I conducted an SEO workshop this morning that was hosted by the Town of Newmarket (Ontario). The main topics were:

• Overview of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Benefits of SEO
• Principles of search engine-friendly design
• Tips on how to apply SEO to your website
• How to avoid the biggest SEO pitfalls that could lower your rankings
• How social media can help boost your search engine ranking

I wanted to share much more but unfortunately the 3 hours went by rather quickly. Instead of sending each attendee an email with additional links, I thought I’d share this with the community so all can benefit.

W3C Quality Assurance Tools – use these tools to see where you need some work! There is even one that finds broken links on your site.
Add your URL to Google – start that relationship!
Google Analytics – helps you see and analyze your website traffic what your visitors are doing.
A Free keyword phrase list generator – helpful as you continue to tweak and improve your website.
A search engine that tracks what is being talked about using Google Buzz – find popular search terms/trends – incorporate that into your blogs to get more traffic (blogs don’t necessarily have to be 100% related to your business).
usernamecheck - check to see where your username is registered on a wide range of social media sites.
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business – for those of you still not convinced!

There are many more tips and tools out there – if you find others, please share them. If you need more help with search engine optimization or your web strategy, let me know.