Take Your Search Engine Optimization to the Next Level

Search engine optimization is very complex in nature, and it is constantly changing. If you solely rely on your old-school techniques without bothering to get fresh updates in the search engine world, you will soon realize that your once effective strategies will no longer work today. That is why it is important to regularly sharpen your SEO skills and to be always on the lookout for changes in Google’s ranking algorithm.

2011 and 2012 were the most unforgettable years for SEO experts. The search engine landscape was dramatically changed when Google released the Panda and the Penguin algorithm updates, creating havoc and damaging thousands of businesses that completely depend on the search engine for organic traffic to their ecommerce websites. Some of them have no back up plans with retrospect to sources of leads, thereby leading to eventual shutdown of the business.

While there are other methods of getting web traffic, SEO still remains one of the promising sources because of the vast potential in capturing high quality prospects if you accurately target the right keywords. Moreover, the benefits of achieving your SEO goals are also immense and astounding, making it truly worth investing in.

Despite the constantly changing environment, some basic SEO strategies still works but slightly modified to fit with the current situation. Here are some quite effective techniques that can still generate amazing results in getting your blog to the front result pages of Google.

Pump Out More High Quality Contents

Content still reigns as the king in online marketing. Many people are surfing the net in search for valuable and helpful information. There are several marketing methods that also rely on contents to fuel the campaign. But unlike before where quantity of blog posts was given more importance, today quality weighs heavier than numbers. So stay focus on content quality and you shall be on the right track.

A few years back, publishing a couple of 150 to 400-word articles is already enough to push the site further to the top pages, but not anymore today. Short contents are suspected of being poor in quality due to lack of meats and value. Hence, steer clear of publishing short posts because this will not only bring little effects on SEO but it can even pull your ranking down to the farther pages.

To make your content marketing work, it is suggested to keep the minimum word count at 500. The more the better but the ideal level is around 800 to 1200 words. But word count is just one of the article-quality parameters. There are other factors as well, such as uniqueness and keyword density. Make sure to publish completely unique articles in order to provide added value to the readers, and you will be rewarded accordingly with good ranking points.

Aside from that, avoid stuffing the post with your target keyword phrase. While there is no recommendation from Google with regards to the standard keyword density, focus more on making the discussions natural without being conscious of inserting too much keywords in your article. One to two placements within the content is already enough in giving a signal to the search engine bots that you are targeting a certain phrase.

Connect With your Audience

In the past, you can get your blog to the front page even if you don’t interact with your audience. Today, your chances are higher if you establish connection with your prospects. So highlight the comment section of your post and ask your readers to place some comments related to the discussions. Having more comments gives an impression that your blog post is getting popular, which is good for SEO.

 

However, the comment section today is also the favorite section of spammers to spam your page with redundant comments for backlinking purposes. So properly moderate the comments and get rid of the spammy ones.

Leverage on the Power of Social Media

Because of the rising popularity of social media, search engines gradually integrate social media interaction in their ranking parameters. Comments, likes, and shares in social networks are signs of popularity; sometimes they are treated as backlinks that provide added ranking points.

Getting hits coming from various social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Facebook can further diversify the link sources, and link diversification is now one of the parameters added in the Penguin update.

Top Quality Links Still Matter a Lot

When the Penguin update was released way back in April 2012, many blogs with bad links were greatly affected. The focus of the update was to get rid of link spam. This forces many webmasters to get rid of redundant links including those with inferior quality in order to avoid being hit by the Penguin attack.

To help web owners in getting rid of poor quality backlinks, Google came up with the tool to disavow bad links that makes it easy to disassociate bad links from your link profile. Having this tool at your disposal, which can help you erase the bad tracks, you can concentrate more on building high quality backlinks to improve your search engine ranking.

Thus, it is important to know several basic attributes of a good quality link. One of them is relevancy. It must come from relevant source; so avoid placing links from non-relevant sites. Another essential attribute is link diversification. Don’t focus on a few sites for your link source, but spread out your sources to many different areas. Also an important factor is the anchor text. Don’t use the same keyword phrase in all your backlinks but use, instead, different but relevant terms.

Target the Right Keywords

This is an integral part of SEO, and this is also the first step to take. The outcome of the campaign is greatly influenced by your keyword research. Using the wrong keyword term will lead you to a wrong turn away from your intended destination. Therefore, you must do this process right in order to arrive at your goals.

There are excellent keyword tools that can help you in laser-targeting your prospects. Some tools are provided for free but if you prefer to get more detailed results, then you can go for the premium tools for a certain price.

Nonetheless, you can start with a free keyword research tool like the Google Keyword Planner, which is already enough to jumpstart your campaign. Once your are familiar on how to conduct the keyword research, then you can upgrade to the premium software as you advance further to the next level of search engine optimization.

The research process can also be done by stages. The first phase is the above steps. But if you want to take it to a higher level, you can do a semantic keyword research that involves using related terms for inclusion in your campaign. This is sometimes referred to as LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing. Use of LSI keywords is greatly helpful not just in improving the page rank your web pages but also in getting more hits to your site.

The above strategies are just the tip of an iceberg. There are still other SEO techniques that boost website performance. In any case, just focus on the above methods and you shall observe gradual increase in page rank. Some of the methods may be old-school techniques, but with a couple of simple tweaks you can take your search engine optimization to the next level.