On the Scene: SEO keyword seminar


sceneblogbwZeke Camusio is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet marketing agency in Portland. He recently gave a free SEO seminar at Portland Community College. Everyone from writers and bloggers to CEOS gathered to learn how to bring more customers to their websites.

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By Emma Hall

Zeke Camusio is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet marketing agency in Portland. On April 28 he gave a free SEO seminar at Portland Community College. Everyone from writers and bloggers to CEOS gathered to learn how to bring more customers to their websites. When asked why he would give away his trade secrets for free, Camusio explained that he had more clients than he knew what to do with. “Plus, the more you make yourself available to people, the more you will receive. I know it sounds kind of new agey and b.s.” he joked.

Camusio made himself available to the gathered group despite his leg being in a cast. He began his presentation by answering everyone’s first question — what had happened to his leg? A rugby accident hadn’t seemed to slow him down, despite the energetic entrepreneur’s numerous apologies for a lack of energy-which were not apparent at all.

Oregon Business has covered SEO tips before, in local search and how to optimize your website. At Camusio’s seminar, he explained that before website optimization comes research into just what keywords you should be using. The first thing you should do when exploring SEO is to make projections and test assumptions.

One of the tools Camusio recommended when you’re starting out is Google’s keyword tool. By doing some research with the free tool, you can discover if more people in your area are searching for, say, “Portland immigration lawyer,” or “Portland immigration attorney.” After you know what your main keywords are, you can begin to optimize your website to gain more traffic from Google. Other tools he recommended are Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker.

Camusio recommended making a list of your primary and secondary keywords, and then using them in your website. Make a page for each of your few primary keywords, and then sprinkle secondary keywords throughout blog posts. However, it’s important to keep content in mind, rather than keyword stuffing. “The main goal is to provide really good content for my visitors,” Camusio said.

If you still are at a loss as to what keywords you should be using, you can always spy on your competitors and see how they are optimizing their website. View their page source to see what keywords they have in their meta description and meta keywords. Camusio recommended a tool at Open Site Explorer to do this.

At the free seminar, Camusio received so many questions from the audience that the seminar ended up going over its allotted time, and people still had more questions. You can find the answers to many of your SEO questions at Camusio’s blog.

Emma Hall is web editor for Oregon Business.