Optimizing searchability

The purpose of creating a website is to make one's company or products/services known in the world wide web. But to be known in the web takes more than just jazzy-looking pages. The website must be searchable. It must rank high in the search engines to be very visible. And to rank high in the search engines is a tall order that commands more work. It has been two years since the Regional Training Center (RTC) websites was up and running. In these two years, the websites have significantly improved the visibility of the Institute in the Web and have lorded over other websites in certain search keywords. However, other websites are slowly closing in the search engine rankings thus, the need to strategize to optimize searchability of our websites. This led to the conduct of Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101 for ATI Webmasters on May 3-7, 2010 at Hotel Pier Cuatro in Cebu City. Webmasters from the 16 RTCs and the International Training Center for Pig Husbandry (ITCPH) participated the activity. They learned how the search engine works, the "Current" search engine requirements, and SEO jargons and fundamentals. The webmasters were also given lectures on Writing to be found, role of the web editor, applying friendly URLs, link building, customizing main site features and new site features, site optimization, content generation and on-page optimization to better equip them for the task. They underwent workshops to further strengthen their learnings and to make the changes desired in their respective websites. The activity ended with a peer-to-peer evaluation of the websites. There is much to be done to achieve the goal of optimizing searchability of the RTC websites. The webmasters hoped that by applying the strategies they learned during the training would help realize the goal.