends, seasonality and changes in what’s important to the target market.

With the “participatory web”, consumers expect not only to be able to go online and search for information and products, but they fully expect to be able to contribute content and socialize as well. Keywords come into play with search engines that crawl and rank content as well as with the folksonomy of content organization that comes with consumers tagging social media with words that are meaningful to them.

21 SEO Tips from Matt Cutts. Via SEO EggheadThe A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic, Part One
The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic, Part Two

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