Since SEO is an ever changing landscape, the professionals in the field know better than to rest on their laurels. They have to stay on top of every change in the industry to make sure they get the best results.
That being said, if you’re doing your own SEO then you had better be just as aware of what is going on or you’ll be left in the dust. The old school tricks just don’t work anymore. That’s why the SEO gurus and pros have been feverishly scanning and examining every aspect of SEO and what the search engines and their software are doing. The analysis can get broad and deep and calls for a vast amount of metric data. From that is gleaned the tidbits that they can test and see what works. If you’re not that astute, then you’ll have to go by the basics and that means knowing what does work and why.
It’s a total flip flop with far too many of the experts over analyzing things to the point of total confusion. The bottom line however is something simple, and you can gain much headway by following the tried and true methods that are proving successful.
Believe it or not, you just need to follow some basic rules and you should gain much with your own SEO efforts. First of all, make sure your website is constructed well and competently. That means providing information in a way that the surfer can easily understand and navigate through. Anticipate their questions and have those answers right up in front. Spelling, grammar, etc., must all be top notch. Photos and pics tagged correctly. Addresses and contact info must be prominent and up to date.
Your content and keywords aren’t the golden goose here either. Don’t put so much emphasis on them. Keywords are important and keyphrases too, however, going after top ones is futile as the big companies gobble them up and spend fat lots of money to do so. There’s a way around this, however, by just creating writing content that explains in detail what your site is about, the goods, services, are about. You’ll automatically hit the keywords and keyphrases you need the most and the search engines will see your site as informative because your content is original and targeted to your site as well as your location thus bringing in the value of what is called Local SEO.
Being true and honest is what is the winning formula here. Google for instance will be looking for such original content and their software for doing so is getting better by the day. Old school marketer scammers are getting a beating like never before as their old Black Hat techniques are falling off the map. Original content, useful content, links that go to and come from reliable and useful sites and blogs of authority can contribute greatly here. Not just a bunch of links you’ve paid for or traded for, but real organic links that show your site is of value to others and provide a valued service.
In addition, don’t underestimate social media and mobile markets. Your site has to be mobile friendly or you’re losing out on massive amounts of traffic and revenue. Google has tools for this and will walk you through. There are also tutorials that will get your site up to snuff in no time. Social media comes in powerfully here as those pics and blog posts and videos you’ve got on your site or blog that are tagged and titled properly, will get likes and shares. These social media posts and links are automatically scanned and added by Google and serve as organic traffic links to your site. This is of immense value because the mobile user can find your site based on their queries that will go to the terms aka keyphrases you’re using. So let’s say your business is about ‘fishing lures in New Orleans’, and you’ve written blog content about it with tagged pictures, then Google will zero in on your site via those specific keywords and keyphrases. You can gain even more SEO ground with a sentence like ‘fishing lures on Jones St. in New Orleans, Louisiana’. As you can see, being more specific gains more ground. You get traffic for each noun, verb, adjective that you put in.
So keep it simple and you’ll gain the SEO ground you’re looking for.