No, I’m not talking about a baseball field that was created out of a corn field. Although, that was a pretty good baseball movie, and I love baseball. What I am talking about, is a high-quality, informative, clean, user friendly website that provides value and useful content that other people might want to share.
People are making a big deal these days over link-building strategies, paid links, directory sites, etc. I agree, this is the hardest part of SEO – driving inbound links to your site. You can tweak your copy, refine your titles and meta data all day long, but that won’t make people want to link to you. Most of us don’t have a ton of time to spend on tweaking copy, researching what’s new and exciting to talk about, etc… We probably have a few minutes each day (or week) in which we have some time to sit down and actually write something worth writing. That’s ok! You’re busy, and that’s a good thing! Just try to stay in the mix. You want people to know that you’re still out there, still working, still staying on top of your business. Heck, you might even just post something about that… about the current work that you are doing for your awesome clients.
Google tries to rank pages based on what it feels would be the most relevant and natural results based on the user’s search query. This is why so many sites got penalized recently from Panda and some other big Google algorithm updates. Google saw some unnatural practices and punished them. We have always told our clients that they need to look and sound as natural as they can when they post something online. You want people to naturally link to you. And to naturally follow you. You sensing a pattern here? Use natural SEO techniques!
Well, how do I make my content share-able? What’s going to make people naturally want to spread your information all over the web? Here’s some simple things that you can try:
- Talk about something current, and relevant. Stay up-to-date with what is going on in your industry.
- Provide useful facts or advice that is relevant to your line of work, and to your clients – and prospects!
- Make it readable – people don’t want to read a book on your topic – they want information quickly. Use bulleted lists of facts, or even graphics when possible.
- Write your content on your website, and share it yourself via your social media channels. Don’t just post a link though. Say something in the post about the topic of your article. Usually your title will suffice – although, the title of this post doesn’t exactly spell out what I’m talking about here.
In the end, there are no guarantees. I, nor any other SEO consultant can guarantee you that someone will link to your page from their site. Or that you’re gain a certain page rank from Google because you wrote a blog post about a certain topic. But, if you’re relevant, you’re talking about your industry and your services, and you’re making your content “share-able”, then you’re in a good spot… right where Google needs you to be. You also can’t guarantee that Google is going to see as much value in your content as you do. But, you can try. And try again. That’s what it takes right now, and it’s only going to get harder, and more complicated as Google makes changes. Just keep up the good work and don’t expect things to happen overnight. SEO is a long process, so be patient, be persistent!
Written by Sam Insalaco – Owner, theBrewRoom, LLC.
