Recently, I have the privilege of being able to speak to the Management Information System Team, a student club here within the Saunders College. While I’ve spoken in classrooms before as part of a guest lecture, this audience was more intimate and had actually invited me. To me, that meant they were actively seeking out specific information and my standard lecture just wouldn’t do. My content had to be better.
It very much reminded me of the concept of SEO on the whole. Content is king. And these students are actively searching for the content. Hopefully I can help them find what they were searching for. No one left after the first slide, so that was a good start, right?
I love speaking in front of students and having the opportunity to impart a more practical manner. I take concepts learned in the class and try to bring a more applied meaning. This was most apparent after the hour-long talk was over. Not a single student got up to leave and all of them stayed another 90 minutes asking questions. We even got into actual case studies of current sites and their own sites. It was amazing to me how many are Webmasters for their parents’ companies and needed this information.
So my biggest take-away was SEO is out there. People know they need SEO and are turning anywhere to get it. Ten years ago, when I owned my Web development company and tried to sell Web development services to small business owners, I had to fight the mentality of “oh my nephew can do that.” Now, it seems that sure, the nephew (or son, or some kid, …) has built their site and they continue to say to these same people: “how can I be found by Google?” For that, these “kids” are seeking out in the right direction.
I’m honored to have been able to be there for them.
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Sounds like a great change of attitude by the students compared to before. One thing that bugs me a bit is how many folks are looking for a quick and easy trick, as opposed to building good solid searchable sites with solid content and building up links to those sites by being useful.
The rules of SEO are always changing too. Keeping up is challenging as well. Just when you think your business site is going to be seen, something else changes. It isn’t easy but rankings are possible with a lot of manual work.