What does it take to create a high-ranking site? To some people, it means spending either a lot of time or money. Either you hire an SEO professional, or you do your own SEO. However, unless you’re an SEO professional yourself, it’s unlikely that you’ll know the necessary steps you need to take to get your site to the first page of search results, let alone the first spot. Here is a 7-step guide for those who want to do their own SEO. Unlike most guides, this one’s timeless – it doesn’t rely on specific techniques. Rather, it depends on the mindset you need to take to make each step successful.
Know the SEO basics
First, you need to educate yourself as much as possible. Whether you go to seminars, read books, or subscribe to relevant RSS feeds, the first thing you need to arm yourself with is information. What is SEO? How does it work? How do you apply it? And, above all, how is it abused? There are several guides out there, but you need to look out for the most reputable ones. Find SEO masters that have a strong, loyal following and who have already reached the success you want to attain. Read the reviews of information products before you purchase them. Just get your hands on everything you can to learn the basics of SEO.
Now, it isn’t an exact science, so you’ll undoubtedly encounter sources saying two conflicting things. When you encounter these inconsistencies, just choose which one makes the most sense to you. Also, don’t be greedy. Just because you’ve absorbed every single SEO factoid that the web has to offer, it doesn’t mean that you have to apply all of it.
Learn from your competitors
Like most businesses, you need to know what your competitor’s strategy is – not to mimic it, but to find its weaknesses and strengths. Of course, you use your competitor’s strengths by finding out how you can capitalize on them as well. Is your competitor ranking really well for long tail keywords, and are they doing this through blog posts? If so, you can try to implement their strategy on your site if it works for them. This way, you can either beat them or be almost equal to them in their strengths.
If you find a weakness, you’ll be able to make yourself stronger in that aspect so that you’ll have an edge. For example, if your competitor missed out on using important brand names as keywords, you can make full use of these brand names and outrank them for these specific keywords.
Lay the foundations of your SEO campaign
Next, you should plan your SEO strategy carefully. Make a timeline for each phase – what things will be one-time deals and what techniques will be implemented regularly? Which key phrases will be the backbone of your homepage? Your product pages? How often will you check these key phrases for efficiency and what are your requirements for replacing them? Is it a decrease in competition for another keyword? Is it an increase in monthly searches? Make allowances for the changes you have to make to improve your SEO strategy.
(Re)Develop your website
If you’ve already got a website, odds are it isn’t as optimized as you thought it was – now that you’re a more informed site publisher. If you don’t have a site yet, now’s the time to apply the important onpage SEO rules. You need to make your site more spider-friendly by tweaking your site elements. Make the necessary changes to improve how your site is seen by both the spiders and people. Create a balance between user-friendliness and search-engine readability. Also, choose a priority between the two. That way, whenever you encounter difficult design decisions, you can choose more consistently between user and spider.
Give your SEO strategy a boost
Now, you need to work on the external aspect of SEO. You definitely need backlinks. Look for the latest ways that web masters are getting them. Before, the big thing was article marketing. Now, that technique is almost useless – linkbaiting has become the new king of gaining backlinks. Directory submission was also a big deal during Web 1.0, but there are now rumors going around that over-submitting to directories might result in penalties from some search engines. There are several trends, some of which are unpredictable, so you need to be updated when it comes to the linking habits of website owners and apply your SEO strategies accordingly.
Measure and analyze
SEO isn’t something you do once and then forget about later. You need to measure which strategies are working best for you. One way to make this simple is to install an extensive site stats analyzer and to keep your eye on the results. Once a strategy doesn’t seem to work for you, stop doing it. Also, every time you implement new changes – whether in your site design or on the backend – it’s best to do it one at a time so that its effects are directly measurable. And don’t just measure stuff – analyze the data properly. For example, if you noticed that you’ve received more traffic from a backlink you paid $20 for compared to those on other sites, you may want to spend more advertising on that site and drop the ones that convert less. If you rank really well for a certain keyword during December, but you get almost no results from it during March, you may want to schedule keyword changes around when they’re most profitable. All the statistics you get will be useless if you don’t know how to analyze it.
These are really basic steps that don’t lean towards a particular action or technique. This is because the SEO industry is constantly changing, and something that applies today may no longer apply tomorrow. However, the thinking and planning processes remain the same – you need to gather information, implement what you know, and measure the results. By sticking to these six steps during your SEO campaigns, you won’t get lost on that highway to success.
4 Comments to "The SEO Ladder: 6 Steps to Greatness"
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Great set of tips- thanks!!
Hi Celine,
Thanks so much for the tips. We have been trying to promote our website in the past few months and so far, blogging and directory submission really helped. At the moment we still need to find more ways on how to make it known (thanks for your tips).
We want to increase the traffic as well. We don’t charge our members at http://www.marksmotos and we don’t have advertisements yet, so optimization is really our high priority at the moment.
Grace
http://www.marksmotos.com
Offtop:
Warning message on the index page of your service while analyzing site:
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Just want you to know
Your blog is really useful for people like me looking to drive more traffic to their website. Thanks a bunch.