I am Sandy Nichols,
and I am learning about Search Engine Optimization and how to make findable websites. For this class at the Art Institute of Atlanta, I had to prepare a blog, SEO to-do list, HTML email marketing campaign, and a research project comparing different website analytic tools. Besides my own blog, I have included the links to several of my classmates who also have blogs. I've used my classmates as link partners because inbound linking provides higher search engine rankings. We each chose different findability topics to blog about fresh content each week, and each has their own research topics such as:
- Microformats
- Black Hat and White Hat SEO
- Viral Marketing Techniques
- Rich Media Search
- 404 Pages
- Google AdWords or AdSense
- RSS to Generate Traffic
- Generating Revenue from a Web Site
Keyword strategies are also implemented to score higher rankings with major search engines. Keyword research was performed with some help from Yahoo Marketing and Word Tracker. I discovered that SEO and related terms are regularly discussed, making it more difficult to find a marketing niche'. According to the long-tail theory, I should choose less frequented terms in order to increase my chances of being visible in a more narrow market; that's why I included the SEO to-do list on this front page.
I claimed my blog at Technorati which has generated real traffic for me, but has also generated my first spam. In this community I can find strangers willing to post comments about my blog, probably in hopes that I will do the same... ahhh... link love at first site.
These marketing techniques are speculation, as no one knows the real algorythms that search engines use, but these techniques seem to be working so if it aint' broke, don't fix it. Enjoy. Go to blog
