My children call them “The Olden Days”. The time when Daddy was a young child . That time when horses and Cowboys and Indians roamed the west and dinosaurs still grazed across the plains. At least that is the perception they seem to have when they ask me questions like, “Daddy did you have a iPhone when you were a kid?” I hate to answer the question but I usually give a smart answer like, “Daddy was out of high school when that fruit company got started.” My point is that times are changing and they change rapidly. We now have a different way of doing business. Businesses must be found online across the Internet and that means your business must be found through search.
How many of you remember what is pictured here? Not only was this our booster chair at Thanksgiving it was the way we found businesses. We searched through the yellow pages alphabetically. In order to be found as a business you had to pay the yellow page book company to be listed. Search engines work much the same way now. You can make sure your business is listed in the search engines through “search engine optimization” or what we in the business of online marketing call SEO. What is SEO? My recent trip to Chicago to the Wordcamp Chicago conference introduced me to Shannon Steffen of SKS Designs and I liked her definition of SEO:
“Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorythmic”) search results.”
Shannon also provides a great article of how to explain SEO in your own company to the departments and people involved in the company. I suggest it be read by anyone wanting to explain the idea of SEO to thir leadership and peers. I like Shannon’s practice of natural search, and there are also some that perform “paid search” through other methods but the long lasting and most beneficial in my opinion are the organic results that we all have grown used to finding in the search engines.
Many companies are able to help you with your SEO and you need to find one that is reputable and practices good optimization techniques. Many of us call these “White Hat” SEO companies signifying their good guy practices. The reverse of this is of course a “Black Hat” SEO company which practices the art of doing things by cheating the system and cutting corners and doing it the wrong way. There are many ways to implement SEO into your business practices and there are more than a few companies out there practicing this as their craft. You can practice the “do it yourself” way of SEO with a few principles in your arsenal or tool kit but for the most part a company specializing in SEO is a great asset to have.
I’ll be giving some tips for the “DIY SEO” non-profit here in the toolkit section of the blog so you can try some of the tips that we provide. Some of them are common sense approaches to the idea of SEO and some are a little more technical but we will make sure to keep it simple for those of you who, like me, might not want to break the Internet. Most of the tips are for natural SEO tips and can be done easily and without much cost besides a little time and effort – great news for cash-strapped nonprofits!
MONDAY – How to set up your site and blog to be SEO-friendly!
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Tags: Natural Search, Non-profits, Organic Search, search engine optimization, SEO, Shannon Steffen, SKS Designs
I look forward to your next post on setting up a site and blog to be SEO friendly. Not-for-profit organizations do need a helping hand with SEO so good on you for providing education and assistance.
[...] Last week I introduced the idea of SEO or search engine optimization. This week I’ll be sharing some examples of things I have learned in the world of SEO. I promise to keep it simple and not talk over anyone’s head. SEO can get pretty technical, but everything I discuss here I’ve used myself. If you want to get detailed technical help you should contact a company that provides that service. At the end of this series of SEO tips and tricks, I will provide information about some companies and organizations that provide this type of work. If you are a SEO professional, please use the comments here in these posts to expand on the thinking and provide your own additions to the tips provided. [...]