This is one of the most important online marketing tips you’ll read! In recent months (since the Google Panda fiasco), many online marketers have come to believe that SEO is dead. While it’s true, Google has said that over-optimized websites will be penalized, this does NOT mean a good website is going to drop off the face of the web if it is properly optimized. So, what should you do and not do to ensure that your website or blog doesn’t fall out of favor with Google? Here are a few pointers.
The old “tried and true” SEO tactics that worked 5 years ago still work today.
For those that never tried to outwit the search engines by using unethical tactics and other somewhat underhanded tricks, good old SEO practices still work. What are these practices?
Content IS still king. Content is what drives the web, whether it’s in the form of an article or blog post, video, audio, etc. The problem is, too many sites are simply replicas of many others – the same old stuff rehashed over and over. Make your content valuable, unique and useful to your reader. Google wants the user to have the best possible experience; hence, they want websites that are designed with the searcher in mind, not designed to have the most keywords or make the most affiliate sales.
Keyword optimization is still important, but don’t over-do it. Without keywords and keyword phrases, search engines wouldn’t be able to determine what web pages are about. You still need to use keywords, but don’t try to “stuff” them in at every opportunity. Your content should read naturally, so that your reader would never notice keyword use. Use variations of your keyword, synonyms – but DON’T stuff a 500 word piece of content with a keyword 20 or 30 times!
Strong, relevant back links. Building back links is still an important part of the SEO process, but you don’t want just any link linking to your website. Avoid link farms, links from spammy websites or those that are irrelevant to yours. What you want are links from trusted, authority sites that are relevant to your topic or niche. A dozen quality back links are worth far more in terms of SEO that hundreds of “weak” or low-quality links.
The problem with search engine optimization the way it has been done in past years is that the majority of marketers go to extremes, fighting for those coveted first-page spots. This means that they’ve stuffed their meta tags with every possible keyword that would fit, built massive backlinks that may not be effective, stuffed their pages with keywords to excess and tried every trick in the book to get on page one. IT NO LONGER WORKS!
Stick to putting your visitor’s needs first, writing quality, original content and not over-focusing on optimization, and you’ll do just fine. In fact, you’ll find that in providing quality, interesting and “shareable” content, trusted sites will link to yours – without you even asking!
