Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing
Search Engine 'Whatchamaggier' you say? Optimization? SEO, as it is named in the trade, is actually a special branch of Marketing that has evolved in the Internet environment.
Initially, SEO was strongly focused on crafting a web site's pages to achieve a high position in search engine rankings. This involves writing page copy and behind-the-scenes page code to make them attractive to the "robots" and "algorithms" that search engines use to index and rank web pages. At first blush it seems as if it's a science of creating web pages for machines rather than people. Half-right. SEO is also an art form because of the very fact that web sites are for People and the science of optimizing for search engines must be blended with making the content on the site appealing to an audience - which brings in the more traditional crafts of marketing and communications. Online copywriting is a branch of Search Engine Optimizing.
By the way for your edification on acronyms . . . if you run into SEM and SEP, you'll now know they stand for Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Positioning - which are two other terms practitioners of this new craft have used to try to properly describe what they do.
As the art and science has evolved, SEO practitioners have also become strong advocates for user-friendly website design. Take a look at Usability Guru Jakob Nielsen's website for both content and a model of practicing what he preaches. You'll quickly see that Nielsen strongly emphasizes function over style (and presents persuasive arguments for why this is appropriate). If you look at the web site of fellow Internet Pantheon resident Search Engine Optimization Guru Danny Sullivan, you'll see more graphics (as well as advertising banners). Sullivan's Search Engine Watch website used to carry a quite simple and clean design and load quickly. It is now somewhat cluttered with advertising, yet it remains an exceptional resource for happenings in the search engine marketplace. Despite the clutter, it remains well optimized for easy indexing and to succeed in search engine rankings. (Go to Google and enter "search engines" and Sullivan's site will be the #1 or #2 entry).
Proving that SEO doesn't have to mean a butt-ugly site design, check out Heather Lloyd-Martin's website: Success Works. Heather's site takes a little longer to load up than Danny's or Jakob's, yet it becomes useable within a reasonable period of time. Another example of high function yet attractive is Jill Whalen's site HighRankings.com. Jill and Heather previously collaborated on a third site that held the content for their online newsletter on Online Copywriting and Search Engine Optimization. This site, RankWrite Roundtable, held the #6 spot (as of October 17, 2001) on Google for "search engine optimization." While this site is presently discontinued, you'll see that the home page remains as a redirect to Jill's new website and newsletter. Incidentally, the #1 spot for "Search Engine Optimization" isn't held by a web site, but rather an article on Search Engine Optimization that appeared in WebMonkey. This shows that crafting even a single page of your web site to meet the requirements of good Search Engine Optimization can pay off great dividends. One well written and designed page can serve as a major Internet doorway to your site.
The above people and resources are who I rely on to help me design, build, maintain and market web sites as well as create online copy that reads well with people and ranks right with search engines.
More about Search Engine Positioning & the services
of Reinhold Development
Ross Reinhold
Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin
608/437-5069
ross@personalitypathways.com
Go
here for a more complete biography on Ross
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