There are two main schools of thought on the subject of search engine optimization. Some feel that you have to be conjuring up as much content as humanly possible with the keywords in all the right places, and that can be the end of it. Others feel that posting less frequently and simply pouring a lot of effort into a post that will hopefully connect with readers is the way to go. Add a few tags at the end, and you’re done. The reality is somewhere in between these two schools of thought, and if you really want to stand a chance of improving SEO, then you have to find that right spot.
Step One: Commit to daily posts
Your competitors are already doing it, and they’re also trying to gauge topics that their audience will want to read about. You can learn a lot from your competitors, but make sure that you are LEARNING from them and not STEALING from them. Bring your own unique vision. Write in a clear and legible manner using short sentences. And make sure that you can keep the items coming every day of the week.
Step Two: Tag appropriately
To make life easier on the search engines, you will certainly want to do the best you can with appropriate tags of your material. What is the post about? What keywords would a user have to search for your post to score well? Whatever the answers are to those questions are what your tags should be. Try to include 5 to 10 for every post.
Step Three: Keep it coming
While search engine optimization should have a focus on quality – after all, you want your audience and your potential audience to believe that you’ve got something compelling to say – you can’t hold their attention if you’re not using frequency of posts to your advantage. Depending on the niche market you’re trying to fill, and you should be trying to fill one, you are going to have to give them a reason to come back for more.
Step Four: Use social media
Social media is now as much a part of the SEO process as writing articles and tagging correctly. When using social media sites like Twitter, you can actually find your target audience through keyword searches. Including keywords in your tweets is also a good way of driving people to your site. Just make sure that once they’re there, you’ve got material that is worth their reading time.
When you get ready to launch your SEO campaign, make sure that you have covered the bases above. You can make SEO work very powerfully to your advantage, but first you have to put forth the effort and commit to your own success.
Vadim Kotin is the founder of Vancouver based Digital Marketing Agency VN Web Group
