We all want our sites to rank better in Google. No matter how we’ll you’re ranking now, a little bit more would be a good thing, right? You can do that with a bit of SEO (“Search Engine Optimization”), but much of that process is misunderstood.
Nick Stamoulis recently wrote a great article for Search Engine Journal titled “4 Things New Site Owners Need to Understand About SEO” which is worth reading and diving into a bit.
His points:
1. SEO is Long Term
We can do some great things to help improve your SEO, but it’s not going to happen overnight. If your site is brand new, it’ll take even longer (Google doesn’t really trust new sites for a while). If done properly, you should see slow, steady growth that eventually will turn into solid numbers.
A good example is right here on the GreenMellen site. As we began to blog more frequently and produce more quality content, our traffic has risen nicely. Here is a month-by-month chart of our visitors in 2012:
It’s been solid growth, but it has a long way to go. We’ll continue to write solid content and hopefully 2013 will continue to show that upward trend.
2. Always Put Your Visitors Before the Search Engines
You’ve seen sites like this before: “We sell red widgets, because red widgets are great, so if you’re looking for red widgets you should purchase your red widgets from the best red widget company around“. It’s ugly, and really not very effective anymore anyhow. Always think of your visitors before you worry about keywords and search bots. Even if you find some great way to trick Google into sending more visitors to your site, they’ll be immediately turned off by content like the example above.
Taking it further, if users find your content to be truly valuable, they’ll be more likely to link to it and share it on social sites — which is much more beneficial for the long term SEO of your site.
3. There is No Secret to SEO Success
I get emails every week that tell me “your site isn’t ranking for the keywords you need” and that XYZ SEO Company can save the day. They can’t.
In addition, there are many products online that offer things like “10,000 backlinks for $49.99″. There are two big problems with offers like that:
- 99% of those links are generated as spam comments in blogs and forums, which are quickly removed by the site owners.
- The remaining links look very suspicious to Google and will likely hurt your rankings more than they’ll help.
We’re not going to get you to the top of Google in a week, and no one else will either. Even some of our clients who saw tremendous growth over the course of a year still saw it happen a little bit at a time.
If you discover any kind of shortcut to SEO success, you can rest assured that spammers have milked it to death and Google is well aware of the technique. Best case they’ll simply ignore your efforts; worst case, you could find your site removed from the search results completely.
4. Link Building is Forever
While the example of “10,000 backlinks for $49.99″ is certainly a bad thing to do, building backlinks (getting other sites to link over to yours) is still very important in the eyes of Google. They main key here is to take it slow and steady. Don’t try to build 500 links at once and then let it ride; continually be looking for places to get links quality as you meet new people.
Finding places from which to get quality inbound links can be difficult, but here are a few places to start:
- Organizations like local Business Associations or the Chamber of Commerce. Most of these places allow you to create a member profile on their site, which can include a link back to your site. Voila!
- Your clients. An example might be if the client writes a blog entry about the great service you provided them (new website, new landscaping, new office location), encourage them to link over to your site if they didn’t do it already.
- Your suppliers. Many companies like to list the companies they work with on their website. Make sure that if they mention you they include a link over to your site.
If you write quality blog content, you should ideally pick up a lot of links organically as well. A good example is Nick’s blog that we’re referencing in this post — we’ve included a link to it at the top and bottom of our post.
SEO is a complicated concept when you dig in deep, but if you stick to the basics you’ll do amazingly well. Be sure to check out Nick’s full post to read more about each of these concepts.
What are other aspects of SEO that new site owners tend to miss?
Better yet, where are more places to keep your eyes open for building inbound links?
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey is GreenMellen's token “tech guy” and his skills are greatly valued on the GreenMellen team. With over 9 years of WordPress experience and a passion for helping others, you will often find Mickey leading a North Atlanta-based MeetUp, All Things WordPress. He is also highly involved in social media and knows the ins and outs of everything from Facebook to Google+. There’s no denying Mickey’s brain is a good one to pick!
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Like so much else, here is another example of good things taking time. The key takeaway for me is the importance of consistent, solid, valuable content. No amount of gaming the system will replace quality content. Good, informative post, Mickey.
Exactly. We’ve had a few clients go against our advice and try to game the system and it never works out well. Solid content wins every time.
This post really reinforces everything that I am reading on blogs, websites and social media in general. It is all about the relationship with your customer and providing good, meaningful content. No gimmicks or quick fixes – just like dieting! It is all about providing strong content and placing yourself so that your customer can find you when they need you. Thanks Mickey for the solid information.
I’m working on link building now thanks to your advisement. Very informative. I’ll be sharing this with other photographer friends.
Mickey, Love that you are always pointing people towards authentic marketing. As always no shortcuts if you want to build long-term success!
i’m not really internet savvy so am still a bit confused. is it about the links that you are putting into your posts that are driving the SEU or about what is on your site in general? i think i have to read this a few more times. thanks for posting!
Courtney — Links in your posts can help, but it’s more important to have links on other sites point to you. When another site links to yours, it’s a way of vouching for the site in the eyes of Google. The more sites that link to you, the more reputable Google assumes you are, and the better you’ll rank!
Hi Mickey, happy birthday! Very good basic intro. Yes, start with great content. Also, be sure to do some of the other basics, like pretty URLs, and adding a sitemap. Btw, the age of your domain name (the older the better) and for how many years you renewed it can also add a bit of Google juice.
Domain name age is certainly a good one, though part of that seems to be “link age” — older links are more valuable to Google. Both certainly help.
I’ve seen conflicting evidence about the renewal length actually making a difference, but everyone agrees that it can’t hurt. You typically want to renew for a long time anyhow so that you don’t have to worry about it, and if you might get a slight SEO boost as well then that’s even better!
Thanks Mickey and happy birthday one day late. I still don’t understand how to set this stuff up. Do you have a blog that gives tips.
Jane — That’s the beauty of these tips; there’s not thing to “set up”. Just post good content on your blog and don’t worry about the rest.
The only odd piece is the link building, but that mostly comes from relationships. A good example for you is if you’re holding a seminar for a particular facility — if they list you in their events calendar or something, see if they can include a link to your site along with their event listing. Google will see that they linked over to you and you’ll get a small boost from it.
Mickey,
I am wondering about linking to your own website or own website’s posts on other blogs in comment threads. For instance, I commented on a blog for Discover Magazine under a post about Down syndrome and I STILL get referrals from that comment and subsequent link back to my post/website. What is the rule or comment etiquette regarding that?
Tim
Tim — Good question! A couple of points:
1 — Those are typically worthless to Google, as they usually have the “nofollow” tag on them. However, as you’ve seen, they can still drive a bit of traffic to your site.
2 — It’s all about your perceived intent. If you look like a spammer pushing his link, it’s bad. If you look like someone offering a valuable resource to extend the conversation, it’s good. Linking to your own stuff, even if it’s valuable and related, will often look bad because people will assume the worst.
Ultimately, this is why it can be good to leave frequent comments on a site; people will get to know you (particularly the author) and you’re able to drop more of those links because they know your intentions are solid.