I was interviewed by Dave Charest over at Case Ace Copy about Search Engine Optimization. We covered three main topics:

1. Is SEO necessary for artists and arts organizations?
2. How to start an SEO plan
3. 3 simple SEO tips to start using right now

Take a listen. Leave a comment with thoughts and questions.

Darren Rowse, over at TwiTip, did a survey in February of 2009 asking people, “Do You ReTweet?”. The results were:

No – I never ReTweet (15%, 491 Votes)
Yes – Occasionally (1-2 times a week) (42%, 1,407 Votes)
Yes – On a Daily Basis (28%, 953 Votes)
Yes – Every I ReTweet multiple times a day (13%, 446 Votes)
Yes – Almost Every Tweet I do is a ReTweet! (2%, 63 Votes)

With the growth in Twitter in the past year, I am guessing the frequency of ReTweets have increased.

Spread Out The Love
This brings me to the image on the left. The Theatre Communications Group (TCG) tweeted a new blog post about the elevation of the theater hastag, and included #2amt so that the 2am Theater community could see it. As with any tweet that is promoting good content, it was ReTweeted. As you can see the @TCG tweet was first ReTweeted by @TravisBedard at 10:53am. The following ReTweets are as follows:

@SouthFLTheatre: 10:57am
@ezmac99: 11:03am
@mreida: 11:13am
@2amt: 11:14am
@WideEyedNYC: 11:21am

While I am the first one to encourage ReTweeting, it is best to spread out the love when a hashtag is involved. While the ReTweet might be new information to your followers, for the people following the hashtag, what they see is the same ReTweet back-to-back-to-back.

When you want to ReTweet a message that includes a hashtag, first look to see if the tweet has already received numerous ReTweets. If that is the case, use a third party application like Hootsuite to schedule your ReTweet later in the day, or even a day or two later. This spreads out the love of the awesome tweet, and for someone who has been away from Twitter and not tracking the hashtag for awhile, it lets them know what has been going on without having to sift through all the tweets they missed.

URLs, METAs, Titles
URLs can come in many different shapes, lengths and sizes. One wants to keep the URL structure in mind when dealing with SEO. Well written URLs, with potential keywords, will aid in Google ranking that page higher. As you can see below, when the keyword “new york teaching artist” is used searched for Google picks up in the term “teaching-artist” in the URL and also in the Title. The META description would be the third place to put the keyword associated with the specific web page. The order, from top to bottom, as it is seen in Google is Title, META, URL.

When using WordPress, the section entitled Permalinks, under Settings, is where you would go to edit your URL structure. There are five settings:

• Default: http://www.dennisbaker.net/?p=123
• Day and Name: http://www.dennisbaker.net/2010/01/01/sample-post/
• Month and Name: http://www.dennisbaker.net/2010/01/sample-post/
• Numeric: http://www.dennisbaker.net/archives/123
• Custom Structure: /%postname%/

These setting are based on the idea of using a blog. With WordPress being used more and more and a content management system, these settings are not the most ideal when optimizing your URL structure. The default setting, uses your designated post or page numbers as the URL and does not mention the title. The Day/Name or Month/Name can be good choices when using a blog as it automatically gives the reader the date the post was uploaded, but it can be hard for viewers to remember because of the numbers. The numeric option, like the default option, does not include the title. WordPress leaves the user the option to customize the URL structure. As seen above, if you include /%postname%/ then the only thing to appear after your domain name will be the title of your post/page. As seen in the above image, “http://www.dennisbaker.net/teaching-artist”.

To be able to edit the META section in WordPress, you need to download the All in One SEO plugin. Once you install it, at the bottom of post/page you will have the option to add the title, description (META) and keywords. I usually just copy/paste the title that I used as the top of the post/page. From there I write a once sentence description, including any important keywords that are in my title or post. Then I type a list of important keywords that are in the post/page. Do not get too spammy here and think you need to include all the keywords that relate to your whole website, just stick to the information that is on the specific post/page.

WordPress is a creative content management system what BTS needed.  The parent page system in WordPress allows the state to act as the parent folder, in which individual school pages are held.  Therefore the URL for NYU looks like “/new-york/new-york-university”.  This is key in helping the SEO campaign as the URL will be keyword rich.

I develop strategic copy containing carefully embedded language for the important pages on the site. I continued to refine site content, “metatags” and “keywords” to catch the attention of Google and the other search engines.  I maximized off-site content through facebook, twitter and other social media websites. After six months of SEO work, my top keywords were all on page one of the Google results.