So You Think You’re Good At SEO, Huh?

If you really are an SEO expert, then chances are, you’re aware of *some* points discussed in this post. However, if you don’t consider yourself an expert when it comes to SEO, go on and read this post. You’ll find almost all of it interesting and worth the time spent reading.

That said, this post is not going to be on something specific. Instead, it’ll discuss on SEO as general. It won’t be the boring principles and concepts, either. So don’t shy away from it just yet.

What does SEO involve, anyway? Some say it involves building backlinks, others say it involves optimizing the internal functions of the website (linking structure, keywords density etc), while a few say it’s all about getting the word out and about.

Put simply, SEO involves everything. From optimizing your website, to getting the word out and about. If you’re trying to build backlinks as part of your SEO strategy, then try the following tips next time.


Create content that’s not only engaging but induces a feeling of ‘want to share’ in your readers

Your readers will always want to share interesting stuff. Everyone does. Take advantage of this human trait. Create content that is not only engaging, but also compels your readers to share it with others. This way you’re not just making sure that readers keep coming back for more; instead they’ll get new readers with them. Extra traffic and backlinks… without the extra work.

Write about it first

You don’t have to be BBC news. But you can still blog about the ‘new hype’ as soon as possible. It’s not the news that will set you apart. It’s the review on the news that will get you visitors. And when you get visitors, you get attention. And attention, obviously, leads to more quality backlinks!

Disagree!

Vague… yes. But also effective. Sometimes following the trend is not enough. Sometimes you have to break off and travel in the opposite direction. If everyone says “Yes” to a particular issue, you say “Yes, but No”. Doing so sets you apart from all the rest. And when that happens, you become the center of attention. You get blogged about (or linked to) and that results in backlinks. Found Tricky? 😉

Remember though, when planning an SEO strategy there’s a couple issues that you should take care of. Stuff that you need to stay away from. It’s the blackhat techniques. They sure seem inviting and interesting. Given the fact they tend to produce results almost immediately. However, in the long run, there’s nothing worse than blackhat SEO techniques.

Here are some known and popular Blackhat Techniques[I don’t recommend trying it if you are not a daring person 😉]:

Hiding Text

Popular blackhat SEO method often used by spammers to stuff their pages with all sorts of keywords. Their intentions vary. Some do it to boost their search engine rankings (artificially), others do it to trigger high paying advertisements (contextual ad serving technology) while others do it to aid them in their overall SEO strategy. The mere idea of hiding text to boost rankings definitely sounds inviting, but the search engines will catch up on to it very soon. So unless you’re looking to get banned, refrain from it.

Cloaking Pages

The most common (and dangerous) method that falls under Blackhat SEO. The basic concept of cloaking involves serving two different pages. One to the search engines, the other to the real visitors. Spammers create a page full of keywords and phrases (and content that makes no sense) in order to boost their search engine rankings. This page is returned whenever a search engine bot visits their website. However, when a real user visits their website, a completely different page is returned.

Buying/Selling Links

Up until recently, this was the hype. People buying links all over to boost their search engine rankings. However, while it’s not blackhat, it most certainly affects the search engines in a negative way. Anyone can buy a few high quality links to get a boost in their search engine rankings. There’s no guarantees that the site itself is going to be of any value. However, the search engines would obviously rank it higher, given the fact it has high quality links pointing back to it.

The problem arises when a common man searches for something, and ends up visiting the site; of course, disappointed because there’s nothing worth looking on the site. This, in turn, creates a negative impression of the search engine. One visitor makes no difference, but for something like Google, MSN, Yahoo, we’re talking about millions of visitors.

That said, recently, all the major search engines have started cracking down on paid links. Paid links manipulate the way in which site reporting and sorting occurs, and is thus considered unethical.

Conclusion

It’s very easy to get carried away when making up an SEO strategy for your brand new website. Thing is, you need to make sure you don’t get carried away. Make logical decisions and judgments. Decide what’s best for your website/blog before you blindly implement every other SEO tip you come across.

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122 thoughts on “So You Think You’re Good At SEO, Huh?”

  1. SEO done right, takes time to get all that traffic to your blog. However, if done correctly, you should see improvements daily, in the areas of more comments to your posts, more money from adsense, and more retweets (if on Twitter). Thanks for the great post, fantastic writing for a 16year old!
    .-= Teasastips´s last blog ..A Chance To Engage Readers: The Zemanta Plug-In =-.

      1. Yes I think like that, my blog is related to work at home, so the traffic come from search engine by searching by keyword like “work at home jobs”, those traffic stay longer on my blog and tend to click on adsense ads.
        .-= chandan@work at home´s last blog ..How google recommend to build link =-.

  4. I never go with Black Hat techniques. I have read lot of books to increase positions in SERP but most of them was Black Hat. Content and sufficient social bookmarking is enough to start and your learning and experience makes you a better SEO consultant, professional or whatever.
    .-= Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..25 Google Wave Invites for Grabs =-.

  5. Wow! It really helps me my friend. I am glad that the vacation has come and so I can update my blog and know what are the happenings in the blogosphere.

  6. You’re absolutely right,SEO needs both onsite & offsite optimization.But I think google is taking serious action even it is banning sites for selling links.

        2. Well, this is my opinion, advertising on search engine and other site is different. Advertising on search engine give you no additional point for serp measurement, but advertise on other site is just same with place a link on other site so it’s not just advertising but also optimizing our serp.

          About offline advertisement, it’s because there is a chance for people who see it to place the link in their blog.
          .-= akira07´s last blog ..Quick report – My Smartbloggerz Commenting Idol 2 Participation =-.

          3. As i said on many chances, it will be on January or February. Just wait for it 😛
            But i think you don’t care anymore since you’re said you will not participating in any contest on 2010, right?

  7. Although SEO is still one of the best strategies for traffic generation and rank building, I would say it’s almost impossible for small business to achieve significant results without little to no investment. We have been noticing more and more that local search marketing and local SEO seem to be the best techniques, but on the more global scale of things SEO requires investments of time, knowledge and previous expertise which not many of self-starters have.

      2. Oh. Thanks for correcting me Senthil. But if you optimized your site traffic well and make it on the first page of the search engine, you will get lots of visitors and earn money well (with google) right?
        .-= Jenn´s last blog ..Lalalalove Contest =-.

        1. Google play the mostly roles on SEO even we know there is a lot of search engine beside google. So, just concentrate on google, please 😛

  9. Hi Sushant
    I’m no expert on SEO but I do read the Rand Fishkin articles and watch his videos over at SeoMoz. I also use a few SEo plugins on my site – you can probably guess which ones!

    Thanks for a reminder that we should be writing good content and not resorting to keyword stuffing.
    The hard part is writing that compelling content… we can only try.
    .-= Keith Davis@Public speaking and Presentation Skills´s last blog ..The eyes have it! =-.

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