Search engine optimisation (SEO), a process to make sure customers find your business online, is a key tool in a small business's digital marketing arsenal.

Understanding the basics isn't difficult and can help your business turn marketing spend into customers. This is the advice of the digital marketing specialist who will be leading three seminars from media group Archant on digital skills.

The Digital Decoded sessions in Norwich, Ipswich and Great Yarmouth will seek to explain some key elements of digital marketing and how these can be deployed to attract consumers at different stages of the purchase process.

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According to Jamie Brown, Archant's digital ninja, SEO is always a hot topic in the digital marking community. Mr Brown said: 'SEO is a big subject for us because it can effectively 'activate' both online and offline marketing. 'If you have an advert on television or radio, on a billboard, or in a newspaper, one of the first things anyone does is go online to find out more. 'If a company is not visible, their spending on other advertising is much less effective.

'We see businesses spending hundreds of pounds not always getting the returns they need because the vital connection, their online presence, is effectively missing.

'It is about being found when someone puts your name into Google, but also being found when someone looks for what you sell.'

Mr Brown, who will be leading the Digital Decoded sessions, said the theory behind SEO is more straightforward than some experts make it out to be.

'This session will explain the context of SEO and why we need it and give advice on how to do it.'

The seminars from Archant, publisher of the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times, are targeted at SMEs keen become more digital-savvy in their advertising.

The sessions will take place at Dunston Hall Hotel near Norwich on Tuesday, July 11; Wherstead Park in Ipswich on Wednesday, July 12; and Great Yarmouth Racecourse on Thursday, July 13.

Two sessions take place each day, at 8.15am and 11.30am.

To book, contact your Archant account manager or visit www.archanthub.co.uk/digitaldecoded