SEO, or search engine optimization, is a topic I find myself mired in these days. Fortunately, it's a topic I enjoy! Especially when applied to an LMS, I think SEO management is a crucial function, but is also full of opportunities and innovations yet to be exploited. 

SEO is something I will further cover, along with Google specifically, in my Converging Trends For Learning Management System Providers series. But for the time being, I want to point out an important tool LMS managers can use for their site SEO efforts - Google Trends.

Search engine optimization is important for any web author who wants to drive as much traffic to their site as possible. The caveat here, is that if you aim too big in what type of traffic you want, you'll miss everything and will end up at the bottom. Fortunately, this is where KMi expertise can help setup your LMS as an effective SEO function. 
 


I agree that it would be great if every internet user out there could come across your page. But to do that, you'll have to include a pretty wide range of content. For example, the most popular and heavily trafficked sites on the internet are always things like Facebook and YouTube. Why? Because the content they contain covers everything imaginable! Chances are, your content is not that sweepingly applicable. 

Instead, most web content providers (including learning content listed on a SCORM LMS, such as KMi's eLMS), is more focused. This means, you need to target your audience. 

To target your audience, particularly in terms of LMS SEO, you need to center on and emphasize your keywords. Keywords, of course, are best when they generate naturally - and if you have genuine content, they will. But it never hurts to refine and try to improve your keywords. To do this, try plugging what you think your key words are, intoGoogle Trends. 

Once you search your terms on Google Trends, you notice some relative data showing which terms have the highest search volume. Next, try searching them in different combinations.

For example, LMS SEO are two keywords that come up frequently in my blogging. It's something that interest me and I tent to write on it a lot. If I plug in "lms, seo, lms seo" (notice that there are actually three terms being plugged in here), the Google Trends application will search each key word individually, as well as together.

From this, I can see that LMS and SEO, as individual terms, get quite a few hits. But LMS SEO as one term, does not. So, separately, my keywords are in demand, but when you put them together, they are not. From this, I can infer one thing: users must be combining the terms LMS and SEO with some word, other than each other! 

After a little brain storming, I finally run the terms: "seo techniques, seo, lms". This does return some hits for seo techniques - a good example of possible other terms users search along with seo - but still not as strong as I'd like. However, this is probably not the forum to outline adventures in Google Trends - that's something you'll just have to enjoy for yourself!

The LMS SEO answer is out there. But no one is going to give it to you. Find your keywords, refine your keywords - relate to your users! Let KMi help you accomplish all of this and more!