Don’t be afraid of SEO
If you’re an entrepreneur, or you run the website for the company you work for, sometimes getting found online can be a little scary. So many people try to get you to fear SEO, and Google’s update zoo (Panda, Penguin, Opossum, Hummingbird, etc…) but they’re not anything to be scared of.
To over simply things, SEO is all about having content that relates to your business or website and being an expert in your field. See how easy that is? Just write really really great content and get it shared by people in your field and BAM success! Ok, it’s not THAT easy, but that’s about as simple of an explanation as you can get.
SEO – TL/DR version
- Great Content
- Sharing Your Expertise
- Keep It Fresh
What about Content?
Get caught up in content. Revel in it. Roll around in it and love it! We often explain to clients that search engines are blind to pretty pictures, even with Google trying to see them, so how would you explain your business or website to someone who cannot see diagrams or illustrations? (Don’t count out images that are sharable, though, but more on that another time.) Can you explain your product, service, information without images? If you can’t then you have a bigger issue than SEO.
Sharing Your Information
What good is content if absolutely no one is reading it. You can have all of the answers to the world’s questions but if no one can find your information, it may as well be hidden in a treasure chest at the bottle of the ocean!
Get your content out to people in your field. Share it via social media, relevant discussion boards, groups, and especially your email list. Contact other sites that work in your field or may be interested in what you are writing about and see if they want to use YOU as a source for THEIR site! Who knows, you may become an expert in your field because of how well you explain your service, information, or product! Just be sure that if the sites source your site, that they link appropriately.
Keep It Fresh
Now that you have a site with relevant content that people like to share, keep the momentum going! Keep up to date on any changes in your field, and make it work for you. Write blog posts, pages of content, or freshen up your product pages to fit what is changing. No one likes a stale website, especially not the Search Engines or your readers.