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Content is King

In the earlier days of the internet there were tons of tricks and secrets to optimize your site for search engines and while some of those things hold true today, the absolute most important thing isn't about SEO at all. It's about content.

The big secret to SEO is that it isn’t really a secret.

In the earlier days of the internet there were tons of tricks and secrets to optimize your site for search engines and while some of those things hold true today, the absolute most important thing isn’t about SEO at all. It’s about content.

Does your site have better content than your competitors?

What reasons are you giving for your clients to come back to your site? Is your site more informative than your competitors? Does it better describe what you do? Does it clearly explain costs and pricing for what you do? It’s important to make it as easy as possible for clients to get the information they want.

Are the words you want to rank for used organically on your page?

There was a tactic in the earlier days of the internet when search engines were a lot dumber to just stick the keywords you wanted to rank for somewhere on your page.  Usually this was done at the very bottom of the page and was an incoherent mess of text.  Nowadays if you try this, it’ll actually hurt your ranking.  Google, Bing, and pretty much every other major search engine see through this in a nanosecond.  They’re looking for properly written sentences, & paragraph structure, not just words thrown together.

Are there a lot of grammatical and spelling errors on your page?

This one is pretty self explanatory.  If you aren’t professional in what you write, it’s not going to rank well.  It’s also very discouraging for visitors to come to your site looking for professional services and come across a page that looks like it was written by a five-year old.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t add your own flair to your writing.  You absolutely should.  Too many web sites are so stiff and dry that no one wants to read it.  (Not even Google.) It’s important to show that there’s a real person or team of people behind the text.

Do you have a blog?

You absolutely should. This is the easiest and best way to keep your web site fresh and give both Google and your visitors a reason to keep coming back. The most important thing to consider with a blog however is that it shouldn’t be solely self-promotional. You should include parallel content to what you offer to get other keywords organically worked in with your site. Post articles about the your industry, fun things you’ve seen related to what you do. Don’t pigeon hole yourself. The more things you rank for, even indirectly, the better your primary keywords will do.

How often are you adding new content to your page?

If people don’t have a reason to come back, they won’t.  Fresh content added weekly (or more often if you’ve got that much to show) gives both your visitors and search engines a reason to come back to your site.  As said above, it’s important not to be strictly self-promotional in your new content either.  People don’t want to read 12 articles about how great you are.  Give visitors helpful tips related to what you do.  Give them information about your process and ways they can do it themselves. (I realize that seems counter-intuitive but it never hurts to give potential clients a better understanding of just how much work you’re actually doing behind the scenes)

If you’re not comfortable writing blog articles yourself, it’s worth it to hire a creative writer. A good creative writer can come up with topics to post about regularly. Once a week is a good interval.

The last part of this to consider is that there aren’t any secrets to suddenly rocket you from page 7 of the search results to the top of page 1.  It takes a lot of work and a lot of time.  Don’t give up and keep at it.  Even if you find yourself ranking better, it’s important to keep adding fresh content to maintain that rating.  Never let your site go stale.