Small businesses often ignore the importance of building a search engine friendly website due to lack of time and resources, but most often it’s also down to a lack of understanding of how search engines work. There is a huge potential for small businesses to gain more visibility online and to better market themselves. Optimizing your online presence is not hard and a basic understanding of the technology, the limitations, and the potentials will help you make better decisions which will lead to long term growth.
 
Hessam previously spent four years at Google where he worked on fighting black-hat SEO techniques and webspam in the European market. He will be sharing his knowledge about how search engines find and evaluate web content through case studies and examples. He will also talk about the three key elements for optimal performance in search engines and how you can incorporate them in your business.

This workshop will cover the following topics:

• Overview of Search as an online marketing channel
• How search engines find, read, and evaluate web pages
• The 3 key elements for optimal performance in search engines
• The most common pitfalls and how to avoid them
• The problem of marketing unique and niche products
• Tools of the trade: free resources for analyzing your online business

About Hessam Lavi

Hessam Lavi is a recognized online marketing expert living in Berlin. Born in Iran, he grew up in Sweden, spent 4 years in Ireland and has been in Berlin since 2009 – talk about international! Before moving to Berlin he worked at Google for 4 years, dealing mainly with search quality and SEO. At Google he also worked with webmaster education, helping small businesses understand search engines so they can build better websites.