The foundation of SEO was built on some of the more traditional methods that are still valuable in today’s SEO market. Refresh yourself on those steps to ensure you are still following the basic foundation of your SEO campaign. This will also help you to identify the areas of improvement. Then we will cover some of the newer techniques to make sure all of your bases are covered.
Research keywords using online tools, algorithms and analysis tools to ensure you are utilizing the appropriate keywords; not junk.
Structure keywords throughout your site; SEO is optimized when main keywords are used on each page throughout your site.
Build links in pages to partners or online relationships that will also help increase traffic to your site.
Update links and keywords constantly to stay fresh in the search engines and in your visitor’s minds.
Track your rankings in the search engines and analyze your traffic reports to see what is working for you; drop what isn’t.
You might be saying to yourself, “I already do all of this”. Well good! You’ve got the basics down, so now it’s time to learn what’s new in SEO.
New SEO strategies focus on recognizing every opportunity to bring traffic to your site or thinking outside the box. Where are your customers at that you aren’t? Find it and then get there.
Content development is all about creating the stuff your readers want, plain and simple.
Set up technical support, even if customers are only contacting you for help in navigating your site. There is nothing more frustrating to a user than can’t make contact with a company for answers to their questions. Technical support is especially important if you are selling a product or your site is set up for interaction.
Implement social media. Get on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social media site you can find. SEO is all about getting your name in front of people otherwise you wouldn’t care about the number of people frequenting your site. Once they are there, make sure your site is optimized for their experience by obtaining feedback whenever you can.
Use feedback surveys to keep you up to date on what your customers are wanting. Update the analytics package you are currently using to include trends your system is not tracking now. If you don’t know what is working for your site it’s like throwing money down the drain.
Market research is more important than you think. Just plopping keywords into your pages because they have high rankings doesn’t necessarily mean you are providing pertinent content to your customers and believe in one thing if nothing else; they will notice. The question you have to ask yourself is will your brand suffer because you lack real content? Chances are likely it will. Bringing us to a perfect question to ask yourself when implementing new SEO standards for your site, who are your biggest competitors and what are they doing so differently from you?
If you own more than one domain, get them all up and going, even if you are forwarding the domains to one single website. Use every social media platform available to you because you are not required to stick to one or two. List the top ten keywords specific to your product or service and set them as permanent fixtures in your SEO campaign.
Finally, expand your search engine horizons. While Google continues to be the world’s leading search engine monster, others are emerging that are becoming big competition for Google. Bing and Yahoo are becoming more popular every day.
Ryan Franklin is a writer and small business professional who enjoys blogging about marketing and SEO. He blogs on behalf of Ordoro.com.
