Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) / Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) makes sound business sense for SMEs as no-one knows their own business and their customers better than they do. Therefore, what that is needed is specialised training material for SMEs and the appropriate didactic methodology to take them through all aspects of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Then, they can go away and start using the new found knowledge to increase the flow of traffic to their website straight away.
SEO/SEM coaching helps SMEs survive tough economic times by additional sales, generation of qualified leads and increased ROI. After completion of the training, SMEs are expected to be able to:
- Establish an Online Marketing strategy that best suites their business (e.g. company blog, Twitter account, attaching "Digg This" and "Tweet This" tags to the end of articles, social networking and viral videos through YouTube, etc.).
- Generate exposure for their business.
- Increase traffic to their site.
- Build new business partnerships.
- Bring in new, qualified leads.
SEO/SEM Workshop
The organised SEO/SEM Workshops are about online marketing issues such as the ones below:
- Basics of Search Engine Optimization and determination of demand
- search engine user attitudes;
- optimising flash pages for search engines;
- optimising frame for search engines.
- Keyword research and press release optimisation for search.
- Effective link building.
- Site-/Content analysis, evaluating and optimizing a website's contents and user-friendliness
- Keyword Management: keyword analysis, investigating and analysing competitors.
- Planning and structuring a link strategy and a link campaign.
- Publishing a website on search engines, web catalogues, platforms as well as site monitoring and advertising.
- Best Practices.
The training comprises among others the application of some basic, but fundamental guidelines to enable the SEO of a site, such as the guidelines below:
- Examining a site using Lynx (most search engine spiders see the site much as Lynx would, therefore, a text browser such as Lynx should be used for examining a site).
- Ensuring the web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header (this feature allows the web server to tell Google whether the content has changed since the site was last crawled).
- Allowing search bots to crawl sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site.
- Use of the robots.txt file on the web server: Learn how to instruct robots when they visit a site.
- Use of the robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.
- Use of short titles in web pages containing the main keyword. The same holds for the URL.