As simple as we try to keep things, we can’t help but get overly technical. We’re always searching for better, faster, more advanced ways to tackle the simple jobs we do. We like to think that advanced always means better. Sometimes, when it comes to SEO, we’re just getting caught up in the muck and hype – it makes us lose focus. Even an SEO Expert like Bill Gates (take a moment to wipe the spit from your screen, I know you just choked and sprayed coffee. Good joke, eh?) gets caught up in a mad diary of SEO tips and tactics and strategies and *HUFF* yup. Too much. You have to remember to keep a level head.
SEO is like a game of Ker Plunk (I’m showing my age again). Each little change you make to a site and its profile brings you one step closer to all the marbles falling down creating a cascade of traffic. Yes I know in Ker Plunk having the marbles fall is bad, but in my analogy it’s a good thing. Work with me, here. The point being, each change is gradual and may be slow to move. Ultimately, the result is a big dynamic change that will eventually boost your site traffic.
When you played Ker Plunk, you didn’t just yank the stick out. You planned your move carefully, considered all your options, and carefully removed the stick. You can’t speed and power through search engine optimization. You can’t motor through a list of techniques and pray that some of them stick. You have to separate the massive list of “gotta do” down into fundamental basics to kick things off. Doing this will make the entire project easier to negotiate
Stay Focused – Plan your work on a page-by-page basis. It is easy to get lost in the overwhelming big picture when you have over a dozen pages to deal with across ten different clients. Concentrate page by page. Each page is important to the optimization of that site, because you never know how well each page will rank and how many visitors will land there. Treat the SEO on every page as important as the main page of the site, and move through one at a time.
Stay Competitive – Review the competition that is ranking high in the search engines and study their keyword use. Do your own research with the Google keyword research tool and find the best mix of highly competitive keywords per your industry or market. Don’t just assume that those 1st rank competitors have the market cornered on those keywords. It may take you time to work onto the first page of Google, but just remember that the entire time you’re doing it you’re plowing through other, less optimized competing sites and you are leaving them in the dust. Keep in mind as well that each page of your site should focus on the most powerful keywords individually. You are ultimately giving your site a better chance of ranking for that specific term by focusing on content throughout your pages.
Map your strategy – Like any good battle tactician, you need to know the battlefield. A plan of attack will always work better than running headlong into combat screaming at the top of your lungs. Before enacting any SEO strategy, it’s important to plot your site to make sure it is search engine friendly. Once you know your site will not punch a search engine in the face for stepping in its yard, you can start constructing appropriate anchored links and working out the internal link structure of your site. This way you’ll be able to figure out just how many internal links your website can tolerate before it starts to look like a used up sheet of fly paper.
Love your own pages – While external links is a wonderful thing for your traffic, you cannot miss out or forget to take care of your own pages. By creating internal links with appropriate anchor text, you are generating search engine love potion number 9 for your site. You will help boost the rank of individual pages within your own site. Just don’t overdo it, it’s really easy to start smelling like overcooked spam.
Fresh content smells like warm biscuits – And we all know how Google loves warm biscuits. Well, not really but it does love fresh content. Having great content on your site that is laden with keywords is fantastic. With proper execution, you will be swarmed by search engine spiders (creepy image) and you will rank very well… for a little while. Plan ahead – know well ahead of time what you’re going to do to keep the content on your site fresh and inviting both to search engines and visitors. This is one of those times when it pays to hire a ghostwriter/copywriter/seo consultant/whirling dervish.
Let your tail grow – Long tail search is just as important as your primary keywords. Consider all the variations on your most popular search terms, including common misspellings. Look for plurals, synonyms, and other variations. Thankfully, the Google keyword research tool can do all of this for you for free.
Stick with your plan and be patient. Don’t get ahead of yourself at all. Give your plan enough time to start presenting you with results. Do not make additional moves until your basic plan is in place. I’ve spoken before on how easy it is to get ahead of yourself and have one strategy actually cause another strategy to falter. You can actually impede yourself by doing too much too fast. Google will spot it, and so will other major search engines. No one likes Blitzkrieg tactics. Slow down, hike up your rookie pants and remember that when it comes to SEO it’s not about ferocity or speed.
It’s about quality.
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Joerg Weishaupt is a 48 year old entrepreneur, software architect, search engine optimization and social media expert. Joerg has been building a lot of profitable Internet businesses since he put his first website online in 1995. He is also one of the founders and partners of Social Media Science LLC, where he launched a content syndication network called SYNND.
Joerg resides in a small, quiet community about 100 miles outside of Munich, Germany. If you ever seek to find him, look for where the cows gather.
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