Website Visibility and Search Engines

56 contact hours (28 hours for lecture&discussion, 28 hours for lab sessions) 44 hours for preparing and documenting in-class and lab assignments, 50 hours for reviewing classes and preparing for the exam.

Students enrolling for this course must be:

• Skilled on browser use in general
• Familiar with the use of search engines, and with reading search engine result pages
• Motivated to learn how SEO can be applied

Students enrolling for this course must have:

• Above average English writing and reading skills
• Basic knowledge of Web design principles

The aim of this course is to give students an overall view of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry, and specifically:

• introduce students to SEO and Search Engines
• teach students to evaluate a website in terms of SEO
• empower students to apply the basic whitehat SEO techniques to improve the ranking of a website

1. Introduction
2. Search, HTML basics
3. Metrics and search engine result pages
4. Content writing
5. Inlinks and keywords
6. Hyperlinks and metatags
7. Whitehat vs. Blackhat
8. Social media and mobile SEO
9. Website visibility

Powerpoint, online resources, online tools for website analysis, videos

Weideman, M. 2009. Website Visibility: The Theory and Practice of Improving Rankings.

Chandos Publishing: Oxford. Abstract: http://www.web-visibility.co.za/website-visibility-digital-library-seo.php