Google is “Yellow Pages on Steroids”. Several businesses that used to be tiny are now 10 times bigger because of Google. Some of them hired SEO firms and others ranked their own websites. Some people even ranked first by accident. They created a website a long time ago, published some great information and time did the rest of the work.
Today I will share 5 SEO secrets that we use with our clients from all over the world. These secrets won’t rank you first by themselves; there is a lot more that you need to do, but these tips will definitely make a huge difference.
Forget About Meta Keywords and Submitting Your Site to Google
2002 is long gone; rules have changed. Meta keywords won’t help you at all and you don’t need to submit your website to Google; they will find it.
Avoid Over-Optimization
If your idea of SEO is writing a page and putting your keyword in it 50 times, forget it. If all the links pointing to your site have the same anchor text, that will affect you too. Make your content and backlinks look natural. Write for your visitors, not the search engines. A great website with outstanding information will get a lot more links than an over-optimized site.
Target Several Keywords on One Page
Choose a main keyword and then think of 5-10 keyword modifiers. For example, if your main keyword is “cowhide rugs”, add words before and after to go after secondary keywords as well. Some of these keywords could be “buy cowhide rugs”, “cowhide rugs store”, “black cowhide rugs”, etc. Notice that all these keywords have the main keyword in them.
Get Links from Social Media Sites
The advantage of social media sites is that most of them have a lot of authority and trust. Links from these sites will be worth a lot. On the downside, anybody can get links from these social media sites, but they can still help you a lot.
Some of these sites are Squidoo, HubPages, NewsVine, BizHeat, KillerStartups and Twitter (links in the bio section aren’t “nofollow”). SEOmoz has, in my opinion, the best list of social media sites you can easily get links from. You can find it here: http://www.seomoz.org/social-directory
Don’t Overlook the Holy Grail of Link Sources
I can’t believe how many people skip this step. The best place to start looking for links is people that you know and you have relationships with. We all have friends and relatives with blogs or websites. I am sure that your company has vendors; ask these people to link to you as their client. Ask your clients to link to you. Ask the organizations you belong to. How about the chamber of commerce in your city? How about local universities, libraries and community colleges?
Here’s something to keep in mind: people love linking to great content. They don’t link to commercial sites as much. So create great content and become THE place people want to go to find information about the kind of product you sell. If your information is useful, many people in your industry will love to list you on their lists of useful resources.
