Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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of edits didn’t turn out the hoped-for quick results? Get the inside scoop on the holdup

so you can take steps to flush it out!

Is anybody reading my reports?

Are your monthly reports collecting virtual dust in

your colleagues’ e-mail inboxes? Are your action items chronically not checked-off?

You may want to consider making some changes to your reports to gain a better audi-

ence. Next week you’ll read about ways to structure your reports to encourage buy-in

from your team.

Is SEO integrated into our processes?

For Your SEO Plan to succeed, it needs to be part of

the web development process. That means an SEO review before, during, or (worst case)

after changes are made to the website. It also means integration of SEO considerations

into the website style guide, if your organization has one. If you’re feeling like an outsider,

or if you think SEO is being given short shrift, you need to work on ways to integrate SEO

into company processes. This means you may have to take on the role of SEO evangelist:

Write up the first draft of an SEO style guide and deliver it to your developers. Ask to be

included in copywriting or design meetings. If you don’t overdo it, you can even send arti-

cles or SEO tips to a team member who might benefit from this information.

How’s that conversion tracking going?

Last month, you started setting up conversion

tracking for your organization. If your system requires participation by members of

your team (for example, you need Sales to track calls from a special 800 number),

revisit it today and see if it’s working. Are you getting the information you need? If

not, what needs to change?

Will the Real Home Page Please Stand Up?

You met search engine expert P.J. Fusco in Chapter 5, where she shared advice for getting your

team on board.Here, P.J. tells a cautionary tale:

“We needed to optimize a handful of pages in a 4,000-page e-commerce site. One of the elements

required was meta tags—unique title, description,and keyword attributes for eight different

pages….

“The project manager informed me this portion of the organic project was complete,so I audited

the work. Everything looked good, except for one thing.

Every single page of the site contained the

meta tags for the home page.

Can you imagine what a search engine spider thinks when it’s trying

to index 4,000 pages all proclaiming to be the official home page of the company?”

You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law: If anything possibly can go wrong, it will. Add to that our sad little

truth:If any project is going to get rushed through, glossed over, or ignored,it will be SEO.Nobody

is going to look after SEO details the way you, the SEO team leader, will.So keep P.J.’s experience in

mind, and be sure that you have a process in place to check your team’s SEO-related edits, even

when you’re

sure

nothing can go wrong.

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