The Future of SEO

There is always a lot of talk on SEO websites about the future of SEO and how will changes in the Google algorithm affect this or that. Everyone is always trying to stay a few steps ahead of Google. I don’t really think you are going to out think a billion dollar company whose goal is to make sure you don’t do anything sneaky. And in the end, I don’t care about Google’s next big thing. I don’t really follow much of this for one reason: No matter what happens with search, Google will always value links the most. Search is based on links. There’s no other real method to determine which site is the best for a given keyword. You know who is popular and the best resource by looking at links. Eventually Google will begin to look at social media links as a way to see what’s popular and what sites are hot but in the end, getting links will be the most important part of SEO. But the real future of SEO….the real way to take it to the next level is by blogging.

People who do SEO are really engaging in a form of internet marketing. You want websites to rank high in search engines so you can make money from them. Internet marketing people go out and find links using the variety of SEO tools I have talked about in the past. Links rank them high and ranking high makes them money.

When I first decided that I wanted to do this as a job, I went out and got websites on everything from corn to dogs to trailer homes. Why? Because they all had good Adsense revenue potential. I went and used the SEO tools to get links to these websites and get them to rank high in Google. Some never worked out, some where a surprising success.

But the biggest success is always travel. Why? Because I run a very popular travel site and have lots of friends who run travel websites and travel blogs. I can ask them for a link. They will give me one simply because I asked. They help me and, when they need help, I help them. We’re all part of a community and we all look out for each other.

The biggest people in SEO and Internet Marketing are those with big flagship blogs- Lissie from Passive Income, The Griz and his many sites on how to make money online, Mark and Court from the The Keyword Academy, Justin from SEO Zombie, and Vic from Blogger Unleashed.

All of these people have widely read blogs where they give SEO and internet marketing advise out for free. But more than that, they build a network of friends who will help them with their new sites and with links when they need it. They use their knowledge to help others and those people then in turn help them out. I would never say no to anyone on that list.

After a conversation with Mark from The Keyword Academy, I realized I wasn’t doing it right. I have a big community of travel friends and I have deep knowledge on travel. Branching out was just a waste of time. I no longer find other niches to create websites for, I work on travel websites. I know so many travel website owners that it’s not very hard for me to get links from a wide range of travel websites simply by asking. They know me, they know I produce legit sites and are willing to help me out.

Not all the people who try SEO can say that. They have to use these other artificial links building tools to compensate for the lack of responses to link inquires. “Cold emailing” another website owner for a link producing a very low success rate. That low success rate and the time consuming process that it is makes lots of people fall out of this field and give up. SEO isn’t hard, it’s just time consuming and the returns don’t happen for a long time.

I don’t know the future of Google but if you want to be a successful internet marketer and SEO guru then you are going to want to create a blog. The rules of internet marketing and blogging is different but I think if you want to be successful online, you want to know how to do both. A blog will allow you to form relationships and friendships with people in your chosen niche. If you are not part of the community that surrounds your topic, then you are losing out and far behind those who are.

Filed Under Random Thoughts | 2 Comments

Internal SEO

Internal Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about making your website fully optimized for Google. This is about proper design, proper image usage, proper internal linking, and proper keywords. Onsite SEO consists of the following factors:

Keywords in Your Domain Name- Get the right keywords in your domain name. If you already have a domain name, I hope there are keywords in there. Putting keywords in your domain name helps you rank higher much much quicker.

Keywords in Your Website Title- Again, get your keywords in your title. Notice the title of this site is SEO Advice. Not Matt’s Theory. Not Matt likes Pink Bunnies. Getting your keywords in your website title allows google to know what your website is about and helps you move up in the rankings. The site or page name should always include the keywords you are targeting.

Keywords in Content- Put your keywords and variations of that keyword in your content. Don’t use it too much because remember- if it sounds funny to people, it sounds funny to Google. Putting variations of your main keyword in their will help you rank for smaller, less difficult words while adding authority to your main keyword. Also, remember that the longer a post is the more long tail keywords you are likely to rank for.

Internal Linking – Interlink your site as much as possible. This helps build links to your posts, helps spread pagerank among your sites, and allows Google to crawl through your site easier.

Keyword the URL- Put your keywords in the url of your post. This will help you target that keyword easier.

Use H1 tags- For titles and important words, use the H1 title tag. This tells the search engines which words are important to the page.

Use Meta Tags- These don’t help you rank but a meta description is seen by a person and if you make it interesting, it will increase clicks to your site.

Use ALT tags- Always put a long and descriptive alt tags on your images. This helps make your site more SEO friendly and helps your images get ranked.

That is the essential of on site SEO.  If you do this, you will help make your site very search engine friendly and help rank it naturally rank in the search results for a number of keywords.  Next time, we’ll talk about how external SEO can help you rank #1 in the search engines.

Filed Under seo | Leave a Comment

« go back — keep looking »