SEO 101…
Lesson Transcription:
Today I want to give you a quick lesson on what I call “The Three Pillars of a Successful Search Engine Marketing Campaign.”
The reason I’m doing this is because over the next few months I’ll be releasing videos and lessons on the different elements of search engine marketing.
This really is Search Engine Marketing 101…but if you don’t know this, you will never get good rankings and free traffic.
In order for you to get the most out of these lessons, it’s important that you have a bit of a foundation in search engine marketing which is what I want to give you right now.
This way, you can use the strategies I’m going to give you in the future to get the best results for your website.
So here goes…
Google, hands down, is the best source of high converting traffic. Social media is good, but not as good as Google yet. Affiliate marketing is also good, but not as consistent and is too volatile.
Now people may argue that Google is volatile as well and it is to some degree.
But, if you are…
- Using proper strategies
- Maintaining good quality content
- Engaging people on your website
- Continuing to build high quality links
…then it is a consistent medium!
It is only inconsistent if you are using low quality search engine marketing tactics and low quality content.
The bottom line is this: Google is a massive source of high quality buyers! People are actually going to Google to look for stuff they want, and if you happen to be the “stuff” they’re looking for, then there’s a good chance they’re going to buy.
So let’s look at the Three Pillars of a Successful Search Engine Marketing Campaign:
Search Engine Marketing Pillar #1:
On-Site Optimization
This is also known as on-page optimization.
On-site optimization is basically ensuring that the structure of your page is set up in such a way that:
- Google can easily find all of the content
- It is linked together properly
- It is well structured
- It is organized
- It is using SEO friendly links
Then, on a per-page basis, making sure that each individual page that you have on your website is optimized properly for the specific key word that you want to rank for.
That includes things like:
- Using your key words in your title tags
- Using your key words in your meta tags
- Using your key words in your heading tags
- Having proper key word density
- Using proper internal and external links
- Using proper alt tags in your images
So all of these elements within your page need to be fine-tuned as well.
Basically, on-site optimization should make it easy for Google to analyze your page and index it for the key word you want.
Once you’ve built your website and optimized it, you can’t just walk away and leave it!
You need to continually add new, quality content. This brings us to our second pillar.
Search Engine Marketing Pillar #2:
Dripping Content
The fact is, Google does not want boring, stale sites that are never updated. They want dynamic websites with fresh content that people want to come back and read, interact with and share.
So if you throw up a page and never add to it, that’s not going to happen.
“Dripping content” means that every week you add new stuff to your website. The most common question I hear from my Internet Business Accelerator students is “How much content do I need to add and how often do I need to add it?”
There’s no right answer to that question because it depends on your niche and what your competitors are doing. If you’re in an uber-competitive niche and your competitors are dripping content every single day then you need to keep up with them.
If you’re in more of a micro-niche and your competitors aren’t updating as fast, then you can scale back on your frequency.
The short answer is that you need to look at your competitors to see where the bar is set for how often you need to drip content.
You need to make sure you’re dripping good quality content and optimizing it properly.
If you really don’t want to create your own content, there are lots of good writers out there and lots of sources of good quality cheap content in lots of different niches.
The one thing I would recommend for search engine marketing is that you make sure your content is good quality and unique.
One of the big mistakes I see people make is they go out and grab content from sites like ezinearticles.com that they are allowed to syndicate and they use that to drip on to their website.
But all that is doing is creating duplicate content! Republishing the occasional article isn’t a big deal, but if all you’re ever going to do is drip content that is already published on other websites, that won’t help you at all.
So make sure you drip quality, unique content on a regular basis.
Let’s move on to our third pillar.
Search Engine Marketing Pillar #3:
High Quality Backlinks
What are backlinks?
It’s simple!
They’re links back to your website from other websites.
If you want to have your website move up in the search engines, you need to concentrate on creating these backlinks.
High quality backlinks include social signals like getting people to Like, Pin and Tweet.
(Note: Tweeting doesn’t actually create a backlink, it’s simply a social signal but I include it in the list because it’s still important to search engine marketing.)
A “Pin” on Pinterest, on the other hand, creates “do follow” links back to your website if someone Pins an image.
Other methods of getting backlinks include creating good quality feeder pages on Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Hubpages.
You can also use social bookmarking like Digg, del.icio.us, and Reddit.
Another great source is guest posting on other blogs. Find people who want to publish unique content you have written that contains links back to your site.
Go out and actively contribute to forums within your niche that will allow you to have the occasional backlink to your site.
These are all good strategies to get high quality backlinks.
Search Engine Marketing Summary
The bottom line is, these three strategies make up the pillars of a good search engine marketing campaign.
You CAN NOT rank well if you are missing any one of these three:
- If your site is poorly optimized – forget it!
- If your site doesn’t have new content – it might shoot up at first, but it will drop back down.
- High quality backlinks will push your website up in the search engines.
If you make a concerted effort and develop a plan to pursue each one of these search engine marketing pillars you will have success getting ranked in Google and securing consistent streams of high quality, target traffic (which means buyers!) to your website.
It’s NOT rocket science, although many people out there want you to believe it is. BUT, it does take work and a lot of “elbow grease.”
After all, everything worth doing does!
So be patient, implement these strategies, and over time you will see your website move up and up.
And because you’ve built it on the solid foundation of the three pillars of search engine marketing, your rankings will stay there!
Now when we jump into more specific tactics and strategies you’ll have the foundation you need to apply them properly.
Hope you learned something and if you have something to say go ahead and leave a comment below!
Thanks for sharing this great tips. If one of the pillars is missing, then your blog search engine ranking is going to collapse.Thanks also for mentioning pin interest in your video.i never knew it is this useful.I have an account with them and i think it’s time to leverage it. Thanks once more.