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Tech Talk The (Broad) Basics of Looking to improve your search engine ranking? Use the tips below to get started. By David Limon, Mission Restaurant Supply Ecommerce Manager davidl@missionrs.com smarter and smarter,and themethods to stay on top work to follow suit.Add to the mix ever-evolving trends like social media, videos, link building, shopping comparison feeds, Rich Snippets, etc., and it's easy to see why companies rou- tinely struggle to keep their websites relevant. Fortunately, in the midst of the storm, lies a solid structure that's helped many websites withstand the turbulent shifts of change:good old-fashioned SEO (search engine optimization). I've been an advocate of basic SEO T ever since I first learned HTML and for good reason. Neither Google's Pandora updates nor any other major algorithm updates have ever negatively affected Mission's rankings over the years.What is good old-fashioned SEO? It depends on the expert. An SEO firm will rattle off a list of key ranking factors like key- words, optimized content, and creating backlinks, while webmasters point to sitemaps, clean code and optimizing for page speed as game changers. And the key for marketers include customer retention, a call to action and color schemes that convert. The truth is they're all right. In order to set a suc- 28 FEDA News & Views he madness to achieve a high rank- ing in any search engine continues to escalate as search engines grow SEOSEOSEO cessful SEO campaign in motion, you will need the workings of a webmaster (to handle the technical aspects), a mar- keter (for a different perspective on reaching your customer) and an SEO firm (to manage your SEO plan). Below is a compressed list of SEO items from all three professions in one. The Building Blocks of SEO Since we are gathering data from three professions to cover the basics of SEO, there will be a lot to cover and will require ample time to set up and evenmore time tomanage.The listmay look intimidating, but the return will justify your hard work. To simplify things, I've separated the basics into three blocks: Technical Optimization, On-Site Optimization and Off-Site Optimization. Now let's break it down even further and define every process required for a successful SEO campaign, along with the processes involved in continuing to run it smoothly. Technical Optimization Properly optimizing your website should begin with the technical block, which covers steps involved in ensuring yourwebsite iswell structured and opti- mized for search engine indexing. This section is where your webmaster will have the opportunity to shine. If a search engine has trouble indexing your pages,on-site and off-site optimization is pointless. Here are the basic steps that should be included in technical opti- mization: .htaccess File - Make sure your non- www domain points to your www domain. XML Sitemap – Make sure you have an XML sitemap located at the root folder of your domain. Robots.txt File – Make sure you have a robots.txt file located at the root folder of your domain. Also,be sure to include a link to your XML sitemap in your robots.txt file. Clean Code – Make sure there is no broken or unused code on your site. This can slow your site down. Site Speed – Don't use excessive code that can bog down your website. Every millisecond counts. Clear Navigation – Have a clear navi- gation structure. Search Engine Friendly Links – If your shopping cart system does not include this automatically, you can fix this in your .htaccess file.While you are at it,be sure to include keywords in your links. On-Site Optimization Now that search engines can proper- ly navigate your website, the next step is to tell them what each page is about. Block 2, on-site optimization, is the art of first identifying key factors on a web page used by search engines to rank a page, then adding the right content to continued on page 30