When most people talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) they tend to talk about getting more traffic to their website. Everyone wants more traffic. Right?

If you are like most film and video distributors, you care less about volume of traffic and much more about quality of traffic. The goal is to get the right people visiting your site. Can SEO do that for you?

Search Engine Optimization is about helping people who want to find your site, find your site. Optimize your site properly, target keywords intimately related to your business, and the high quality traffic will come.

By making a few technical improvements to your site right now, you can help search engines like Google and Yahoo understand and 'respect' what your site offers and then pass the good word on to the thousands of film and video license buyers who use search engines every business day.

Maybe a buyer only remembers a few words about a title they saw on the back of one of your sell sheets. Good SEO practice makes it possible for license buyers to find you using even the sketchiest keywords.

We've put together a checklist of nine very basic things you can do today to make sure your website is search engine friendly. Give your site an SEO tune-up, work hard posting keyword rich content, and you will be amazed how fast you can 'own' a set of keywords related to a film/video content category or genre. This means that whenever, or wherever, a buyer searches for content related to your business, they'll find their way to your website.

This checklist is just as essential for film and video distributors as it is for indie producers and film festivals wanting to boost their exposure. Everyone can benefit from these best practices.

9. Have you announced your site to the major search engines?

Search engines can't find you if they don't know about you. The first thing you need to do (once you finish reading this article) is to make sure your website is submitted to the major search engines.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you do this manually. We don't recommend that you use auto-submitter websites that promise to do this for you. Get off on the right SEO foot and do the submitting yourself.

Check out the IPEX TV blog for an article about submitting your site to search engines.

8. Did you add your sitemap?

A sitemap is a simple document placed at the root directory of your site and informs search engines which pages on your site are available for searching. It's like one of those big maps you see at audiovisual content tradeshows: but this one is for your website, and search engines love it.

7. Do all of your web pages have titles?

At the top of your browser window (on the same level as the close, maximize, and minimize buttons) you will find the title of the page you are viewing. This is some of the most valuable real estate on your site. If the only thing in this space is your company name (or worse, it just says "Untitled"), you're wasting a great opportunity. Use this space to attract search engine attention to specific keywords by writing unique page titles for every page on your site. The trick is to write a page title that is keyword loaded, but still seems natural to your actual visitors. Don't make these titles too long, but do make sure that the keywords you use in the title appear again in the body of the page. You'll be amazed at what an improvement this can make to your search engine results.

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