Matthew Nash and myself, David Coleman, were recently asked by Staffordshire University to give a presentation on Search Engine Optimisation to their business scheme members.

The aim of the presentation was to introduce the business owners to the benefits of getting their websites to appear in the search results, and to give some actionable ideas that they could take away and implement on their own websites.

While a lot of people have heard of Search Engine Optimisation, it’s not immediately obvious why they should be doing it, and what, if anything, they can do themselves without paying expensive ‘gurus’.

The main point of the presentation was that if you spend some time and actually put into action some of the points made, you’ll be doing a lot more than a lot of your competitors towards showing up on Google. There’s no secret silver bullet, you’ve just got to do something.

The presentation touched on the following points:

• Why you should give some thought to SEO
• The history of how Google has changed the way it decides which websites to show
• Getting more people to visit your website is achievable by anyone
• Make sure you have a way of tracking visitors to know if your efforts are paying off
• To start with, aim for some longer search terms that there’s less competition for
• Make sure the phrase(s) you want to show up for is properly used on your web pages
• Get other websites linking to your website as Google counts them as votes
• Frequently add new, original content to your website that is relevant to your products and services