It’s true, content is very important for any SEO strategy. However, it’s critical not to forget about the importance of links and social media.
Below I’ve listed three core areas (plus a few tips) that anyone should consider if they are just starting to learn about SEO or are developing their first SEO strategy.
Content
Content is vital these days to overcome Google’s changes that now make content one of the most significant factors.
The three most important types of SEO content that you’ll need on your website include:
1. Blog posts and articles
These need to position your business and team as the authority on your subject, be topical and must match what the key ingredients of your business are.
Blog posts and articles need to be professionally written and answer a specific question or FAQ that your users might have about your industry. For example, if you’re a carpet cleaning company, write an article about “How to get a red wine stain out of carpet”. Make sure the title of the article is exactly the same as the question.
Be succinct and to the point; readers don’t want to read waffle!
2.’Videos
Whilst video can be more costly to produce (as you will need a well-made one to stand out from the crowd), you can get great backlinks from them. Make sure you use good presenters, answer the question quickly and add some fun factor to the video content. Videos can then be uploaded to YouTube and embedded in your blog posts for great sharing opportunities.
3. Infographics
These are fun and funky ways to visually display the core messages you are trying to get across to users when solving their search queries. Similar to a blog post, infographics must be easy to read, aesthetically appealing and must really target the primary audience you are trying to attract. An infographic must also offer a point of difference it stands out from the crowd and get the right people linking to you. Check out a great example here of an infographic talking about a key SEO topic, the differences between Google Panda versus Penguin.
Links
You won’t go very far with SEO if you just have content; you need links to gain recognition for your hard work!
It’s not about how many links you have to your site, but rather, the relevance and quality of said links.
Links cannot be spammy. By this I mean that your links should not come from the one source multiple times, from dodgy blogs, from forums selling their links or from multiple footers on a website. If they are you’ll get avisit from the Google Penguin.
What a good SEO’er does is first develop a “content strategy” (based on target keywords or keyword themes) and then, once the assets are produced, the SEO er becomes a marketing strategists and promotes their content out to the web. They do this by building relationships with credible blogs, forums, news sites, PR sites and more with the goal of getting a link back to their target website.
How Can Social Media Help With Links?
When lots of people are consuming and sharing your content through Facebook likes, Google +1’s, Reddit (et al) or Tweets, your content will reach more people and therefore your opportunity to gain new links increases. In a nutshell, social media platforms allow you to build your website links through viral sharing. The better your content, the more it will get shared and the more opportunity for links you will have.
Also, it’s important to treat great links as positive word of mouth for you or your brand. If you want your website’s linking reputation to be about “Content Strategy in Brisbane” then develop and submit entertaining, educational or engaging content about Content Strategy in Brisbane and submit it to the right sites (or share it on the right platforms).
Other really important areas for a SEO Strategy
Keywords and Keyword Phrases
Choosing the right keywords to target for your site is still the most important old school ‘SEO tactic. If you can target the revenue generating keywords early on in the SEO program and build quality content and links around these phrases, ‘over time you will likely be successful.
Make sure you place the keywords in the right areas of the site e.g. in the title tags. However don’t bother with the meta keyword tag, that is long gone! Also, don’t ‘keyword stuff’ the content pages of your website or add too many keywords to the footer.
Social Media
Yes, it’s really here as a key part of any SEO strategy. It’s been fairly apparent within the SEO industry for a while now that Google+ (Google’s social media recommendation engine) will play a much greater part in the future for search engine rankings.
It’s likely going to come about through a suspected possible algorithm change called “AuthorRank” or “AgentRank”. This change would see that authors who build a reputation for writing or developing content in a specific author area will be seen as more relevant and credible in the eyes of Google. This also means that any content they post on that particular post will likely rank higher than content written by an author with a lower rank or no rank at all.
This is why it’s more important than ever to get in front of the algorithm and get involved with Google+ as soon as possible!
In summary
Although we’ve only gone over some very very basic areas of SEO, they are all still critical to any SEO strategy. If you are having a go at developing your own SEO strategy, be sure to include these core principles in order to get off to a good start!
