SEO Today!
By: Brendan Fitzpatrick
Gone are the days of simple content, keywords, description and links to your site! Nowadays search engines are much smarter then they were years ago. If you are trying to get back into or simply trying to master SEO here are the top 3 areas you need to work on.
1. Focus – if you have more than one site or idea, pick one! If you’re in the game to seek success on more than one idea then pick your best idea and pursue it. See the next point!
2. Relevance – what does this mean? After several year of chasing multiple ideas it’s clear that the most successful websites are people who are passionate about their product. You have to live, breath and eat what you’re looking to promote. If you’re focusing on SEO then you may going down the wrong path. As Matt Cutt’s explains – if you’re not creating content on the product or service that you’re offering then you’re going about SEO the wrong way. Google is getting smarter and smarter every day, they are truly seeking out ‘authorities on specific subjects’. In the old days, backlinks, content and internet presence was everything. Today it’s all about quality and expertise on subjects that truly get you ranked higher in the search engines. To do this you need to focus on expert content and your internet following (ie. social existence). A site that has 1000’s of social followers proves to google that your site is trustworthy and has some level of authority and relevance. Without this your site has a lower relevance factor. Produce expert content on your subject matter and search engines will rank you accordingly.
3. Dedication – it takes a long time for search engines to find you and rank your site accordingly, it also takes a long time to produce enough content to make a difference. If you’re website if not your life where you are living, breathing and eating it every day then it will be very difficult to find your site in the top 1% of the search engine ranking, much less the top 100 or top 10 (where you need to be to make a difference) search results.
I know these points are generic, but the bottom line is that it’s becoming much harder if not impossible to spam your way to the top search results. Today the search results are becoming all about expert content created by experts. You really have to have focus, relevance and dedication to see significant results. If you’re paying for backlinks then you might as well give up, google is now penalizing sites for spam backlinks (ie. paid backlinks). If you’re an expert on a given topic then chances are you have a blog, a website, a google+ page, facebook page and perhaps a pinterest, instagram, tumblr account and maybe many more avenues of inbound social networks. If you don’t then you’re playing Major League Baseball with a whiffle ball bat.
Read my article on SEO tips.