I was pleased to present again at the Software Association of Oregon’s TechPub “Hot Seat Site Review” event in Corvallis last week.

This is the biggest SAO group besides the Portland organization and the fickle economy has done nothing to slow down entrepreneurs in the area.

Scott Fish, Director of Search for EngineWorks presented with me again as well as web developer Misty Lambrecht.

PoshStyle.com has a lovely site, but panelists agreed they’d be hard pressed to be competitive with big name brands for “head” keyword phrases. The team was encouraged to pursue “tail” keyword phrases to help boost visitors to the site. Though PoshStyle.com did have a presence on Twitter and Facebook they were encouraged to have a conversation with their followers rather than just update them on new products, which had been their social marketing strategy to date.

SpinDriftCellars.com was in the middle of a redesign so the critique focused on creating an experience for the visitor rather than just trying to sell wine online.

Panelists reminded the audience that best practice for online business owners includes involving search marketing professionals before the redesign phase so important search factors are identified prior to redesign.

StruCalc.com review illustrated the importance of usability. The majority of the site had a banner which took up all the content above the fold, so when a new page was selected, the visitor had to scroll down the page to view the new information, making it appear as if the visitor was still on the same page. Panelists also recommended including content on the site that helped solve a problem. The product, for architects and designers, helped them save time and money during the design phase, a benefit not included on the home page.

CenterSpace.net review highlighted the importance of keyword research. “Numerical analysis software”, identified by the panel as important phrases for their target market, weren’t used in the sites on page content.

All four reviews highlighted the very important and foundational need for keyword research. It’s difficult to reach your end user if you haven’t researched which keywords and phrases they are using to find your product or service.

Writing unique, keyword rich title tags, meta descriptions and on page content for all high level pages was a recommendation for all four sites.
(As these items display in Google: Title Tag is in blue and underlined, Description is in black underneath Title Tag)

When there are nearly a million results for a keyword phrase (such as “oregon wine club”), it’s important to give the engines every signal that your landing page is relevant to the query.

Pursuing short term and long term goals in keyword research is also an important strategy. There are free tools for starting keyword research including a free trial for WordTracker and the Google tool.

Presenting for the topic of “Search Engine Marketing” entails more than SEO (search engine optimization). Panelists covered site usability, social marketing and other online marketing strategies.

Of course my favorite part of the evening was when Frank Hall, event coordinator, reminded the attendees that they should devote themselves to their businesses and leave Search Marketing to Search Marketers;)

Comment here or tweet me if you’d like to have the presentation for this event.

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