SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is a strategy in reverse engineering. Professional SEOs look at the sites that rank high on search engines and do their best to determine why those sites rank higher than others. They can also consider the actions they take on any campaigns that they personally influence and of course they read what other SEOs are saying. As you can imagine, this process can be pretty extensive. If determining Google’s “secret sauce” was easy, everyone would be on page one, right?

But as complex as it is, there are still some fundamentally simple things that one can do to their website to improve organic rankings. Often times, these basics get ignored while the “advanced strategies” are pursued. For anyone who is new to SEO or for the DIY SEO-er who should probably be out running his/her business but likes to tinker with stuff like this, here are some basics that you should consider.

SITE STRUCTURE

In a nutshell, make your site easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to understand. Keep it clean – even simple. Use keywords in your URLs and title tags. Have a clean site map and don’t have broken links or bad pages on the site. In other words, have a good web designer who understands SEO and can create this in a way that’s easy for users to use and spiders to crawl. Using a tool like wordpress will take a lot of the guesswork out of this for you because it’s all pretty much built in.

ON SITE CONTENT

You’ve got to have content on your page. And right now in 2012, Google’s Panda algorithm likes lots of original and fresh content. In other words, don’t tell me what you do in 200 words or less. Elaborate. Tell me what you do, how you do it, and why you do it better than anyone else. Describe your services in great detail. Sure, we all know what a plastic surgeon in Phoenix does, but if you’re that plastic surgeon and you want to rank for rhinoplasty, don’t just list that as one of the services you provide. Tell us what rhinoplasty is and how it’s performed and why you’re the best choice in Phoenix for anyone wanting rhinoplasty. Have an entire page of your site dedicated to rhinoplasty. The more content you have on the subjects for which you want to rank, the more of an authority on that subject you will appear, and Google will reward you with high rankings.

Keep your content coming. It’s 2012 and you need a blog. I don’t care if you lay concrete or sell homemade purses. Google expects fresh content and sites with blogs have a distinct advantage over those that don’t. “But how do I write a blog about my industry? There’s only so much I have to say about what I do.” Good question. Here’s the answer – don’t just write about your industry. Write about the topics that your clients want to read about. If you sell sod, start a blog about outdoor living and landscaping. Not every article needs to be about your specific product or service. And if you don’t have time to write a blog, look for an author who can. [Call me. I know a guy.]

OFFSITE LINK BUILDING and CONTENT MARKETING

It’s no secret that Google (and other search engines) look at the incoming links to your site. They feel that if someone else is linking to you, that’s a “vote” for you and it’ll help you rank better. [Read “Backlinks are Like References”] The more votes you get, the better.  Okay, that’s not exactly true. It may have been true at one time, but not in 2012. Today, you need links from sites that are RELEVANT to your topic, TRUSTWORTHY (older sites, maybe even with some social signals on them) and AUTHORITATIVE (domain authority score, PageRank, incoming links of their own). It’s a battle of quality vs quantity of links and in 2012, quality is winning.

That means that you have to find these sites that are relevant, trustworthy and authoritative and get them to link to you. In a perfect world, all the great content that you’ve created on your site will simply inspire them to link to you because you are awesome. In the real world, you may have to reach out to these publishers and persuade and convince them to link to you. [Just hire a link builder. Seriously, this is not an easy task!]

One way to encourage these other sites to link to you is to provide content for their site. They too know the value of fresh, original content and will often allow you to provide it (and include a link back to your site within that content.) Here’s the thing – these are human beings we’re dealing with and that means that you can’t provide some scraped, spun, ‘bot-created garbage. You’ve got to provide something worth reading – hopefully something awesome. You do that, and you’ll get your content out on other people’s sites and you’ll get some high quality links out of the deal.

SOCIAL MEDIA

There are blogs and books that go on and on about the importance of social media. So how am I going to cover it in just a couple of paragraphs? I’m just going to hit on the most basic of basics when it comes to social media as it pertains to SEO.

Search engines are paying attention to social signals. I’m talking about tweets and likes and +1s and such. So if that article on your site or your infographic has some social votes, the search engines will likely take it more seriously than the other guy’s article sitting in a vacuum, with no comments, no likes, no nothing. That means you have to get some eyeballs on your stuff and you’ve got to encourage your visitors to make their social voices heard. [PLEASE +1 or tweet this article!!! LOL]

Use the social channels to broadcast your content. As soon as I’m done writing this article, I’ll head out to post it on Google+, Faecbook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ve built up friendships, circles and followers and that will hopefully result in some traffic to the site, more social signals, and better rankings.

At the VERY LEAST, post to Google+, because if you want to rank on Google, you have to play with their toys, and right now, they’re favorite toy is G+.

Have I forgotten anything? Heck yes, I’ve forgotten (or failed to mention) a ton of strategies and elements of SEO, but you can read more of “Let’s Translate” if you want to go deeper. This one was for you guys who wanted to go back to the basics of SEO.

Thanks so much for reading.

David McBee