Now hold on… Before you think I’ve lost my mind, notice the title doesn’t say “Don’t do SEO” or “SEO Doesn’t Matter.” In fact, spending quality time on SEO is anything but a waste of time. It’s no secret that search engines are the primary source people use to find your site, and it’s also true that if you’re not ranking pretty high in the search results for your relevant keywords, you’re not going to get much of that traffic. So SEO is unquestionably vital to your site’s success. But which areas of your site’s pages should you be focusing on to improve your SEO? If you focus equally on everything you can, you’re going to be wasting your time, because the truth is, some areas just don’t matter as much as others. While people have different views about which areas are most important, most agree that there are 5 critical areas you must nail to really have a positive effect on your SEO, so here they are:
1. Content – Well, duh, right? As is often said, content is king. That’s not only true for keeping people coming back to your site – it’s also true for SEO purposes. Search engines love fresh new (relevant) content. There are a lot of bloggers who post infrequently and sporadically, and they’re just not doing themselves any favors from an SEO standpoint. Relevance is another important issue when planning your content. There are blogs out there that are mind-blowingly broad in their content topics, and this makes them less attractive to the search engines. If you have posts about software, nutrition, politics, celebrity gossip, and how to do origami all on the same page, chances are you won’t rank high for any of those topics. The exception might be a news site that already has substantial traffic, but even those tend to categorize their content both for better readability and SEO performance.
2. Keyword Frequency – The trick for some people is to balance quality, well-written content with keyword frequency. This shouldn’t be hard though. If you’re writing about a topic and you’re going to cover it well, you’ll naturally use your keywords in your writing. One thing you can do though is scan what you’ve written and change some wording to other keyword variations – as long as it doesn’t make your writing sound dumb. For instance, in this post, it would be fine to mix it up and spell out SEO as “search engine optimization” now and then, as long as it flows and doesn’t detract from the writing. But it shouldn’t be obvious that you’re optimizing. That’s annoying to read (even if it’s an SEO blog about SEO), and your readers – who want to learn about search engine optimization – will not tolerate it, nor will the search engines who you’re trying to search engine optimize your search engine keywords for in your article about search engine optimization. (SEO)
3. Title – Your title tag (or post title for a blog) is an important consideration for a couple of reasons. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, you want to give your readers and idea of what the page is about. In doing so, you’ll no doubt use your target keywords in your title – which is the other important aspect of title tags. This makes perfect sense. When people get a long list of search results, what do they do? They scan the titles to find the result most relevant to their search. So you’re helping yourself by helping your site’s visitors when you optimize your title tag with relevant keywords. Also, for search purposes, try to keep your title under 72 characters. That way the full title will show in search results.
4. Meta Description – Following your page’s title in the search results is the page description. There are varying opinions about whether using keywords in your description meta will improve SEO, but it’s still something you want to pay attention to. Why? Because even if it won’t help you get ranked higher, it will increase click-through rates once you are ranked. After scanning titles of search results for relevant content, searchers read descriptions, so even if you have the perfect title, the proper description will validate and cement their decision to click through to your page.
5. Links – Search engines believe (if a computerized algorithm can believe something) that the more connected you are, the more relevant you are. So both incoming and outgoing links matter when it comes to SEO. Outgoing links can be to other sites with related content or to relevant internal pages. This basically tells the search engine, “See – what I’m presenting must be relevant. Here are other sites and pages talking about the same thing.”
Obviously, like I said in the beginning, there are a lot of other areas that can affect SEO, including H1 tags, link alt tags, image alt tags, keyword meta tags, etc. But if you want to spend more of your time running your business, focusing on the above five areas will improve your SEO without wasting your time.
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I think its funny how fast people want to skip over the basics like quality content and the basic on page seo factors. Everybody wants to just jump to fancy tricks, but there is something to be said about consistent focus on the fundamentals.
Precisely. I think it has to do with the ‘SECRETS”, I think it’s human nature to get a high from finding out ‘exclusive’ information, and people associate that with success. When in reality they’d get more results focusing on the basics.
I couldn’t agree more, Chris. I read somewhere that basic seo makes up for 40% of ranking factors and that 90% of the people don’t do it right. Just crazy.
You can do very well by focusing on these areas. Really though, I’d personally rather cover all my bases, especially when doing marketing in competitive niches. If you skip over too many details you are giving your competition openings to outdo your efforts. As a result you may have to build more links than them or significantly beat them in other areas.
Awesome tips buddy! I’m a Seo analyst and fully agree with your points. Seo is not only the way to keep your site good position in search engine ranking. If you wanna more you have follow the basis of it. Niche content, keyword research and keyword rich content will help you lot to get advantage.
Thanks for the article. With so many tips and tricks out there for SEO, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, but these are really key factors to stay focused on.
Great point! SEO is important but there are other things that are of equal importance that we may tend to neglect if we solely concentrate on SEO.
I didn’t think of outgoing links would effect inner seo before. Good point.
Be consistent and start with the basics.. That’s my experience with SEO
Without these 5 elements in your website, you are indeed wasting time on SEO. I believe that having a great content and building enough links to the content can be a boost in the SEO aspect.
These are definitely things that you need to have. Throw in the backlinks and you basically got it down!
I agree with not being broad in your topics. This is also the reason why niche marketing is the best.
When you performing Seo you should keep the No follow and Do follow strategies in mind. Most of the search engines null cont a backlink that links come with no follow code. if you getting a link relevant to your site your link should be do follow.
Also looking as natural as possible is another key point. If you add overnight 100.000 back links that looks not very natural..
The links is always a major factor. You cannot sit on your laurels either. They have to be constant forever. Ughh.
Very comprehensive article Matthew. These basic steps were often misunderstood and taken for granted. I’ll keep your five basic steps in mind. Thanks!
Regards,
Alex Tagus
If anything in my opinion the most important SEO aspect is the SEO that is done outside of your website, meaning the links you get. As long as you have the great content, all you really need to do is continue to pour that great content, and if you can somehow manage to get incoming links all the time, then you are already winning the game in my opinion. Since to me… its all about great content + links.
Thanks Matthew for this useful post.
Yesterday my mentor gave me a copy of his new product on SEO. Although he emphasized its importance, he didn’t fail to place its importance within the context of the whole business operation. He gave valuable tips on doing SEO right so that you won’t be wasting your time on it… just like what you’re teaching.
Jose
I believe Links should be placed in #2 next to content. Because 80% of the time spent on SEO is on link acquisitions.
Good Advice , Thank you !
Yes links are definitely the biggest rankings factor. You can usually overcome other weaknesses on your site by building enough backlinks.
@Komodo Dragon: I agree that it is mostly links + content, but you should not ignore other factors. When Google looks at 200 factors when ranking websites, you should try to satisfy many of those criteria. That also helps you on the search engines which place more weight on onpage factors.
Hi guys,
When I first read the title of this blog. I grasp OMG!!! He has lost his mind. But you clarify quickly what you meant and I thank you for that. Thanks for sharing.
Kind regards,
Sam
X
Yes agree SEO not only way , but SEO is Key to get traffic but we have to follow properly on your given tips of SEO.
I did a few mini blogs for very narrow keywords and I found that they would rank naturally without any backlinks at all. It would take a few weeks for them to get there.
@Laptop Briefcases, sounds to me like you know alot about SEO, could you perhaps provide a link or something where I can read more about the other factors? Seems to me like I need to learn alot… lol
Title says it all. Right now I have my little system and it is similar to yours and I just crank it out on a daily basis. I would like to add persistence to your list, it seems a lot of bloggers give up but if they just stick to what they have learned on this page and don’t give up, then they will succeed.
So many people miss out on the value of outgoing links with their websites! I have preached it many times over on HotBlogTips, and most people are scared to link out fearing people will leave and not come back. That should take you back to #1: Content. If your content is good, they will return!
Nice solid information here, Matthew. It’s important to know that you are writing for your readers, however, always have SEO in the back of your mind. Google keyword tool is my friend ;-)
Another neat trick (which I have to admit I tend to slack off on) is using H2 tag subheadings in your article.
Thanks for sharing!
Content Content and Content is what Leslie Rohde says is the best SEO. I tend to believe him ;-)
I think that is a good enough list but just like David above says you need to add persistence. Without it you get nowhere. Lots of things can be outsourced but to get good backlinks you should give good content and other people will link to you. If you know your stuff then make sure others know it with your content
Working “quality time” SEO is paramount… I personally found out the importance of not only incoming links, but also of outcoming links, the more so if you link to authority websites…
Great points! I think these days a lot of entreprenuers are just conducting SEO activities without a fundamental plan. Small businesses can learn from these tips before they waste too much time.
Thanks for all of these tips on SEO – I have to agree with being connected and having both incoming and outgoing links on your site. Google wants to see you are real and providing value after all.
Thanks for the post
@Komodo Dragon . You can read basic SEO starter guide of Google, search in google same term and you will get PDF for same, hope it may be useful for yours.
Matthew- Great points about improving SEO with blogging, especially noting that frequently updating and not being too broad in your content is important. We all know how important link building is!
@Paley, Thank you I will give that a shot and go from there! :)
Nice article! By this time I have really learnt these 5 points by heart but still finds it difficult to succeed in the same.
For me SEO in a big way includes linking with other sides.
@ Payday. in starting it may difficult but once you start slowly you found its useful and easy.
I’m just an amateur in optimizing a website but i would agree with those who says that using keywords in description meta is good for SEO. I added just two words once there and one of my keywords i was optimizing for, went from 3rd result on second page (where it was for over a week) , to a 1st position on second page, very same day.
Like the way you managed to break a tough topic like SEO down into bite-sized pieces. One of the other things I’ve found to be really important with my efforts, is getting the main keyword in the domain name. It’s not always possible, especially if you want your website named after your business, but it can give you a massive boost in the rankings. I use .org domains instead of .com ones to – there’s some anecdotal evidence that Google prefers them.
Thanks for the post
M
You’re right SEO can suck the life out of you and waste your time! If you do it right from the beginnning and target a niche or keyword within a niche with the right amount competition a lot of the time onpage SEO is enough to rank well in Google for that keyword.
So you should focus first on finding a niche you can compete in then following some simple rules including the 5 above you will find yourself in Google utilizing organic traffic.
Keyword Frequency is really a myth. Many people try to focus in that. The key factor is to deliver good content, everything else will follow.
yeah we sometimes tend to spend more time on seo than actual product / services.
Great point!
I partially agree to your point as I’ve seen companies booming because of the search engine optimization. But yes that is again something which needs a lot of hard work and labor and due to this we stop concentrating on our products or services. What comes in mind first is marketing. Undoubtedly you had a wonderful blog here and would like to see more from you on this topic.
you are putting great points
Great writeup, good article for people to read about the basics.