Good and Bad SEO Ideas in the Post-Panda 2.0 Period

SEO service TipsA lot of people have tired out views of what SEO is and what it means. Yes, keywords are a part of any good optimization strategy, but they’re not everything. Optimization efforts are a lot more varied nowadays and take in numerous aspects of a site’s presence on the web. In short: good content is more important than ever. There aren’t any shortcuts anymore.

To Improve Your Site’s SEO You Can…

1. Build a blog for your site and populate it with informative posts people will want to share and comment on. Come up with a regular posting schedule and stick to it. Comment on other blogs and write guest posts to further your site’s visibility.

2. Tell the story of your company or industry with visuals. That is, create infographics that present data, facts, and figures in an interesting and compelling way. Why write out info in a list or chart when you can make an eye-catching image? Include your site’s address on the graphic so that when it spreads across the web, people will know who to attribute it to.

3. Run a contest on your site. This will bring in more visitors and ensure people share the link to your site on social media and on their websites. Just make sure the prize is substantial to really lure people in.

All of this is fine and well, but it’s important you avoid doing certain things when trying to optimize your site lest you actually hurt your rankings.

Do the Following If You Want to Hurt Your SEO Efforts…

1. Use the same anchor text for your links on your site and everywhere else. Anchor text is important because it tells the search engines what your links are about. If you use the same keywords time and time again, you could send up a red flag for your site and have those links marked as spammy.

2. Write guest posts on sites no one cares about. For guest posts to count you need to make sure the site you’re writing for has a good PageRank. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time.

3. Incorporate site-wide links in your sidebars. Blogs are notorious for this and having links in your sidebars and/or footers means they are repeated over and over again on every post you create. This looks awfully spammy to search engines (even when it’s totally legitimate).

These are just a few guidelines to follow if you want to make the most of your SEO efforts.

Picture credit: Sxc.hu