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SEO 101: How to Rank Better at the Search Engines


This morning, I put on a presentation sponsored by the kind folks over at Ameriprise Financial. I spoke to the group about Search Engine Optimization basics.

Here are some key takeaways:

  • SEO is about making both search engines and users happy. It’s about balance.
  • First and foremost, make sure your website is user-friendly – your navigation and information architecture should be intuitive.
  • Do a keyword analysis to find out what your audience is searching for online.
  • The more quality incoming links, the better. How do you get links?
    • Directory listings
    • Contact bloggers/webmasters
    • Blog
    • Guest blog
    • Article marketing
    • Participate in forums
  • Submit a brick-and-mortar business to all of the major local search engines.
  • Don’t forget about social. It plays a huge part in SEO these days.

For even more takeaways, view the full presentation below:

Search Engine Optimization 101: Rank Higher and Sell More

View more presentations from Nicki Hicks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • http://www.sethjacobs.com Seth

    Excellent Stuff. I want to attend one of these presentations.

  • http://www.flyte.biz Nicki

    Thanks, Seth!

  • http://www.offroadobsessions.co.uk Daniel

    thankyou so much for that advice. i do my own seo for my business, can you shine a light on dirctorys and how do i go about getting listed???

  • tom

    Ameriprise is very tricky. Being in the financial industry, the advisors have very limited control of their website content, including who can link to them, and how those links are created. Incorrect links from un-approved sources can imply endorsement, and that’s a big violation of the new laws governing financial advisors.

    They have a big problem with content on their website too. They can’t add or update content on their advisor website, due to restrictions from the corp home office, so their content gets stale, and their pages have canned pre-approved phrases on them, so they look like every other ameriprise advisor out there. i hear they are making changes to the webpage system, but we’ll have to wait and see if this gives the more freedom.

    if they were allowed to have a blog style website, they could add their own content, but all content needs to be approved by their corp office, and they don’t allow it because it’s too hard to police it all. Fresh relevant content on the site helps search engine rankings, but they are not getting any points for this. in fact the corp office has to spend $$$ to buy adwords to promote their advisors pages.

    so good luck with that…


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