Search Engine Friendly Design – Searchnomics Panel

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Last week’s Searchnomics conference proved that the WebGuild can deliver an exceptional event. Most impressive, which I intend to reiterate here, were the keynotes from Hitwise and comScore highlighting the power of search behavior as a window into your customer, a topic we discussed just a month ago. WebGuild’s approach to search marketing is a fresh blend of entry and expert level discussion of SEO, paid search, and social media optimization and I had the honor of sitting on a panel with Google’s Shashi Thakur and DoubleClick Performics’ Cam Balzar to discuss SEO priorities such as site accessibility, technical design, and submission to engines.

Here’s a recap of my priorities with links and comments to additional information:

1. Make your site accessible – This is a popular topic on my blog so stick around for more
2. Push to the engines – Use Google Webmaster and Yahoo’s Search Submit tools as well as setting up sitemap autodiscovery
3. Consider PageRank – Recall the wonderful insight from Shashi on popularity, relevance, and quality of content
4. Optimize your page titles
5. Improve page copy


Then worry about

6. Meta-descriptions
7. Use of image alt-text
8. Meta-keywords

We also discussed how to go about obtaining corporate support and internal resources; I highlighted a process I used at HP and which IBM’s Mike Moran has encapsulated: Train your web design team in search friendly considerations, set standards for design, enforce compliance, and measure progress.

I had a tremendous pleasure meeting and hope my presentation was of value to you. Let me know if you caught the conference or drop me a line if you’d like to discuss the material.

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