The Search Engine Optimization Workshop

Getting started...

Every successful project begins with a good plan. 
Every good plan begins with good information.

Changing trends in search engines and keyword use...

Search engines and the way people use search engines have changed dramatically since the early days of the web. In the early years "Build it and they will come" really worked. Any site you put on the web would have some top positions in search engines. Today, after 10+ years of Internet and web expansion (*estimated at 320 million new pages per week) things have changed.

In the early days doing a search might have returned a few thousand web pages. Today the same search would return dozens if not hundreds of millions of pages. The tremendous number of competing pages makes it unlikely that your page will be anywhere near the top of the search results without using some sort of optimization techniques.

Fortunately for the millions of small business websites, people have also had to change their search methods to find what they are looking for. Where a one or two word key phrase was the norm in the early days, today's searches are more typically three, four or more words. Single keywords are still used but to a much lesser extent. Using longer key phrases means there are fewer sites competing so your specific page has a better chance of being ranked.

This also means that each unique key phrase will produce fewer clicks to your site. Obviously, longer key phrases means fewer searches for that exact set of keywords. In addition, search engines are now using contextual relationships of the keywords used in a search to the content. 

These changes have ushered in a new phase in optimization design. Optimization means creating large quantities of content target to specific key word sets. Each page brings in less traffic so there have to be more pages to generate the same amount of traffic.

The ultimate result of all of these changes is that search engine optimization can no longer be simply key word focused. Optimization must be contextually focused. Search engine optimization is about creating content around a set of contextually centered key words and key phrases.

Defining the search engine optimization plan...

* "What’s New on the Web? The Evolution of the Web from a Search Engine Perspective", Alexandros Ntoulas (UCLA Computer Science), Junghoo Cho (UCLA Computer Science), Christopher Olston (Carnegie Mellon University), May, 2004