Search Engine Positioning with The Computer Gal: Missoula, Montana

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the many topics discussed in the Web Marketing and Design class. At that point in the classes, it it not assumed that you are actually working on your website, as much as trying to figure out what it takes to build a website and where you fit into the picture. Now, we assume that you have a website to maintain, or are in the process of building one. This class is designed as a hands-on, practical application course.

Suggested Text: Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day
by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin
ISBN: 978-0-470-22664-3

Suggested reading from Google

Prerequisites: to get the most from this class, you should have excellent file management skills. Taking the Dreamweaver 1 class is helpful to practicing what we learn, as there will be no time for Dreamweaver instruction. Referrences will be made to information from the Web Marketing and Design class. While this class is not a pre-requisite, we will not spend a lot of time going through the material from that class.

Lesson

Class Description

Web Resources

Setting up your Tools

Discussion: Where is it headed?
Discuss and do: Sign up and Install Google Analytics
Discuss and do: Using Google Alerts to guard your name
Discuss and do: Google Webmaster tools
Discuss and do: Create your site map
Discuss: How important is your PageRank?
Try: Find your SERP for your keywords
SERP: Search Engine Page Results

A completely mathematical look at how Google works

Google Alerts - How to Use it the Right Way!

How does Google see your website?

Google Caffeine?

A good reason to keep your website and not just depend on Facebook Pages and online WordPress

Site map generator

Beyond Title Tags and Content

Discuss: Forget the website and just do Social Media?
Discuss and do: Refine your title tags
Discuss: What about META tags?
Discuss: Duplicate Content and Paid Links
Discuss and practice: 301 Redirects
TheComputerGal redirect file
Discussion: Relaunching your website
New Term: Content Farm

Where Google Stands on the "Keywords" Meta Tag

An SEO Problem Without an Answer? Analyze the answers to this post

Duplicate Content on Google, Bing & Yahoo

Matt Cutts: Duplicate Content and Paid Links

Discussion about the Consequences of relaunching your website

Links to and from Other Sites

What is Link Juice?
What is robots.txt
What is "no follow"
Posting comments on blogs and other sites and no follow.
What is PPC?
What effect do PPC and organic results have on each other?
Comparison of clicks from Facebook PPC and other sources.
Do you search with short tail or long tail?
What about press releases?

Recommended Web References for Discussion

- A Round-Up of PPC CTR and Ad Optimization Tips

- Abuse of your PPC dollars

What is "long tail key word?"

What is a "canonical link"?

Google and canonical links

A Definition

Jargon that refers to the quality of a Web site's link power, as in page rank, number of link votes, etc. - that are obtained from backlinks. This expression was coined by SEO consultant Greg Boser, for example "I need to get some more link juice for my latest site."
from http://www.netlingo.com/word/link-juice.php

Some Important Other Sites

What about Bing?
How to Digg your content
How to Retweet your content
How do blogging and article submission fit into your SEO efforts?
What about phones?

Suggested Reading about Search Engine Optimization

This is an SEO book that I have found helpful.
Nora

Google positioning v Bing positioning

Blogs Can Still Drive Traffic

What about those "direct traffic" links?

Interesting stats

SEO and the Social Networking Effect