SEO Seminar

I attended a free seminar last week at the local small business centre on SEO – Search Engine Optimization. What exactly is SEO? According to Wikipedia, it is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results.

It is much more complex than I ever imagined and constantly changing so it can be hard to keep up. I did learn a few things at the seminar though, and I am trying to implement some of them as I move forward. It’s all a bit overwhelming but I figure if I take one step at a time, I will finally get there.

I have started by being more careful and precise in naming the photos for my Etsy shop. Then, the search engines can more easily find the images. For example, a file name like IMG47-35.jpg will not be as effective as tree-of-life-pendant.jpg would be. In the first instance, the search engine has no idea what the subject matter is. Separating the words in your file names with hyphens is also important, apparently.

My website will need a complete over-haul to optimize it for the search engines too. I did a lot of things right on it but the whole thing is very haphazard and hard to navigate. It will be easier and smarter to start from scratch than to try to go back and ‘fix’ it. The first step is to research the keywords relevant to what I do and then try to incorporate them on the new website in the most effective way possible.

I have a lot of work ahead of me. With a bit of help and encouragement from my friends, I will move ahead with this huge project. Wish me luck!