Obviously, if I knew the secret to SEO, I would be the only Katie Davis in a Google search of my name! Everyone is always trying to scramble their way to the top of that valuable list. There are a bazillion articles on the internet about how to do this, and here I am definitely no expert. But I do know a couple of things.
Back Links
The more back links you have – that is, links that lead back to your site – the better. And if the name of your blog or site is the thing they link to, even better. I went into this a bit in my post on Day 8: Your Website and What’s Wrong with it.
Just recently Google changed the way it works, and so article farms (also known as content farms) like About.com took a hit in rankings. From my research, I learned that it’s better to have fewer links in more places than lots of links in one place.
Reciprocal Links
That is just what it sounds like. On your site you include a link to a site, and they link back to you. I was recently approached by someone who, in a roundabout way, asked me to link her. I did and then asked her to link my site, and she replied that she doesn’t do that. She has no links to other people on her blog.
I talked about this to Jay Gissen, a digital marketing consultant, and he told me that’s it’s worse than being selfish, it’s being dumb. “Does she not realize that people actually know there are more websites than just hers? Visitors will surf away from her site even if she refuses to put links on it, but if she used reciprocal links her own search ranking would rise. And if her content is great, people won’t want to leave so fast anyway!”
Again, I believe in reciprocity, so if you ask someone to link your site, I personally believe you’d better be prepared to link theirs. Therefore, make sure before you link that the content is appropriate and relevant to what you blog about, or what your brand represents.
I read this terrific article by Eric Siu recently on creative ways to boost SEO. One thing the author recommended was making donations as a great way to build links and do good at the same time. The suggestion alone makes me think his article was well titled!
Commenting
Make constructive and informative comments on blogs. Moderated comments will kick nasty or unhelpful comments anyway, and do you really want to spend your time looking for or reading blogs you’re not interested in anyway? Move the conversation forward, and you will start to connect with people.
Get a YouTube Boost
I almost forgot about this! Then I came across this article by Mitchell Harper. He is co-founder of BigCommerce, and has written and published over 300 articles relating to software development, marketing, business, social media, and entrepreneurship. His original article is here.
I love what he wrote. I started my YouTube channel and happily, already do a lot of what Mitchell recommends! For example, I started my video FAQs, so I am not making people “watch commercials,” but I do embed my URL in the videos so if they want to know more about what I do, they can find me. He even talks about how to record your videos. And most important, he recommends keeping your videos to under two minutes.
To optimize for Video Search Engine Optimization (and Google loves videos!) Mitchell delineates the steps to tagging, which has always confounded me. I also learned about video replies – am I the only one who never thought about that? It’s when you start to write a comment about the video you’re watching (say, something with a million bazillion views) and, instead, click on the link to the right that says “create a video response.” Theoretically, your video then gets seen by the million bazillion people watching that other video. I’ve done it with a few of my videos on my channel and will report back if I notice whether it works.
It’s a brilliant article, and if you want to create better SEO for your site, definitely go and read it!