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SEO CoPilot Returns to Chesterfield College with Search Engine Master-class
After being invited back to Chesterfield College to give a talk to second year students studying their level 3 extended diploma in IT, we were asked to cover some of the latest developments in the world of search engine marketing and amongst other topics we discussed the new mobile compatibility update that is due to roll out globally from Google on the 21st of April 2015.
For anyone that does not already know, Google is planning a large update to its algorithm, meaning any websites that are searched for on a mobile device and are not mobile compatible will move down the search results. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly more popular and internet users are browsing on many different mobile platforms, to highlight this it is important that Google brings their search algorithm up-to-date.
We discussed with the students the changing face of web development and search engine optimisation to give them a heads up of the digital domain that they will be stepping into once they look for work or employment after completing their studies.
Web design, development and search engine optimisation are getting much closer in their relationships these days, meaning that anyone looking to move into web design should get a strong understanding of how search engines work and we believe that in the future, employers seeking web developers will also be looking for employees with an adept knowledge of SEO as well as web design.
Other topics covered with the students were:
- Google Analytics
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Sitemaps (HTML and XML Versions)
- Website Structure
- Finding Crawl errors and fixing them
- Website Audits
It is essential for students to understand that when creating a website they need to factor in backend development as well as frontend design in order for a website to be healthy, easily found and crawled by search engine software. The more of these factors that are taken into consideration when designing new websites, the more successful the foundations will be for local businesses in Chesterfield on the internet.
We gave the talk to four different groups that were split into two presentations, we found the students to be well-behaved and eager to learn. We have already been asked to attend the college again to do more talks in the near future and we look forward to supporting the college and the students as much as possible.
