3 Quick & Effective Tips For The SEO Challenged
I’ve got to tell you, working on Search Engine Optimization is one of my least favorite things online. But I also recognize that it’s one of the most important things we spend time on – well, only if you want anyone to know you exist, that is.
Want to get a boost in the search engine results? Let me boil all the confusing information down to 3 important practices that will git ‘er done! This is certainly not all that there is to SEO, but it will give you a great start. And if you’ve already been at it for a while, hopefully this will serve as a reminder of some SEO basics.
1. Continually add new content
Over the long haul, this really is the most unbeatable way to improve your search engine rankings. You can blog, write reviews and testimonials, submit articles to online directories, and so on. For the adventurous soul, you might even consider adding a forum to your site as a great way to get a stream of new content added by other people.
2. Optimize the use of keywords
Do a little homework for every piece of content you create. It doesn’t have to take hours, but a few minutes of research can mean the difference between a piece that gets read often and one that sinks into the cyber-abyss, never to be called up by anyone.
Select specific and relevant keyword phrases rather than general terms. We used to talk a lot about “the long tail”. Those specific keyword phrases that may be searched less frequently than one of the big generic keywords, but you will be able to compete for them in the engines, and ultimately receive much more targeted traffic . For example, you are very unlikely to get in the top 50 pages of Google for the keyword “ebay”, but you might be able to climb up the rankings for something like “best selling items on ebay”.
The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a really helpful free resource. Learn to use it!
3. Get Linked To
It’s very important to have other sites linking to your site / content. This is how the search engine algorithms calculate the importance or “weight” of your pages. The theory is, if lots of people are pointing at you, you must be pretty interesting.
Links can be either one-way or reciprocal, where you link to another site in return for them linking to you. Both kinds help. Internal linking also help with site structure and building the prominence of pages within your website.
Having said that ALL links help, however, it is a fact that one-way links have the most weight with the search engines. To get more one-way links, singular best way is to write great content! Nothing compares to it for motivating others to link to you.
Of course you can also take some control by posting on social networking sites, and linking back to your own site. Posting comments on blogs is also helpful. These are perfectly ethical ways of boosting your own perceived importance on the web.
When it comes to improving your search engine ranking there are a lot of little things you can do, as I said, but these three strategies are the most important. One other piece of advice I would give is: Do a little every day!
Phil
Phil
Gary Simpson
Eric Bonnici
Peter Davies
Zee Visram
Hi again Phil,
Nice article and well-written mate. This being a PERFECT example of what you are talking about – so you get a link from my PR3 site.
Gary Simpson
TEMPLE
Hi Phil,
Excellent post! I’ve been into SEO since 1998 and the basics haven’t changed too much. Building backlinks has always been important but these days getting them from authority sites gives you better rankings in the search engines. And there’s so many ways of doing that compared to several years ago.
With that said I’d like to share a tip on how to get a super link juice to your web pages. Imagine if Google linked to you… how much link juice would that be worth? Quite a bit right?
Well if you can get people with Google Profile accounts to subscribe to your blog using Google Reader… and then that person shares your blog post through their Google reader.. guess what? Their Google Profile page will show that as a link to your blog post on their Google profile page. Of course the option to display shared items must be enabled and a lot of people have done that.
Well I like this post so much that I decided to give you some link juice through my Google Profile Page Shared Items over at:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/IMEricBonnici
As a side note I believe that Google Social tools like Google Friend Connect and Google Reader are going to revolutionize how to get top rankings in Google very soon. And that’s going to happen when Google Wave finally goes public. Right now it is still in beta but there are millions using it. I was lucky enough to get invited to test it out recently. It should go public by the end of 2009 or early 2010. To get involved all you need is a gmail account (you can set up a Google profile page when you have gmail).
Bottom line is I encourage everyone who wants to dominate Google rankings to get a gmail account and get ready for Google Wave. Because it looks like Google rankings are going to be (and already are) influenced more by social media (especially Google’s social tools) in the very near future.
OK I will stop rambling, just got a little excited here.
Your post is very concise and informative. Thanks so much.
Sincerely,
Eric Bonnici