An SEO Primer

As I mentioned the other day, I've been catching up on my podcasts recently. For free content, I'm always surprised about the amount of quality information you can get from them.

Take the one I was listening to last night. My buddy, Ross Johnson of Ingenex Digital Marketing, recorded one of his presentations about search engine optimization (SEO), the techniques and strategies to improve the position of websites in the search results of the major search engines.

If you've any interest in SEO and how it works, I recommend you give this one a listen. He covers these topics and looks at some basic strategies he recommends for his clients to improve their search ranks. He also talks about techniques you should avoid at all costs -- the kinds of behaviors which will get you "thrown out of the pool" if Google catches you trying to use them.

The caveat I have is that this is a recording of a presentation. Ross does a great job, but there are questions from the audience you can't hear. Most of the time you can get what they are saying from context, but not always.

That said, though, if you are at all curious about whay you aren't on the first page of results from Google (and how you can get there), you should really check this out. Spend 40 minutes and get a much clearer understanding of how it all works.

So, for what phrases are you on the first page of the search results?