There’s been a lot of buzz about SEO lately, and I have several different clients with various types of SEO challenges, so here are a few brief updates/reminders on SEO basics:

1. Google does and does not want organic search engine optimization to work. If it doesn’t work at all, no one will use Google. If it works too well, no one will buy Google Adwords, and Google loses a revenue stream. As a result, search engine optimization is do-able, but there are a few tricks.
2. When Google makes “improvements” to their search engine, it can change some or all of the rules of the game for optimization. As a result, SEO is a specific, constantly evolving skill set.
3. SEO involves a combination of
   1. SEO-friendly site construction (pages that aren’t too many clicks away from the home page, descriptive and unique urls, simple site map, etc.)
   2. link building (i.e. links from Wikipedia and credible news sources),
   3. keyword content (using keywords that people are searching on in your content as well as in the metatags), 
   4. submitting your site and sitemap to a search engine or several,
      1. Bing
      2. Google
   5. and other tactics to get your site at the top of the page in search engine results (age is beauty on the internet … older sites will naturally have higher rankings, hosting your site with a trusted provider, ensuring there are no “dead” links on your site, etc.).
4. A few mythbusters:
   1. “Metatags aren’t important.” Au contraire. In their own SEO Starter Guide,  Google talks about the importance of metatags in titles and descriptions.
   2. “My site was optimized when it was built. Why do I have to do anymore?” Because your site doesn’t exist on the internet in a vacuum. Other sites are being changed and added to the web all the time, industry trends and buzzwords change all the time resulting in shifts in keyword popularity, because you want more and more qualified prospects and guests to visit your site, and, remember above? The search engines change the rules. A recent change has been the introduction of Google+, and the search result impacts are discussed in this article from Marketing Vox.
5. Resources: Don’t take it from me. This is who I trust:
1. Google SEO Starter Guide
2. Google Webmaster Guidelines
3. Register.com SEO
4. Yahoo! Content Guidelines

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