Search engine optimization or SEO has changed so much over the past 15 years. The practice of SEO used to be about “gray area” tactics that would manipulate the search engine. Since the beginning of Google and Bing’s search engines, they have both declared that their intent was to serve results to users that represented the “best information and options” available on the Internet.
It has taken years and years for search algorithms to catch up to the original goal for quality results. SEO has changed. Every large company or brand has a search engine strategy and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year optimizing to control search results.
Search engine optimization has become a process for auditing your web presence and creating a strategy to generate real traffic and make real improvements to site speed, structure, content, imagery, and user experience. SEO now dovetails with conversion rate optimization (CRO) and a variety of other marketing channels to drive user engagement.
The search engines are using extremely advanced tactics to process the vast amount of data and content online. Artificial intelligence combined with advanced algorithms derive a set of results in a variety of search verticals (ie maps, youtube, info panes) now. Optimizing your business or brand for search results and ultimately conversion is now an in-depth process of understanding the wants and needs of the searcher in order to position your product or service in front of their quest for information or a transaction.
In this breakout session we will look at the process for developing a strategy, optimizing your site or social profiles and the tools needed to track ongoing performance. For many attendees this class will provide a basic knowledge set to better evaluate an outside agency resource or hire an inside resource to carry out these tasks.
