Tonight I attended a “Search Engine Optimization For Entrepreneurs” seminar put on by the Okanagan Valley Entrepreneur Society (OVES).
It was a great talk and the discussion exceeded my expectations. There was a packed house and the discussion format was a moderated Q&A with 3 expert panellists:
The Top 3 Keys for good SEO (Search Engine Optimization ie. improving how you rank on search engines such as Google and Bing) that were discussed tonight confirmed what I already suspected:
SEO Must Haves
- Relevant High-Quality Content
- Quality Incoming Links from Relevant Sites
- Regularly Updated Relevant Content
Notice that the common theme in improving your SEO is to be RELEVANT!
Search engines such as Google are wising up and are no longer fooled by keyword stuffing (overuse of keywords which aren’t relevant to your content), paid links (paying sites to link to you), or other artificial “black hat” (spammy or unethical methods of trying to increase your page ranking) tricks.
By the way, a fourth key element which is not always at the top of everyone’s radar, but was brought up tonight by the panellists as another must have for good SEO, is:
4. Keyword Rich Relevant Title Tags
Some other important points that were emphasized tonight were:
- SEO takes time
- be as authentic as possible
- stay on top of it
- define specific goals and targets
- create a niche market
- make your site authoritative on your subject
I learned a lot tonight (10 pages of notes worth!) and it just makes me want to learn more. If you would like to find out more about the seminar I attended or the panellists, visit the event Search Engine Optimization for Entrepreneurs info page on the OVES website.
Feel free to contact me if you’d like to set up a consultation on your website and help improving your SEO. If you have any suggestions or observations, please comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
