First of all, Web 2.0 is a buzzword. But as Andy mentions, all buzzwords have a real use. They define a nebulous concept that can be used to communicate with non-technical people. You can use this term when speaking with developers and clients.  And everyone has a general idea of what you are talking about.

 Tim O’Reilly, head of O’Reilly Media Inc., and Dale Dougherty coined the term Web 2.0 as a way to describe the different beliefs and characteristics of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 companies. Old guard versus new guard companies. AltaVista versus Google and Hotmail versus gmail, for example.

The first characteristic of a Web 2.0 company is that it is Open Data.  Users own the data, use the data, and do whatever they want with the data.  If they become dissatisfied with the application the data is not locked.  They can take the data with them.

Also the data can be used across devices. One example is del.icio.us You can bookmark a site at work and have it available on your home computer. It is device independent.

Another key component is Social Participation. Web 2.0 companies provide a service not a product. It encourages user contribution. Amazon.com is a great example. Users can submit feedback on products sold via Amazon. It uses collective intelligence. The idea that a group of people is collectively smarter than an individual.  

Web 2.0 is basically customer self-service.  You want your customers to help themselves. This creates a strong feeling around your product.

The third key component of Web 2.0 is a rich user experience.  It should be easy and enjoyable to use.  Tools such as AJAX helps provide the rich user experience. 

The core technologies for Web 2.o are:

• Open Data through API’s and Web Services
• RSS
• Ajax (which is a buzzword for javascript and xml)
• Web Standards (CSS, XHTML and DOMScripting)

This is a brief summation of his presentation which gives a great overview of what Web 2.0 is.

Information that is contained in this tool are:

• The last time a Googlebot successfully accessed your homepage
• The list of pages indexed on your site
• Pages from other sites that link to your site
• A snapshot of your page when Google lasted accessed it
• Page rank of your site
• Keywords found in your site

You can use this tool to get a better understanding for what Google is finding on your site. 

First make sure that you are capturing and reviewing your web site analytics. These would include number of visits, unique visitors, where your visitors are located, how they are being referred to your site, etc. One excellent source is Google Analytics. It is a free powerful tool. And it is easy to set up. You sign up for the service, copy and paste a small block of code on each page of your site, submit some basic information about your site, and the next day you can begin tracking your site’s analytics.

Keep that in place for a period of time to get a baseline on how your site is currently performing without making any changes to your site to improve traffic. Because that is what your are trying to achieve. Higher rankings are great, but you want people to actually click on the link and visit your site.

Second, consider using pay-per-click advertising with Google Adwords. This is a quick fix to improve traffic while you are working on the other aspects of improving search rankings. You can place a cap on how much you are willing to pay-per-click, and how much you are willing to pay-per-day. So you can choose 10 cents per click for a maximum of $5 per day. And if you service a small geographic area, you can limit this search to the geographic area you service, thus targeting your marketing.

Third, create inbound and outbound links. Most likely you are listed on some professional directories. In addition to the usual information, such as name, address and phone number, make sure you have your web site listed also. This will help search engines find and understand what your site is about. Be picky though. Search engines also take into consideration the quality of the inbound link.

Also, add outbound links to your site. This will help search engines get a better understanding for what your site is about.

Fourth, add your business as a local business center on google maps.  It is a free service.  And the whole process will take about four weeks.  When you sign up for this service, you will enter the name of your business, address, email and web site information.  To verify your listing, you can either have them send you a postcard or have google call you by telephone.  The telephone process is very easy.  If you decide to do a phone verification, you will receive a phone call immediately and asked to verify that the listing is correct by typing in a pin number.  Within four weeks your listing will start appearing on the google maps for searches on your business type in your area.  That’s it.

The final step is a bit more painful. Consider a web site face lift. You got that blinking new button, that airplane flying around gif thing, your site uses frames, etc. The web is relatively new. Times are a changing. And how search engines spider the web have changed also. So you need to keep your image and coding practices up-to-date.

Your site needs to use Semantic HTML and Web Standards. Semantic html means that the html tags describe the content between those tags. This is a title, this is a main header, this is a sub-header, this is a paragraph, and this is a bullet point. This helps search engines understand the content and importance of each piece of content. Also, Web Standards means that you separate the content from the appearance of the site. Basically it strips out all of the unnecessary information about how to present the site to the web browsers, and just leaves the content in the html. Search engines can spider that content more efficiently as a result.

Keep in mind that this is an iterative process. By reviewing your web analytics you can gauge how your changes and improvements are affecting your site’s traffic. You can tweak your pay-per-click advertising, such as keywords used and geographic area. You can add inbound links and outbound links. And you can add new content to your site.

Content is key for search engines. They are spidering your site for key words. Don’t just put them in the meta-tags, key words need to be in the text of your site. Keep your content up-to-date and relevant. This will ultimately help your rankings.

• Create a presence on the web.
• Update your existing site
• Improve your site’s marketing and reach