Don't fall for the SEO tricksters
I own an SEO company and spend plenty of my time searching the internet for new ideas and tips.
Everywhere I go, I am accosted by single page mini-sites promising me short cuts to SEO success. Some are clever, some are stupid and some downright dangerous to your reputation.
Those of us who do SEO for a living realize that the only way to success is to be patient, honest and hard working. Forget 'tricking' Google into submission and just get on with playing the game honestly.
So what counts most with SEO?
1. Patience
Prepare to be ignored for six months choose what you do. To find out why, please Google the term 'google sandbox'. Just keep at it and be prepared for a big suprise when the traffic does arrive!
- Your Website
Google uses software and not people to index your website and so make it obvious all the way what you do for a living. From the URL to the page content and all stops in-between make things clear. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck and eats bread it is probably a duck.
- Keywords
Before you do anything! Make sure that you have the correct keywords. You should spend about 25% of your overall time on SEO on keywords alone. A good free resource is Google Keyword Tools.
Building links
This is the hard bit. Getting links from blogs, articles, directories, RSS, software directories etc is time consuming to do well. Quantity does not matter as much as quality. I always look for a chance to have a 'do follow' link from a page with a high page-rank value.
5. Content
Without regular, fresh content you will struggle. I would look to add one
new page per day for six months if you are serious about succeeding. Google
knows who is trying and who is not. Play the game and you will win!
