News
Spreading the word about SEO to the next generation of entrepreneurs
July 16, 2009
This past Monday, I met the next generation of young entrepreneurs in the tech field. I volunteered to speak to a group of students at the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity residence.
VeloCity - plugged as a “mobile + media incubator” - is more than just a university residence. The Minota Hagey Residence has been upgraded for this program, adding a device lab (i.e. a computer lab, with access to various wireless devices), wifi network, as well as multimedia and gaming platforms in common areas. Students are immersed in technology and media, given access to industry-leading experts, and are encouraged to develop their own ground-breaking projects. Some of these include an off-campus housing resource, a gift-card marketplace, and computer games.
So what did I talk about? Search engine optimization, of course! Several of the students are working on web-related projects, and were interested in learning about how to get more traffic to their sites via search.
Since SEO is a new topic to them all, and not really the focus of these projects, I kept it to the basics; how search engines work, what on-site and off-site factors affect rankings, and discussed analytics and what measurements they should be focusing on. We discussed some specific issues they were experiencing and I offered recommendations and various solutions on-the-fly.
I left them with a list of resources and other websites they could visit for more information. Hopefully I also left them with a desire to learn more about SEO and to become future members of the search industry. At the very least, they will have learned a greater appreciation for what is necessary to have a successful website.
Happy searching!
Dawn Wentzell
« Back to News