It's been an exciting year in search engine optimization. There have been lots of changes from Google. But, believe it or not, despite all of Google's algorithm updates, there are a lot of beginners out there trying to get into internet marketing. So for the beginners out there who are searching for tips for seo, we present to you a small gift--awesome SEO tips based on our REAL SEO methodology. For the beginners, press play!
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hello, and welcome to our video on tips for SEO. I'm Chad Hill, and I have Adam Stetzer here with me as well.
Hi, good afternoon, Chad. It's been an exciting year in search engine optimization, lots of changes from Google-- seems to be the case every year. A lot of beginners, though, still out there, believe it or not, if you look at the stats, trying to work their way into online marketing, into internet marketing.
And they're often searching for tips for SEO, how to do better in the rankings, how to generate leads from their website. A lot of this information is focused on on site updates and tuning, and things that were very, very important five years ago. Let's orient our viewers and give our philosophy on what these awesome SEO tips really should be focused on.
OK, that sounds fun. We've developed a methodology that we trained our team on that we call the REAL SEO methodology. And that stands for research, end user value, analysis, and then launching. So let's break that down and talk about each of those components.
A seo tip, we think that SEO always starts with research. You need to understand what your audience, your prospects, are looking for, and not only what your language is, but what their language is. And make sure you understand what keywords they might be searching for so that you can then build content that helps answer those questions and get them to engage in your business and what you do.
So, right there, that probably represents a departure from most people's point of view. When they're searching for tips for SEO, the first thing they usually encounter are these mechanical website type things. You're talking about the audience, the audience value, the keywords they are searching for, how to meet that demand. So I guess that's the very first seo tip, is first, recognize SEO is marketing, and don't separate them out. They go together. It's very important your strategy is built around what an audience needs.
Exactly, so once you know what that customer is looking for, you know what messages you're trying to communicate to that customer, you then need to create compelling information that, again, this is content marketing. We're trying to get you to not necessarily put the hard sell on someone to say here are the three reasons you need to buy from me.
But really what you're trying to do with a search engine, if you think about it-- someone's looking, has a question and they're looking for an answer. So if you can intercept that search, that question that that person has, with compelling information that answers it, then you're really one step ahead of everybody else. So that second step or seo tip, end user value, is really all about creating compelling information for the user.
And we go beyond what people traditionally do with creating just simple articles, but we add to it things like infographics, and videos, of course, press releases. But as many different types of multimedia, types of content you can create, that's what you want to do.
Right, and these tips for SEO in 2013 are kind of different than they were last year, or two, or three or four years ago. This content is king concept has been around for a long time, but it's never been more important as Google has been evolving the signals they look at and the data they have available to understand if what you're putting out is really valuable to the end user or not.
If you think they can't tell, think again. It's really just not worth your time to go there and be really thinking about how to trick them. It's better to just cut to the chase and make something that your end users want. You'll be Google proof, and you'll be doing a good job and you'll get where you want to go.
Right, exactly. So once, though, you mentioned at the beginning of this that people often start with thinking title tags. So we're kind of into the third step now. You created this great content. Now we go back and we tune it.
So we're tuning it for two different audiences. The first is tuning it for the human audience, the end user. And we want to make sure that everything we create looks nice, of course, the grammar is right, the spelling's right. Make sure that you have nice paragraph breaks. You insert some images.
If it's a text type of piece of content you've created or if it's an info graphic, that it looks attractive. So you want to make sure that you're tuning it so that whatever you're creating doesn't immediately repel somebody because it looks like a big text blob that's not interesting to read. So you start there.
The other audience you want to tune it for if you want to tune it for the search engine, because you want to make sure that everything you create is ultimately readable and indexable by the search engine. So that's where things like title tags, and description tags and H1 types of adjustments are made. And that's made once you've created the compelling content. So you get that right, because that ultimately is just as important as creating compelling content.
Yeah, and I love this is step three and not step one, Chad, because most seo tips blog posts you read are all about this tuning, and they put that right up front. And that's really not where it's at in 2013. It's content first, and it's tuning as an afterthought. It needs to be done. Don't overlook it, but don't obsess on it.
And secondarily, I like your point about audience first and search engine audience second. When it comes to tuning, if anything you come across, you try to do, makes your page less usable or less friendly for the real user audience, don't do it. They are the primary audience. Keep your focus there.
Exactly, so then the final step is ultimately where the rubber meets the road. And that's when you create this resource of information, different types of content, you need to be very thoughtful in how you use it. Some of it needs to go on your website, because people will ultimately come to your website and they will want to see compelling and interesting information and up to date information on your website.
But just as important, in fact, probably more important than what you put on your website, is how you go about syndicating your message with other content to other websites. Because that's how you earn links back to your website. And even in 2013, one of the most important factors in deciding which website's going to rank for a targeted keyword comes down to who and how people link to it to kind of earn those votes back to your website. So that REAL SEO methodology is how we ultimately talk about thinking about what seo tips are useful in doing SEO.
And this launch phase is as important as ever. In 2013, we have over 500 million active domain names, half a billion, so getting mind share, getting attention, is really a big task. And we know build it and wait for them to come just does not work. You have to launch this. You have to syndicate.
I mean, remember, SEO is marketing. So if you've done the first three steps in earnest, you have something excellent to share and talk about. Now you need to go on the mountain top and scream about if. You need to be guest blog post, and you need to be tweeting. Social media is excellent for this.
There's also get the word out about this excellent content you've created. And now we'll all leave this wonderful SEO footprint that looks very valid, very natural, not that happened by itself-- you promoted it-- but looks very natural and spreads the way you want it to. Google sees it and you'll be rewarded with excellent SEO.