A few months ago, the Council of Residential Specialists asked if I’d be interested in giving a webinar presentation on SEO. Of course I was interested (It’s scheduled for tomorrow!) and in putting the presentation together, it forced me to reexamine the state of SEO… and how to really get value out of an SEO campaign.
If I could summarize my point of view it’s that creativity is key to a successful SEO campaign… at least if you want to have any impact whatsoever.
When looking at SEO factors, there are three main levers you can pull… They are to
- Improve the on-site factors like titles, URLs, keywords, etc.
- Improve user-interaction factors like bounce rate
- Improve off-site factors like quality of inbound links and anchor text
If you’re creating interesting content on a decent blog platform like wordpress then you’ve got the first two areas because there’s only so much that can be done on your site to improve your SEO… and you’re more likely to end up spinning your wheels than get real benefits if you spend too much time there.
The real SEO benefits come from improving off-site factors like inbound links to your site… (Honestly, I’ve been saying this for years, and it’s one thing that never has and likely never will change in terms of SEO value!). One way to understand this better is that without quality inbound links, a site will never rank. However, a site with a horrible on-site SEO (title, URL structure, bad use of keywords, etc.) can rank just fine if it’s got enough quality inbound links!
So anyway, the point I really want to make in the presentation is there are some proven strategies for generating lots of quality inbound links… and ALL of them involve a bit of creativity and some time. If this is a topic you’re interested in, consider joining us tomorrow when I’ll dive deep into using social networks, social bookmarketing, social news and social group sites to generate great inbound links.
Other resources you might find interesting/helpful:
- 7 Tips to Getting SEO Value Out of Your Social Media Efforts
- Linkation, Linkation, Linkation
- Anything Matt Cutts writes on SEO
Also, if you know of any other great SEO resources, let me know so I can share them with others!
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