SEO, or search engine optimisation is something all internet marketing professionals pay attention to. Whether you’re new to the world of affiliate marketing or are someone who’s already seeing moderate success from online marketing efforts, SEO tutorials can help you build, maintain, and grow your online business. But, not everything you read about SEO is necessarily true.
When you find SEO tutorials online there are a few things you need to keep in mind:
1. Is the info current?
2. Beware of absolute statements.
3. Quality should always come first.
4. Marketing techniques are important, too.
SEO Tutorials – Is The Information Current
Currency of information is important. Search engine algorithms change. For instance, the Google algorithm changes dozens of times every year.
Some of these changes show major differences to some webmasters (such as Google May Day, in May of 2010) and some changes are so subtle you may not have noticed them. Google’s SEO tutorials should be paid attention to, but information from 5 years ago may not be as relevant as it is today.
Beware Of Absolute Statements
Be very wary of absolute statements. You’ll find SEO tutorials that tell you that you need precisely 2.8% keyword density on every page of your website. That’s information that is very subjective. Some websites, depending on the phrases used, could get away with keyword density that high. For others, that would read as garble and turn off search engines, not to mention visitors who won’t get any value from the pages because they are so keyword-stuffed.
Sure, keyword density is something you may want to pay attention to but many SEO tutors will tell you that latent semantic indexing, keyword placement, and keyword proximity may be more important than how many times per 100 words your keywords appear. Then, there’s choosing the right keywords for the right audience as well!
Quality Is King
Quality is vital and should reign over SEO. Yes, you should populate important fields and sure, it’s a good idea to name your images with keyword phrases. Yes, you should link to authority sites, link to other pages within your site, and use h1, h2, and h3 tags if you can.
Bookmarking can be fruitful and article syndication can be valuable. But, if your online content isn’t good and isn’t valuable, it doesn’t matter whether your website is ranked #1 or #99 for the most popular words and phrases in your niche. You need to appeal to search engines and appeal to your visitors, too.
Not all SEO tutorials are equal. Read them all, take in as much knowledge as you can, and stay up to date on what’s current and on what’s coming down the pipe. Yes, learn SEO but also make sure that you learn how to market to your prospective audience.
Also learn about relationship marketing as well as permission marketing. Search engine optimisation can get visitors to your page but your marketing skills can convert them from browsers into buyers.
If you are interested in accessing some dynamite SEO tutorials, tips and strategies as well as a whole host of current information you need to know in order to become a successful internet marketer, my internet marketing program may just be the program for you!
About Sean Rasmussen
Sean:
Great information you posted here!
I appreciate the tips. I do pay some attention to SEO but not nearly enough. There is so much information about SEO, as there is about almost any topic, online that it can be hard to decide which information is correct and which information is not.
Thanks for the link to Google’s SEO Starter Guide. I just downloaded a copy to read and the website states that it was update on July 22, 2010.
- Rick
It certainly can be tough to decide on what information is the best way to go Rick. In the end, SEO is not rocket science and taking a common sense (white hat) approach will produce results. Good to see Google’s starter guide has been updated, too
Great point about being wary of absolute statements. So many times I’ve come across people who insist something is always right, even though they ignore evidence to the contrary. Then there’s the people with the “silver bullet” like the guy whose “secret” to higher search engine rankings was to get listed in Google Places, completely ignoring the fact that at the same time he got a whole lot more quality incoming links
as you say, SEO isn’t rocket science, despite some “gurus” claiming otherwise.
Good information about SEO. For my case, even though I follow basic SEO guidelines listed in the great Google’s SEO Tutorials, I make sure that I focus on writing good content for my visitors and work on converting them into paying customers. I believe a lot of us worry too much about keywords and search engines while forgetting to focus on their visitors by providing them with great content. The below is what I aim for, while following Basic SEO Guidelines:
1 – Recommended Reading – Google’s SEO Tutorials
2 – Design – Simple and void of any un-needed pictures, javascrip and others.
3 – Site Architecture – Having good site architecture will make it easy for your visitor to navigate and find your products or services.
4 – Fast Loading – some of your visitors might still be using slower connection than you do, therefore, speed is very important to your visitor including search engines.
5 – Design for your visitors and search engines will reward you.
6 – Avoid Javascript (if you can) and use CSS instead for your navational menu
Again, make your visitors, which you might turn into prospects/customers your main focus and everything else should fall in play while following Basic SEO Guidelines.