Today we want to talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We’ve been developing websites for a long time and as it’s evolved over time we’ve had to transition into different areas. Around seven years ago we decided we couldn’t just build websites we had to do some SEO. Back then when you were doing SEO you could just follow the guidelines Google gave you such as changing a few title tags or changing your metadata (back in code that allows you to customize your search results). You can’t do those simple techniques anymore. The things you have to do to your site are much more in depth. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do the standard things for SEO but it’s become more difficult for you to control it.
Black Hat SEO
At one point people would stuff their websites full of words, hiding them and things like that. People were tricking the search engines into showing their website, but Google has advanced their algorithm since that time. There are still some out there who are writing their own algorithms to trick Google’s algorithms but once they catch you you’re done. It’s not worth the risk.
SEO
Everyone wants SEO and there are riches in ranking for a top key word. The problem is you have no control over that. If you build your business on that it can be taken away at any time. But if you build your business on other tactics and techniques like paid advertising, social media marketing and email marketing in addition to SEO you will find yourself in a much better place when Google decides to make another change.
Write for People
Don’t write for search engines, write for your visitors. If you stuff a blog post with keywords and you get it up to the top of search and someone goes to it what kind of value is that going to bring them? If you write for your visitors you can’t go wrong. As long as you do that they will be happy with what you do.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is where you can really leverage SEO. You have a blog, you have videos, you’re putting up content and you want to try to write a little bit more to incorporate more SEO. That’s fine but we never advocate writing just SEO for search engines, that’s a recipe for disaster. You can get quicker results by spending a little money creating funnels such as sales funnels or lead generation funnels which we talked about in a previous podcast. You can get faster, more predictable and long term results if you can learn how to leverage cold traffic.
If you have an e-commerce site and you want to do well SEO is definitely a marathon, but don’t try to get there right away. Just do the right thing. Create valuable content for your visitors. Throw some words in there but don’t go crazy.
The moral of the story/podcast is don’t waste too much time on SEO. Do the basic things, make sure your keywords are in your description, and keep your URL’s short and sweet. You can do much more to get results quicker than just trying to get yourself ranking in the search engines.