5 Simple Search Engine Optimization Strategies to Implement Now!

A few people have asked me about some simple ways to make their sites more “search friendly”, so I compiled a few easy tips. Now, keep in mind one very important thing about Search Engine Optimization. A lot of people think SEO is just about changing a few things on your site to elevate its visibility in the search engines. The reality is that it’s a little more complicated than simply analyzing your keyword density and making sure you have search friendly URLs.

At the end of the day, the most effective SEO is not a “tactic”. Rather, it is about creating content rich sites that is user/client-centric. Bar none, the absolute best way to boost your rankings is to develop a site that provides valuable, original, relevant content that will keep people coming back to your site. If you do this, not only will you enhance your credibility but other sites will link to you simply because you are a valuable resource. This is known as building organic links, and it trumps any other sort of tip or trick in the book.

That being said, it’s still important to make sure your site adheres to best practice SEO/SEM practices to help the search engines analyze your site correctly.

So here they are…

1) This is the easiest tip and best of all, it only take you 60 seconds!

Make sure your domain name is registered for more than a year, preferably two years or more. Many people register their domains on a yearly auto-renewal basis. This is a big no-no!

The reason being is that Google and other search engines like to see a commitment to the domain. Most spam sites and fly-by-night operations have short term registrations, so you want to make sure they know you’re site is going to be around for awhile and that you’re on the “right side of the tracks”.

2) Some people—present company included—just love to acquire unique domain names and then park them with the intention of creating a network of sites. Well, first off, let me say that developing a network of sites is generally not the best strategy if it dilutes your resources. You’re generally better off devoting your resources to developing your primary site; otherwise you could be in a situation where your sites are competing for SERP (search engine results page) rank.

Instead, you’d be better off devoting your resources to building out a very deep, diverse, customer-centric content rich site. You’re more likely to get noticed, and enhance your visibility. Just make sure the content is complimentary. For example, on how NOT to do it, I knew someone who devoted half their site to real estate and half to cooking and recipes. This isn’t a good idea, as it just confuses the engines as to what your site is about.

However, if you do have multiple domains, there’s no reason to completely neglect them and not do anything with them. Don’t allocate a ton of resources to developing them at the expense of maintaining and developing your primary site, but consider setting the domain up as a splash screen, informational page or even a ‘guide’ like a “Squidoo Lens” (www.squidoo.com). A “Squidoo Lens” is a one-page guide to any topic you can think of. To develop a “lens” or a site like this could be done in a couple of hours, and you would at least have a site or page that is indexed by Google. Once you’re ready to go live with it, at least you have a site with some history.

I’ve personally set up a few pages that were little more than a simple landing page. But the domains were targeted, and while not optimized for major keywords, the sites come up on smaller volume searches. This is what’s called a “long-tail” SEO strategy. Some of these pages actually generate 1 or 2 leads a month. It’s not a lot, but they took me no longer than 20 or so minutes to set up.

Likewise, even setting up a simple page on certain domain that is comprised solely of your name, company and basic professional information is not a bad idea. I’ve come across a couple of one page sites in my area that done pretty well. For example, “Santa Barbara Financial Advisor” and “Santa Barbara Financial Planner” both belong to the same person and they are one page sites. The domains are www.santabarbarafinancialadvisor.com and www.santabarbarafinancialplanner.com respectively. Neither term is highly searched according to Google’s Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), but if someone uses such specificity in their search, and you’re ranked #1, you could still generate some leads.

3) Stay away from crappy directory sites that charge for a listing or don’t charge but have a 0 page rank. These sites don’t do much for your rankings, and in some cases you can be penalized, especially if you acquire a bunch of links in a short period of time. Likewise, never hire an SEO service that promises hundreds of links. This is a “black hat” technique that Google frowns on and it can get you sandboxed.

Instead focus, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, on growing your links organically by providing quality content on your site that other webmasters/bloggers will want to link to.

You want to avoid creating an “online brochure” about how great you are, and instead provide valuable, relevant content. Google likes this and so will your clients!

As an example, valuable, relevant content could include a first time homebuyer’s guide or information on staging a home for quick sale. Just make sure you primarily use unique content. Google also doesn’t like redundant content that appears on lots of sites. They won’t penalize you, but original content does much better.

4) If you don’t have time to create a lot of original content, you can now use many social bookmarking sites that add the entry to your blog. While technically you’re linking to external content, you have the opportunity to write a short synopsis of the material that will be original. This keeps your content fresh and Google does actually look at your outbound links for relevancy and can reward you for good, targeted references. They don’t like link pages or link farms, but links accompanied with your commentary is good!

5) Try to get links from local non-profits and community associations. They may not have a very high Page Rank, but they will be compared to other similar sites in the area, and if they are deemed trustworthy and relevant, they can give you a boost for your local rankings.

If you have any other questions, feel free to post a comment, message me, email me (jeremy.kossen at gmail.com), or even call my office (805) 617-0506. I love giving free advice!