Online Reputation Management For Dummies

Building a Solid SEO Foundation for Your Site

Google looks at more than 100 factors when it assesses your site. What factors? Well, Google won’t tell. No one knows the formula, and even confirmed experts debate about how best to approach SEO. Never fear: Your online reputation management mentor Lori is here to get you acquainted with this fascinating, useful puzzle piece to every online strategy.

It’s a cliché by now to say that websites need to be created so that they appeal to search engines as well as actual *gasp* people! As with most clichés, there’s a lot of truth to that. I agree: Cater to real people. Give them a compelling site that’s useful, interesting, and maybe even entertaining while remaining relevant to their interests. Search engines are looking for quality search results for their advertisers, so you will always be in good taste when you design for people, no matter how often the search algorithms change.

Looking at your architecture

Believe it or not, one of the factors search engines evaluate is how well your site is put together. They look at keywords, which are those things you enter into the search window, and they also look at metatags, which are informative descriptions meant for search engine “eyes” only. A discussion of metatags is beyond the scope of this book, but you should bring up the subject with your web designer, IT staff, or SEO professional. Working with metatags doesn’t have to be difficult: You can use plug-ins, such as WordPress’s All in ...