Fast track to Web Channel strategy learnings: 2010

It's been awhile since I posted last. Life and work took me off and away. And now I'm back.

Next week I release a new CMS and government of Canada website that's filled with best practices for user experience based on user tasks and usability.

And this is the first time that I have worked with all of the winning conditions:  a budget, open source CMS software (Drupal), a smart, talented and dedicated team: specialists in web design, information architecture, content, SEO, and importantly, a client who sees the absolute potential of the web to transform business process and operations.

It's a unique site the hails the beginning of user task websites. My next few entries will be based on this, so stay tuned...

5 Steps to getting reports and website to the top of search engines

This powerful search engine optimization (SEO) presentation demonstrates how search result rankings are affected by some simple but important steps you must take to get your reports and information to the top of search engines.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDESHOW: Getting your reports and website to the top of search engines

Writing for the Web and Search Engines

It's simple really. If you've written well for the web, you've written well for search engines. That's because spiders crawl like people prefer to read on the web: titles, subheadings, highlighted words, bullets, hyperlinked text and use of short paragraphs with the most important information at the top of the page. All of these are listed in order of priority. For titles and subheadings, use plain language phrases that your users will Google and you'll start coming out on the top searches.

Who's Linking to You?

One of the best ways to get your site to the top of search engines, is to have reputable sites linking to your website. It's very easy to find out who and how many organizations and websites are linking to your website or blog.

In Google's Advanced Search, type your url into "Links: Find pages that link to the page"
To find out right now go to google, copy this link, and add your website name: link:www.yourwebsite.com

5 Steps to Getting Reports to the Top of Search Engines

These 5 steps in order from most important, are critical to being found on the web as search spiders go to these first in succeeding order:
1. Title your report to be found.
How would your clients/users/viewers google your information? This is what you want to name your report.
2. Add metadata such as keywords, descriptions, subjects and authors to your PDF document properties and save these to the PDF.
3. Add a title to your webpage.
Make it the same subject, title or keywords as for your report.
4. Use hyperlinks text descriptions on webpages to point to other relevant information within your site.
5. Get links from other organizations linking to your report, website or information.

Stay tuned to the next post to find out who and how many organizations are linking to you.