In Berkeley

Writing and Editing for the Web II: Building SEO Skills

Date Monday, May 24; 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Cost $75 for enrollments paid on or before May 17;
$85 after May 17
Class Limit 24
Instructor Yve Tinsley
Location

First Presbyterian Church, Room M201 (McKinley Hall)
2407 Dana Street, Berkeley

(see http://www.fpcberkeley.org/campusmap.asp for maps and directions)

What is search engine optimization (SEO), and why is it so important? SEO is a tool to help make your Web pages more searchable and increase the success of your site by generating traffic to specific pages. You will discover which pages need SEO (not all do) and how to select or create strong candidates for this process. Learn what a preferred landing page is and how to fine-tune a Web page. Also learn to

  • Identify keywords based on user behavior and search terms
  • Customize pages to support keywords
  • Build keywords into a page so that the page comes up in searches more often
  • Avoid the most common SEO mistakes
  • Apply quick fixes that can make a page more effective right away

Bring pages to class that you would like to evaluate and work on, or experiment with exercises to be provided.

Prerequisite: Participants in this workshop should have some basic knowledge of writing for the Web: participation in a basic-level Editcetera workshop (Web Writing and Editing 1.0 or Writing and Editing for the Web I) or prior work experience and knowledge of Web text structure.

Yve Tinsley has been writing and editing since 1999. She began her career as a copywriter with Starbucks Creative and worked on packaging and signage for both domestic and international campaigns; she won an award for her work with Hear Music, a subsidiary of Starbucks. Yve created her own freelance company, Maverick Writing, with clients such as Starbucks B2B, Garden Botanika, Bristol Publishing, and City of Hope. She also served as a marketing writer and editor for First Franklin | Merrill Lynch prior to moving into the technology field as a search engine optimization specialist and content strategist with Cisco.

Click here to register.