Search engines are by far the most popular way people find content on the web. In order for them to find your content, you will need to make your pages "search friendly."  The practice of optimizing your website to perform well in searches is called "Search Engine Optimization", or SEO.  To help your your pages score well in search engine results, each page will need to have at least:

• well-written text about a specific subject
• well-written and specific page titles
• well-designed content hierarchy with appropriate headings for each section

Having clear, well-written content, unique and descriptive page titles, and helpful heading organization, the easier search engines will be able to 1) determine the meaning of the content and 2) to suggest this content in search results.

JMU also uses the Google Custom Search Engine to search our website. If you have any key search terms you would like us to elevate, you can ask marketingemail@jmu.edu to "promote" a specific page for a given search. For example, if you go to the JMU homepage and search for "class search," you can see that the MyMadison class search page has been "promoted" to the top of the search results.

Note: Promoting search keywords in JMU's Google Custom Search Engine will not have any effect on search results using google.com. The "promotion" feature is only for searches done within the jmu.edu website using the top search bar:

To learn more about SEO, click on the following link: Google Webmaster Tools SEO guide.