Increase Website Traffic using SEO

Agenda
Internet usage Stats
Tools to increase website traffic
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Key SEO Dimensions
Hiring SEO professionals
Some useful SEO resources

Statistics
Internet Usage
There are 1.6 Bn internet users in the world
There are close to 200 million websites
(including blogs)
Google searches around 1 trillion web pages
This means there is a flood of information on the
internet. How do you ensure that your website
stands out and is among the top results displayed for
its search-category?

Tools to increase website traffic
Some main ways to increase traffic:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Paid Listing
Affiliation
Advertisement
E-mailing
Partnerships

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the set of methods and tools used
to get listed in the initial results of the main
search-engines based on keywords that are
related to your goals

Main SEO dimensions
Technical
Editorial
Reputation

Technical
The main techniques are:
Defining parameters in robots.txt file
Optimizing folders' classification tree
Using appropriate HTML markup

Editorial
Write stuff that would interest your readers
(understand the concept of two messengers
and how search-engines \"read\" you)
Optimize content, mainly text, using keywords
that are relevant to your category
Optimization refers to sound repetition of words,
positioning near the BODY tag, positioning in
titles, accentuation, etc.

Reputation
Reputation is measured by the number of
incoming links to your page
It is one of the key parameters in calculating
Page-Rank
It matters if the incoming links are coming from
well-established sources of your domain
Parameters used for indexing pages are many - more than two
hundred in Google - and their weight is unknown and shifting. Indeed,
search-engines modify their algorithm as the Web evolves. Therefore,
even though some good practices always remain, optimizing a
website is a never-ending task

Hiring SEO professionals
Some tips if you want to outsource SEO
activities:
Use Freelances: They are less costly; Check their
references to know about their work
Start optimizing your site at the design phase
Negotiate a result-commitment; introduce a
performance element clause in your contract
Use Web Analytics tools to measure the outcome of
your SEO efforts

SEO Resources
Here are a few resources to explore SEO further:
The Wikipedia page
Words from Google itself on its site and in this
document
The excellent site SEOmoz which offers a blog and
many tools
This exceptional page where the best experts discuss
and evaluate the influential criteria
Search Engine Roundtable a blog which offers a good
perspective on this microcosm

Thank You
The Palermo Project
A blog about internet strategy and
entrepreneurship
(http://thepalermoproject.com)