This is a guest post from A.J. Wilcox. A.J. has been in love with Internet marketing for 3 years. He is a local Internet marketing expert who currently resides at Orangesoda.com where he is the team lead over 400+ SEO campaigns.
Once you start a website or a blog, you may have wondered, “I built it, so why haven’t they come?” The truth is that Kevin Costner’s epiphany no longer holds true for the Internet. There are now so many millions of websites out there, that you need to get word out that you have something unique to offer (and please, have something unique to offer!).
So, How Do I Get Traffic?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making the pages of your site relevant for chosen keywords. There are basically two sides to the SEO equation – keywords in your content & links pointing to your site.
Since Google owns more than 2/3 of the searches in the U.S., it’s safe to assume that if you get to the top of a Google search that lots of people search for, you will have traffic. So how do you get there?
Start with Your Site
You can’t directly control the links pointing to your site – you can influence them, but if you could control them, it would be a conflict of interest. You can, however, control your own site! The search engines know that you can change any aspect of your site you feel like, given that you aren’t limited by your site’s technology. Take advantage of that control.
Choose one keyword per webpage that you believe someone would search for. Add that keyword as often as you can on your page without going overboard and making it look ugly to one of your readers. You can add it in the:
- Page title (This one’s important)
- Headers
- Text content
- Image descriptions
- The name of the page itself
Once you’ve picked a keyword (a really relevant one) for each page, and added them into these page elements, you will be super pleased with the results in just the first month. Still impatient? One month is actually really good for SEO – it does take time, so plan on it.
Finding Balance
You should find the delicate balance between writing for users and writing for search engines. For instance, if your site was a skydiving business in Virginia, and you chose the keyword “Virginia skydiving,” you might create headings similar to the following:
- For the search engines: Virginia Skydiving – The Best in Virginia Skydiving
- For your user: Looking to go skydiving in Virginia? You’ve come to the right place!
The first one uses the keyword twice, and the second one just uses a weak variation of the keyword. A happy medium might be something like:
- Virginia Skydiving – Have the time of your life skydiving in Virginia!
You can see how strong SEO can cater both to search engines AND your users.
You Are Futureproof!
Links are the currency of the internet, and that currency is inflated. The content of your site is finite. Do that right, and it will be a boon for your site visibility for years to come. If you target businesses in a specific geographic location, get in touch with the local internet marketing experts – OrangeSoda.com for the most optimized on and offsite work for search engines.
A blog carnival is a collection of links to blog posts, usually on a similar theme or topic. Participating in blog carnivals can:
The blog post you write today may be online for years to come. Although with blogs the emphasis is on the new, even the posts you wrote last month, last year or last decade can still draw search engine traffic and visitors to your site. The secret is to fill your blog with evergreen content.
Want to get better search engine rankings for your web site? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your site to make it more accessible and attractive to the search engines, while also making sure it is useful to human visitors.