Video still from the video How Google Works ft Matt CuttsFor mere mortals it can be pretty hard to understand the technical aspects of what goes on when you search in Google. Yet, as a marketer, you need to understand a bit of this process.

Once you do, a big marketing chance will dawn on you.

So, hang in there for a bit. I’ll first explain the process. Then I will highlight the big opportunity for marketers.

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You can run, but you can’t hide!

Search Engines. Google. That we all know. But how to optimize our websites for search engines often seems like a big box of misty magic.

Image of a white graduation cap

That’s going to change! My goal is to teach you – marketers, PRs, managers and entrepreneurs – the basic SEO skills you need to get your business visible in organic search results.

I’ll kick off by depositing 3 statements:

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Last week, I explained why SEO should be conducted with at the very least, close participation of the marketing department rather than being an ICT project.

Of course you need to technically optimise your website for search engines. But this is a given. More importantly, you need to use the right keywords!

As a marketer you know your products and services best. This puts you in pole position to determine which words to use on your website, in your tags, your URLs, et al.

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You may have been an early adopter of social media. But is it getting you real business results? Here’s a quick overview of where, in my experience, the market is at, and where you need to focus for effective social media marketing.

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Since I will be talking about SEO on this blog quite a lot, I think it’s good to clear up some terminology first. Let’s start with PageRank and SERP.

Usually when I ask marketers what PageRank is, they reply:

Isn’t this the position of your site in Google?”

Answer: no, not exactly.

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Image with combined logo of the Firefox SEO plugin and Chrome SEO Extension In a recent post, I urged marketers to be more aware of the number of backlinks their site is getting from other sites. This is of crucial importance for your website’s performance in search engines.

In addition to monitoring your own’s site performance, you should also keep track of your online competition.

An easy way to work that into your routine is to make use of browser plugins or extensions.

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Last week, I discussed the joys of backlinks. Getting a link from another website, helps your website to be found. It also helps your website (or page) to rank higher in organic search engine results.

Sometimes we can even create backlinks ourselves. For instance by including a link to our profile pages on Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube or other social media channels. You would think that a backlink from these big boys would help your website to rank higher in search engines… Wrong :-(. So why is that?

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Ever wonder what it takes to start a movement? This insightful and entertaining TED Talk from Derek Silvers explains how to start a movement in under 3 minutes. WATCH IT!

What a great explaination of the ‘building-a-movement process’! I think it’s useful to just repeat and sketch out what Derek said here:

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Currently I am preparing to publish a series of posts that teach marketers how to develop a Keyword Strategy. A Keyword Strategy is crucial if you want to drive quality traffic to your website.

Before that however, I will first publish some posts on basis SEO knowledge. Today: the importance of ‘incoming links’ aka ‘backlinks’ to your websites findability.

Links to your website is a major factor in getting great organic search engine results.

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As a marketer, you or your department, will sometimes be dealing with nastly little executional issues related to publishing content on the web.

In my blog post last week I discussed adjusting the code from SlideShare presentations, so they look cleaner when you embed them.

Another problem you might encounter is the size of the object not fitting your blog. For instance a YouTube video might be too wide for your blog. This way the video will overlaps the column next to your content area.

The same could happen to a SlideShare presentation or to any content (video, image) you are embedding in your blog or social media newsroom.

Here’s how you solve it:

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