Thoughts On SEO and Internet Marketing Trends
I’ve been working as an SEO specialist for a few years now and during those years, I experienced a lot of changes that happened on that certain period of time regarding how websites are being optimized and ranked. Lots of changes about indexing, how the pages are being crawled, ranking factors, page optimization, how links are being counted and so many other stuff that can help a site rank on search engines. Ranking factor changes a lot and SEO people shouldn’t be stuck on one single technique that they are using or practicing.
I saw an article last week regarding how SEO was being affected or being less important to use on small business as an online marketing tool. Internet marketing nowadays is getting bigger and bigger than it is before. Social media and social networking is ‘in’ right now while search engine optimization is being less prioritized.
I think that small business owners who relies on getting their sales on organic traffic shouldn’t less prioritize Search Engine Optimization. Basic SEO should always be implemented on a new or not optimized website. Here are some of the basic SEO which I think should always be implemented on a website.
Site Analysis
Site analysis is one of the most important factor to consider before optimizing your website. Think of your target market, check for broken links, checking of backlinks and indexed pages, age of site and many other stuff that you need before you start optimizing the entire website.
Keyword Research
I consider this as the second most important factor for SEO. Choosing the right keywords for your site can definitely take most of your time. Analyze each keywords that can bring you traffic when that certain keyword is searched on SEs. Make sure that you have long tail keywords as well and some competitive ones.
Meta Title and Description
Meta Title and Description still plays a good role on optimizing web pages. Title and description are the two things that people see on the search results. By providing a very good title and description that suits well with the content of your site, it can surely attract visitors.
URL Optimization
I hate long URLs with numbers and a tracking code or something. Isn’t it good to see a URL like this one here, http://www.afreemind.org/2009/12/happy-new-year-2010/ ? Check for the URL of your websites. As much as possible, avoid using URLs that are hard to remember. 301 redirection for http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com should also be implemented to avoid duplicate issues.
I can go on and on for some other “basic” SEO techniques but those are some of the few to remember. And oh, Link Building should be included on that list.
I know that it is hard to rank on the search results on some very competitive keywords because of how search engines differently rank websites right now than it is before. One search engine feature from Google that is hard to beat is the Google Live Search. Google live search uses a dynamic stream of real-time content from across different websites. Meaning, it uses most Social media and networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for real-time search. So I really think that social media and networking sites plays a big role on internet marketing today. But even if these new internet marketing tools are out there doing very good for your sites, you should not forget to still use some “basic” SEO techniques for your websites.