Search Engine Optimization Seminar
Earlier in the week, I had attended a seminar designed for business owners to learn about "Working with the New Marketing Media: Your Web Site and Search Engine Optimization". Sponsored by the Lincoln County Technology Solutions Alliance and the Small Business Development Center at the local community college, the seminar was attended primarily by local business owners. Some of them did not have website, some had informational websites, and I can only assume that some of them were doing business online.
I came away from the seminar with two major things on my mind. The first was how many people showed up to attend the meeting. Not only was I surprised about how many business owners were interested in learning about search engine optimization, but I was also surprised at the level of attention that they paid. Throughout the entire presentation you could hear people commenting to each other, people were grabbing their pens and pencils at certain points and diligently writing down notes and resources and there was a definite feeling of attentiveness in the room. Now, keep in mind that if this were Seattle, Portland or Denver such a sight would not be terribly surprising. But in a town of less than 10,000 people on the Oregon Coast? Given my experiences the turnout was surprising, and encouraging all at the same time.
The second thing that I came away from the seminar with was a feeling that one of the problems with being an Internet developer is that there is an awful lot of bad information going around. What I witnessed at this seminar seems to be endemic of the search engine optimization business, and of Internet consultants in general. I witnessed a seminar on search engine optimization that could not be considered relevant within the last few years. I listened as two local web designers explained that title tags were the most important aspect to optimizing a site, and that description meta tags are still used by major search engines. The business owners heard all about how submitting to major search engines was important, and how ranking high in the results could lead to more business. Questions that the attendees were asking were glossed over and in some cases chided, as though their confusion about how Google determines it's rankings reflected some sort of intelligence deficiency on their end.
Not once did I hear any reference to duplication in the search engines, or how important clean URLs are to optimizing for search engines. Not only did I not hear a single mention about optimizing code for search engines, but the sites that were used as examples had table-based layouts. While there was as little talk about how important text content was, there was no mention of document structure. In fact, there appeared to be no discussion at all about how search engines try to determine relevance, link weights and PageRank. All in all, the attendees at the seminar were left with a feeling that if they simply sprinkle keywords into link text, content, alt tags and meta tags that they could expect their search engine rankings to improve. To some extent, I suppose that is a reasonable assumption, but it lacks context.
Another thing that was not mentioned at all was analytics. How exactly does one quantify the results of their seo efforts? Is it all about just getting better rankings in the search engines, or is it about doing better relative to your competition? Does a better ranking always mean higher traffic? Does higher traffic always translate to better sales? The purpose of this seminar was to raise awareness, and I think that it did that. And although overall there was barely any discussion about actual search engine optimization, a lot of Internet marketing principles were touched on, which I think was a benefit for those attending.
I have yet to figure out (and probably never will) whether raising awareness about search engine optimization and Internet marketing in general outweighs the damage done to businesses who get poor consultation. Being someone that is obsessive about search engine optimization, and holds people like Stephan Spencer up as rock stars, it's hard for me to sometimes to see the "other side" of the search engine optimization fence.
With that, I hope that such seminars are prevalent in every town in America. At the very least, they give people an opportunity to meet others that are interested in Internet marketing, and they expose people to concepts and resources that they may not have otherwise found themselves. Just because the Internet provides global market access doesn't meant that there isn't a place for it in local discussions about business. If you are interested in finding out more, check out your local college's Small Business Development Center (if they have one), or see if there is a Technology Alliance group in your area.
This post is filed under Developers' Corner and has the following keyword tags: seo, search engine optimization, google.
