This week I had the pleasure of speaking at SMX Travel @ PhoCusWright in Orlando.

My session, “How ya doing?” Critiques, Appraisals and Kudos from Travel SEM Experts,” went very well.

I was joined by Elisabeth Osmeloski, Director of Online Media at Zonder.com and Christine Churchill, President at KeyRelevance. I was honored to share the stage and I managed to get some microphone time in as well, which is always nice.

This was an informal session that included reviewing sites for best practices on search engine optimization. Some of the common issues I noticed are below.

Page Title – For me, it’s still the most important step to take for search engine rankings. Developing a site title with a few targeted keywords makes a huge difference in search rankings. Surprisingly, as simple as this is, it’s still one of the most common mistakes.

Missing keyword-rich content – Many sites we reviewed at SMX Travel were missing quality content. In this session and throughout the conference, this is usually the first thing that site owners realize on their own after a few quick questions.

• Why should you be ranked higher in search rankings?
• What is the purpose of your site?

Now, express that answer on your website. Tell your consumers and tell the search engines who you are.

Targeting the wrong keywords – By reviewing analytics, pay-per-click campaigns and various other tools marketers can discover which keywords convert better. There are also many tools available that will discover missing opportunities. Many keywords may convert well, but the competition is to strong and not worth competing in. Marketers need to find their niche.

Site Maps – Search Engines love links, especially internal links. A site map is useful for indexing spiders to find all content of a site. The text you use to link to a page should be keyword rich and related to the URL that it’s pointing to.

Although I review all of our sites on a daily basis, it’s nice to get a fresh look at new sites. Some of the things that I can consider common knowledge are not always that common. This was a very enjoyable session for me because I enjoy helping people, plus it’s good to learn from Elisabeth Osmeloski and Christine Churchill.