Practice Safe SEO - One Of A Kind
Great SEO isn’t just a one-time, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am thing. It takes time, so don’t try to rush it.
If you ask the right questions, you just might get there. Ask yourself things like:
- What am I doing right? (Do more of that!)
- What am I doing wrong? (If it isn’t working, stop doing it!)
- What are others doing better than me? (Try it. You never know, you might like it!)
- Do I have a trustworthy SEO partner? (Because it’s too risky to have any doubts…)
Practice Safe SEO On-Site…
You shouldn’t go off and market a website that isn’t ready for traffic, and SEO is only one part of web development.
Define your brand and express it in a way that makes you truly unique (as in “one of a kind” and “unforgettable”… not the “must pass Copyscape” type.) When in doubt, just be yourself!
Obviously SEO isn’t the only thing you’re after, so get everything that really matters in place. But don’t neglect things like strategic keyword placement, meta tags, optimizing image descriptions, etc.
Going Off-Site For Safe SEO…
If the thought of building links has you wanting to hide under the bed… welcome to the post-Panda era of internet marketing. Relax! There’s no need to worry about the Google Apocalypse…
As long as you don’t go to a back alley to buy cheap SEO, you should be clean. Play it safe and do your research before inviting somebody in. Always remember that it’s about quality not quantity.
The bottom line is that link building is not illegal, nor is it a bad idea. In fact, the Google Gods themselves agree that it takes a lot of backlinks to give authority to a website. However, this is not something you should take any shortcuts on. Publishing content that is likely to be linked to or shared is the best way to maintain an authority website, but if you do build your own back links it should be manually and controlled.
Don’t Be Afraid To Use SEO Tools
Not only is it more interesting, but tools can be used to increase the value of the efforts you put into SEO. They can help you answer the important questions previously mentioned, and teach you how what improvements are necessary so you can be as good as possible at SEO.
Ideally, you should run an SEO audit on a regular basis depending on the size and importance of your website. With the right tools, you can easily compare identical information against prior reports on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.
Some information to look at may include:
- Traffic Sources
- Most Valuable Keywords (that would be the phrases that are bringing you the most traffic, not necessarily the keywords that you are ranking highest for.)
- Locating and repairing any back links that are broken or “spammy”, because those kinds of links will hurt more than help
- Analyzing your top entrance and exit pages
- Monitoring your bounce rate
You might even go in so deep that you determine the leading navigational path(s) to gain additional insight into the way your audience prefers to interact with your website… that way you can give them more of what they want.
In Summary: Safe SEO is What You Make Of It
The goal (of getting found by targeted search engine users) is an important one, and that will never change because the benefits will never change. Yet you take a wrong turn when you put this goal before the more important things… like quality customer service or branding with an unforgettable impact.
You offer nothing of value by attempting to take a shortcut or game the system, and that’s why practicing safe SEO is all about putting people first.
