The amount of SEO knowledge required by site owners and webmasters these days can be intimidating. The number of pages indexed by search engines is near 4 times the number just a few years ago. For your business to be a competitive force in today’s market, how much SEO is enough? How much SEO is needed for startups hoping to attract more traffic? This article will answer these questions and more.
Shifting goals
The new question in the SEO conversation has become how do we get targeted traffic and convert it into customers? To attain this, we need to undergo is a shift in goal-focus. Instead of saying your aim is to rank in the top-5 of Google’s and Yahoo’s search results for a particular keyword, we should look at people- focused initiatives. These goals read more like this: “I want to bring more people to my website who search online for the products we sell.”
SEO that focuses on those most highly desired keyword rankings is on the out. Instead, we are broadening our horizons and looking at the larger picture. Too many times, our focus is narrow and we miss the opportunity for site improvements that would advance us in the eye of the consumer and the search engines. Placing “special phrases” on each and every page can limit you in the end if you don’t open your eyes to the thousands of other terms being typed into search engines daily.
Organic content
Raise your hand if you’ve heard the phrase good content. It seems as if everyone, at least every SEO-er is throwing that phrase around, but no one seems to know what it means. If you’ve yet to figure out that the good content most of these guys are talking about is not what you want, here are a few pointers:
- Steer clear of those who will “rent” you content
- Avoid content that’s really madlib- like spam pages on which you substitute keyword phrases from page to page
- The history of your product is not necessarily good content
- Quality content is not the stuff you write for the search engines
Rather, good content is unique. Your content should be yours alone- those creative singular ideas that have popped in your brain. Good content is creative, plain and simple. Creativity leads rather than follows. It’s your voice, not a version of your competitor’s voice. Good content makes your site better for your site visitors as well as search engines.
Quality takes time
If you’re still disgruntled that your page isn’t where you want it in the rankings, understand that this approach to SEO isn’t going to happen in a snap, a jiffy, or in the flick of a switch. This approach takes time, but it lasts. The traffic you will get is real. The visitors are true people seeking out your product. In the end, that’s what you want, right?
