This semester, we had the privilege of welcoming Vitalii Starov, Humber grad and industry expert in Search Engine Optimization, to our BUS 2504 Web Development class. Vitalii shared invaluable insights into the world of SEO, which we will apply to develop websites for our clients: students of the BAKE 253 Bakery Management and Entrepreneurship course, taught by Chef Alastair Gray to students of the Baking and Pastry Arts Management program at the Longo Faculty of Business.

Vitalii’s session focused on essential SEO techniques, from keyword strategies to optimizing content for search engines. These tips and tricks will be directly applied to our project work, ensuring that each website is functional and primed for higher visibility and better ranking on search engines.

Key Takeaways for Effective SEO

Key takeaways for effective SEO included understanding the importance of keyword research, where selecting the right keywords based on the audience’s needs is the foundation of improving SEO. On-page optimization was also emphasized, focusing on refining page titles, meta descriptions, and headers to enhance indexing. The session covered technical SEO, highlighting the need to improve website speed, mobile responsiveness, and overall user experience to boost search engine rankings. We also explored off-page optimization, which involves strategies like building quality backlinks, social media engagement, and influencer partnerships to enhance the site’s authority and visibility. Finally, link building strategies were discussed, particularly how acquiring quality inbound links can improve a site’s authority and ranking.

A huge thank you to Vitalii Starov for sharing your time and expertise with us! We look forward to seeing how these SEO insights will be implemented to build powerful, user-friendly websites