While it is true that SEO is complicated, there are essentially three main factors that go into search rankings: content, inbound links, and social media. No single tactic or strategy will get you to rank high. Instead, you’ll need to focus your efforts into all three of areas to create a successfully SEO campaign.
Part I – Content
If you’ve read any other SEO blog or article then you’ve probably seen the phrase, “content is king.” Since the Google penguin and panda algorithm updates (don’t worry, we will explain them), many SEO tactics that used to work no longer do. The old days of using spam tools like Xrumer or Scrapebox simply are not as useful as they once were.
Today, your content strategy should be more than just publishing interesting content. You need to make sure that you’re also optimizing your content from a technical side as well. On-page SEO is vital in 2014 and we’ll go more into that lately.
Keyword research is essential to your content strategy. You need to know what users are searching for related to your website’s topic. There are several tools that can help you find out keywords like Google trends, or Google Adwords.
While developing out your content you also need to understand exactly what your audience is looking for. Is something missing from the existing search results? Knowing this will help your website gain attention for publishing excellent content and will increase your inbound links, social media interaction, and branding.
Remember, a search engine wants you to build websites for your audience, not for search engines. Keeping your visitors in mind will help you develop a better content strategy that will reward you for your hard work done the road.
Part II – Links
Link building is the shadiest part of SEO and it always has been. Link building is the process of obtaining the creation of hyperlinks from other websites to your website. The quality and quantity of inbound links is a major factor of search rankings and coincidentally is the same target of many of Google’s algorithm updates.
Creating valuable content is the best way of obtaining inbound links and is seen as the most ethical way of earning links. Of course, so called white hat SEO’s will argue that there are ethical ways to build links, although it still is technically against search engine policies.
Part III – Social Media
Unlike linking and content strategy, social media strategy depends on the audience of your brand. For example, your social media strategy for middle-aged moms is certainly going to be different than college kids.
However, no matter what you do you should be interacting with your customers and users through as many social media outlets as possible. Some of the most popular outlets include:
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Instagram
– Pinterest
– Youtube
Social media is important because it engages your customers to build stronger relationships so that they continue to be your customers down the road. When building a social media strategy, get creative.
Offer sweepstakes, contests to your customers in exchange for them sharing your brand. Perhaps give them a sneak peek of a new product or offer them a discount on their next order. Social media enables you to get creative and that is vital to a successful social media strategy.
or go back to last chapter:
