Google is “Yellow Pages on Steroids”. Many companies that used to be small are now 10 times bigger thanks to Google. Some of them hired SEO companies and others ranked their own websites. Some people even ranked first by accident. They built a website a long time ago, posted great information, and time did the rest of the work.
Today I will share 5 SEO secrets that we use with our clients around the world. These secrets will not rank you first on their own; there’s a lot more you need to do, but these tips will definitely make a world of difference.
Forget meta keywords and submitting your site to Google
2002 is over; the rules have changed. Meta keywords won’t help you at all and you don’t need to submit your website to Google; they will find it.
Avoid over optimization
If your idea of SEO is to write a page and put your keyword on it 50 times, forget it. If all the links pointing to your site have the same anchor text, that will affect you as well. Make your content and backlinks look natural. Write for your visitors, not for search engines. A great website with prominent information will get many more links than an over-optimized site.
Target multiple keywords on one page
Pick a primary keyword and then think of 5-10 keyword modifiers. For example, if your primary keyword is “cowhide rugs,” add words before and after to go after the secondary keywords as well. Some of these keywords could be “buy leather rugs”, “leather rug store”, “black leather rugs”, etc. Note that all of these keywords have the main keyword in them.
Get links from social networking sites
The advantage of social networking sites is that most of them have a lot of authority and trust. Links from these sites will be worth a lot. On the downside, anyone can get links from these social networking sites, but they can still help you a lot.
Some of these sites are Squidoo, HubPages, NewsVine, BizHeat, KillerStartups, and Twitter (links in the bio section are not “nofollow”). SEOmoz has, in my opinion, the best list of social networking sites that you can easily get links from. You can find it here: http://www.seomoz.org/social-directory
Don’t overlook the holy grail of link sources
I can’t believe how many people skip this step. The best place to start looking for links is with people you know and have relationships with. We all have friends and family with blogs or websites. I am sure that your company has suppliers; ask these people to link you as their client. Ask your customers to link to you. Ask the organizations to which you belong. How about the chamber of commerce in your city? What about local universities, libraries, and community colleges?
Here’s something to keep in mind: people love to link to great content. They don’t link to commercial sites as much. So create great content and become THE place people want to go to find information about the type of product you sell. If your information is useful, many people in your industry will love to include you on their list of helpful resources.