By
John Charles Trace
This week, we've got part two in our series of articles looking
at how we can prepare and plan our SEO tactics for the coming year. We
started looking specifically at content creation and how it will have a
significant influence upon SEO strategies in the coming months.
Authorship:
You already know that the social interaction and human activity your
content generates can impact your ratings with the search engines. The
next step to ensuring your profile on line is notices is to establish a
firm footing online as the author of your work. Authoring your work
makes you visible to Google Author Rank so that all your content is
noticed, not just because of the user interaction with it, but because
Google can see who wrote it. This is vital, particularly when you are
working toward building a reputation as an expert in your field. Do your
best to get your content out there as much as possible, but in a
natural way. In addition to your own blog and news, add a variety of
different content posts to your weekly list of new content. It sounds
like a lot of hard work but it will pay off tremendously.Go easy with
the guest posting however. We are expecting Google will be paying much
more attention to guest blog posts in the very near future - and there
are a number of experts who agree with us. By all means share your
content with more and varied audiences but be very careful about
entering into old fashioned back-link building by posting guest blogs
full of meaningless, keyword loaded drivel; it won't help you at all.
Blanket link building won't work anymore:
Google will be continuing to fine tune their algorithms so they can
measure the quality and natural growth of links to and from a website.
It is going to make link building much harder. The old, traditional
methods of back-link building are just not effective any ore and they
will be even less so in the coming months. Google has waged war against
spam advertising and 'fake' activity in all its forms. The algorithms
are looking for patterns which reveal real relationships and high levels
of human activity. We're not saying stop creating links; we're saying
create opportunities for links and encourage them with your content.
Building links is going to involve much more careful thought, planning
and execution.
Choose your text and keywords carefully:
Penguin is also on the look-out for websites which look 'too'
optimized; more than 30% of the text was identical with unnatural
repetition of key phrases. It looks awful, unprofessional and definitely
puts real customers off. (Sadly, there are so many businesses out there
that have paid good money to have their website content SEO optimized,
and have instead ended up with an adverse effect because the levels of
anchor text were so high. Penguin can spot the fakes! There are a lot of
cowboys out there claiming to know what they are doing, and in fact,
they have caused damage. Be very careful and only talk to real experts
who understand how much the world of SEO is changing.) The key here is
to create your content carefully, choosing your keywords and text wisely
and creating links which will be organic in their growth.
Don't underestimate the importance of looking good:
We've already mentioned on many occasions that enhancing the user
experience is how to raise your profile online. Design is a vital part
of this. The first impression you give to visitors when they find you is
critical to inviting them to stay for a while. While this may sound
ridiculously obvious, and it is, in practice we are still seeing
countless businesses having less than attractive websites built. Not
everyone has an eye for design, not all businesses understand the
importance of design to build a brand identity. If you really want to
succeed online and attract people, design has to be part of your focus.
Make re-vamping and re-designing your website part of your SEO strategy
for the coming year.
Be Welcoming: it
will help you build relationships and trust - to build your brand. It is
a powerful way to project a way of life, an aspiration and a mood to
your users. While this may all sound very jargon and as though we've
just swallowed a marketing handbook, it is a fact. Good design attracts
customers, points them in the right direction and encourages them to
relate to you, read your content, share it and interact. It also helps
you to look like a real professional in your field and increases the
perceived value of your content. Your online (brand) identity must be
created using design, content and multimedia so that it will generate
natural, organic activity - the stuff Penguin loves!
What this
means for website owners is the need for high quality in all content. If
your websites are not designed, written and created beautifully, then
it will absolutely have an adverse effect on your rankings.
The idea here is to attract real people by making them really interested in real information. PageRank, Author Rank, Penguin - all they are looking for is where the crowd is gathering and enjoying itself.
If
you get your brand, your voice and your message right, by planning
carefully now, there is no reason you can't achieve great things for
your business over the coming year.
Next week, in part three, we look at what we can expect form social media in the coming year leading to 2014.
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