Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search optimization comes in two flavors - SEO for publically facing web sites, and search optimization for the Enterprise. They are very different models. The following is focused on SEO for public web sites that can be crawled by Google, Bing and Yahoo. If you're interested in optimizing search for Enterprise content please get in contact with me. The SEO business is filled with misinformation and questionable ethical practices. There are SEO activities that can give you a short-term boost in search results, but Google always discovers them, and will make you pay for this conduct. Some SEO gurus will promise a first page listing if you mark up your pages according to their proprietary method. The fact is, no one can make these guarantees and be believed. There is no substitute for hard work – this means understanding your customers, developing high-quality content that users find compelling, and designing high quality error-free web sites. The best way to think about SEO is to view the field as a set of best business practices within the context of search, content and human behavior. Preparing content so that it can be searched and found by customers requires an awareness and understanding of the interactions of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Content and Search Engines. This knowledge can be further enhanced by understanding how people find and consume content. Though clearly in a symbiotic relationship, all are often dealt with as if they are stand-alone disciplines. For example: Content is often developed without the understanding of how it should be positioned within a website. Websites are often specified, designed and developed without SEO or search strategy requirements. The SEO experts are brought in after the site is deployed to optimize the best that they can.  SEO and content experts know about search, but infrequently don’t grasp the technical details of how search relevancy and crawler technology work, and how it impacts their content in search results. Further, Search Engine companies do not discuss their algorithms, so this leads to excessive speculation in the SEO community about how Google's search technology works. This generates an enormous amount of faulty information. There is often little appreciation for the customer's research skills, and how they actually go about finding information (search behavior). The lack of insight into customer behavior impacts keywords strategies.

Taking Control of Your SEO Strategy To take control of your SEO strategy you must understand the Search-Content-Behavior-SEO eco-system. This is a two-part process.  First I will provide you with a customized understanding of: How search behavior should be analyzed, and how this behavior impacts content development. How your content impacts search results (both positive and negative). How Search Engine relevancy algorithms work.  Why your content can appear on page 1 or on page 200 of Google search results. How crawlers work, and the impact that poor coding / SEO practices have on search engine results. Good coding, page mark up and content SEO practices vs. bad SEO practices. With this knowledge you are better positioned to understand the second part – an SEO analysis of your web site. This analysis will outline all the SEO steps that need to be addressed to improve content visibility in search results. This information will provide you with the roadmap for taking control of your SEO strategy. SEO, Content and Search need to be approached in a integrated way to generate the most benefits for you and your customers. This graphic illustrates how it falls together at a very high level.

Next Step With a single one-time consulting engagement (generally less than a week) you can take tactical control of your SEO strategy. If you would like a cost-effective review of your website I have a one day program where we conduct an analysis of your top four pages, and develop a search behavior model that provides a road-map for improving customer experience with focused content. Call or send me an email if you would like to talk about my approach to SEO.      Mark Sprague . 781-862-3126 P 339-223-0500 C . Mark@MSprague.com   SEO in Boston, MA