A review of a few key principles of search engine optimization that clients should know when working with a website developer

1. What clients should know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2. Search engines want to give users relevant results

3. To help make this happen

4. Website developers should apply certain best practices when coding websites

5. And clients should have a general understanding of them

6. This presentation is for you… the client

7. Here are a few best practices related to…

8. Page titles, file names and headings

9. Page Titles show up here

10. And here

11. They should describe the content of the page

12. They should also include words or phrases…

13. … that someone searching for information might use

14. … not words and phrases that you use

15. Google shows the first 65 or so characters, so keep that in mind

16. File names should describe the content of the page too

17. “ id2” isn’t very descriptive

18. If your web developer is creating a content management system for you…

19. so you can update the site once they’re done…

20. … ask them to make sure you have descriptive file names

21. They might really be impressed…

22. Or really annoyed…

23. But you’ll be a satisfied client 

24. Next are headings

25. Headings should be in heading tags (h1, h2, h3…)

26. Not font tags…

27. Ask your website developer not to use flash to design your site

28. Flash should only be used for images , not main content or navigation

29. Why?

30. Look at this site

31. Pretty, huh?

32. Let’s take a look under the hood

34. There’s a title

35. But not much else

36. So if someone entered “chiropractic/nutrition” in the search engine

37. Which is a little unlikely…

38. This site probably wouldn’t show up in the first few pages of results

39. Who knows when it would show up

40. There’s nothing on the page telling the search engine…

41. … that this is really a site about chiropractic nutrition

42. And…

43. People with visual disabilities, who use screen readers , wouldn’t have access to the content either

44. There you have it

45. The best practices for coding page titles , naming files and coding headings

47. Developing educated, informed clients