The hot topic and major concern among bloggers these days is search engine optimization and if it’s worth doing it or not.
The latest Penguin update from Google has made a significant impact on websites worldwide and dropped a shadow of doubt on all SEO efforts made by bloggers to reach higher rankings for the desired keywords.
Time will show SEO is not dead, even though Search Engines try to ensure us it is futile to invest in such services anymore.
The bloggers and webmasters have to understand, that if you don’t SEO, you don’t get noticed.
So how to proceed after this big hit? What is the SEO that we cannot go wrong with? Simple SEO methods and activities, pure white hat optimization and natural link building will never harm your site or blog.
Keep it steady, keep it cool.
SEO Basics You Cannot Go Wrong With!
Onsite/Offsite SEO -
As many of you know already, there’s the onsite SEO and offsite SEO. Okay, we all know about those but not many understand it correctly.
One is SEO work on the site, the other is SEO carried out on other sites, but closely related to the onsite seo.
Once the onsite work is done, link building can be started, by using the correct anchor text for the link created for the appropriate pages. I believe this rule will still be a rule.
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Keywords -
The building block of all good sites, but don’t angst over this, or complicate the matter. Just think this; if someone is searching for my site, my products, or my services, what words (keywords), or phrases (key phrases) would they use.
Spend some time thinking about the words and check them out to see if people actually use them. Then pick a list of the best words (your primary list) and then a list of runner-ups (the secondary list).
Select about five in each list; Check them out to see if people actually use them and bingo, you have your keywords.
Metadata -
The keywords are the Lego blocks which build you the perfect website and to help the search engines find your website, their spiders (have no fear,) these are digital crawling devices which read ‘signposts’ called Tags and the text on the page.
The signposts, or Tags, are full of metadata, including the keywords, which help the spiders categorise and rank your site. So, guide the spider properly and sensibly.
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Navigation -
No, this is not about boats, or sailors, but concerns how a site is built and how easy it is for the user to navigate their way around.
A site which is hard to move around, or has broken links, or cannot be easily understood, is a disaster for both the user and the search engine spider. And if this happens, sort it out; otherwise you’ll never get ranked properly.
Content -
In the land of SEO, the king is content. Content rules the waves and the bigger the site is of relevant and quality content, the better.
Note the words relevant and quality. That should be any webmaster’s mantra and enough said here. Apart from, use your keywords in your content but use them sparingly, or you’ll be done for spamming and that’s not good.
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Quality -
Yes, we all know that you can buy content pretty cheaply. In fact, many suppliers of content, and webmasters themselves, think that there is no better joke than cutting and pasting other people’s content onto their own site.
It’s cheap and used to work. Nowadays however, the spider will get very angry and you’ll fall through the rankings faster than a drunk on a Friday evening.
Relevant -
Your second main word of the day, relevant. Alongside quality, it’s the word you need to keep in the forefront of your mind.
Everything on your site has to be relevant to the theme of your site. If it’s about fishing tackle, don’t start writing articles about your favourite cars. It confuses the users and it confuses the spider, and they don’t like that.
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Blogs -
Learn to love blogs.
They are the SEO’s main source of power and allow a site to be built out with quality and relevant content (those words again) which the search engine spiders like.
Link Building -
The World Wide Web is a giant network so it figures that the more connected you are (as in life), the more popular you are and the more worthy in the eyes of the search engines. And popularity on the web is denoted by links.
The more links, the more popular, until naughty uber-SEO experts dreamt up ways of creating thousands of links, from irrelevant sites, which really annoyed the search engines. So use this offsite SEO tactic with care – all roads don’t lead to Rome.
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Black Hat -
In the SEO world, being called a Black Hat is not an appreciation of your favourite head gear. It means you have wandered over to the dark side of the art and if you want to be legit, you have to resist.
Listen to Yoda, he knows.
Got any more tips about Google Penguin Update? Please share them in the comments.