I came across a great article in USA Today about search engine optimization (SEO) today. The information is common knowledge to us in the web industry, but great for website owners just getting started or trying to improve their search engine rankings.
The gist of it is simple, just putting a website online isn’t likely to get you the top spot in any search engine, because there is simply too much competition. Lets take, for example, a Google search for “steamboat springs lodging”. Look in the upper-right corner of the screen and you’ll see this
This means that if you wanted to get top spot in Google for this search, you are competing against 3,350,000 listings!
So how do you compete? Either you pay to play or you put in the time to make it happen. For many small businesses starting out, paying for search engine advertisements isn’t feasible. The good news is you can still get a great listing organically. Organic search engine results aren’t paid for, but are deemed to be most relevant on the subject by the search engine. Good organic results are captured with good old blood, sweat, and tears. This article highlights two techniques to grasp a top spot organically, quality incoming links and updating and improving your own site.
To get quality incoming links, look past the link farms and other scams that claim to quickly boost your site to the top. In reality, your site is more likely to get banned or “sandboxed” for attempting to spam the search engines using these techniques. Quality incoming links must come from other legitimate (and preferably popular) websites.
One method mentioned in the article is to use web forums and comment forms on blogs. To find these sites, do a search for forums and blogs in your area of expertise. Once you find a relevant site, try to add to the community with helpful comments or by answering other users questions. Be sure to tactfully drop a link to your website in your signature. Not only will the search engines notice, but other members of these online communities will too.
Once you start getting visitors from the links you have dropped across the internet, it is critical to keep your site updated and informative. We not only want the search engines to easily be able to index your site, but we also want to intrigue new visitors to your site. If people find your site interesting, they’ll give you free word of mouth advertising and help your incoming links grow. The key here is to keep your site updated on a regular basis. If your site never changes, people will stop coming back to it and stop linking to it. If you have a blog or otherwise update the site regularly, users will keep coming back to see what’s new.
In review, here’s the run down of using these techniques to boost your organic listings. Start with a site that is informative and easy to use, then:
- Seed (not spam) the internet with unobtrusive links to your site.
- Update your site frequently.
- Repeat.
