Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

After you have some results to show from the first pass, you’ll have great ammu-

nition for a second pass.

Don’t be drawn in by the myth that everything that benefits SEO will be detri-

mental to the design and that you have to choose between a good-looking site that

nobody can find and an ugly site with tons of traffic. Many of your SEO improve-

ments, such as adding IMG ALT tags to graphics, will have no ill effect on the design.

And there are some, like replacing outdated font tags with

Cascading Style Sheets

(CSS)

, that your designers may have been wanting to do anyway. But most important,

if your designers are able to internalize SEO factors, future designs will have a way of

coming out more search-engine friendly.

P.J. Fusco:“Educate-Inform-Transform”

P.J. Fusco is a search marketing expert and in-house search engine marketing manager for a top

health and beauty e-commerce group. She shared her philosophy of “educate-inform-transform,”

explaining that building a successful campaign is all about “empowering others with the knowl-

edge and passion to champion a project through the organization.”

Here, in her own words, is how it works:

•

“When you reveal keyword research to a copywriter or editor…they take greater responsibil-

ity for the words they choose.

•

“When you show a Flash programmer how the search engines ‘see’ their work, it’s a lot easier

to convince them to wrap a Flash program in more search-engine-friendly code.

•

“When you show a designer that search engines can’t read the words embedded in an

image…all of a sudden you get more words and fewer images built in to site designs.

•

“When you show a Sales & Marketing VP the return on investment made in a PPC campaign

that has positively impacted top-line sales and bottom-line profits, you get bigger budgets

for more campaigns.”

As the head of the SEO team, you become more than an SEO expert.You also become educator,

project manager,cheerleader, and most of all, communicator.P.J. sums up:“Keeping different

departments informed about the status of a project takes meetings,instant messages, phone calls,

conference calls, and the occasional pop-in if someone missed a meeting or conference call.It

takes organization, too, in order to keep up with who is doing what, when,where, how, and why.”

But despite all of your best efforts, there can still be bumps in the road. P.J.has been known to take

extreme measures:“If I need the telecom team to get DNS set up for a new site,I’ve learned to

bribe them with cookies.”

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