Search engine optimization is crucial to online marketing success, and in general business success for that matter. There are virtually endless techniques that today’s online marketers use to achieve top results, but there are 4 that outweigh all types. SEO techniques are often highly debated, but these are in my opinion the top 4 things that the search engines weigh the most, and yes, these are in order of importance.
Inbound Links
Inbound links are the currency on the internet today. I have seen tons of websites do very well with little or no content and even poorly optimized that rank very well because of the sheer amount of quality inbound links. It’s no secret that search engines put the most weight on inbound links.
Title Tags
Second to inbound links, title tags are extremely powerful in gaining top results in the serps. Title tags are one of the most direct ways to tell the search engines what your page is about, and if optimized properly, can net great seo results.
Content
We’ve heard “content is king” for years and years and it is still crucial, but not the final say all anymore without other things supporting the content, like links.
Url
Just like I mentioned above that I’ve seen sites do well with nothing other than good volume of quality links; I’ve also seen sites do extremely well in the serps solely on the keyword rich domain name. I’ve literally seen brand new websites gain top rankings for competitive phrases just because they have a great url. There has been great debate on the value search engines place on keywords in the url, and I wouldn’t put it in the top 4 for no reason. Like I mentioned, I have seen sites with good domain names do well time and time again. The main stickler now is that most of the good domains are already taken. So do your research before you register a domain!
Ok, your turn; what do you think? Do you agree?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you SUBSCRIBE to my RSS feed!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related posts:
January 18, 2010 at 8:12 am
Surprisingly, most companies websites fail to understand these basic SEO concepts. I find that many businesses expect their developers and designers to know how to optimize their sites, but they really don’t. This is a good starting place – but it requires someone to pay constant attention to optimizing the site structure and content, and making it a priority.
Bryan Stapp´s last blog ..10 Rules From Sam Walton for Building a Successful Business
January 18, 2010 at 10:20 am
Great article, i think all of these will continue to be important over the next year. However, I also see a strong push on social media happening (with Google’s Caffeine) and think having highly trafficked social media pages(twitter, facebook, etc) will become increasingly popular this year.
Josh´s last blog ..2010 eCommerce Predictions
January 18, 2010 at 10:47 am
Brian, Yes, many companies do put all their seo hopes in their web designers. Some web designers are great at seo, others are not, but it is best to have someone focusing solely on seo on a regular basis. This will be more and more crucial in years to come as many companies are already finding out.
Josh, it will be interesting to see what kind of impact social media will have in the serps in the coming months.
January 18, 2010 at 5:24 pm
SEO is very important and way too many business owners take it for granted. As stated most owners believe or want their web designers to do everything for them, but it very rarely works that way. In today’s world, business owners should keep up to date with the internet.
Cambridge Who’s Who´s last blog ..Infinite Possibilities: Chronicles Vol.1: 2853-2857 where to buy online guide
January 19, 2010 at 7:08 pm
I suppose it still comes back to the basics. Content is king and all the rest are the fringes. Good points on the url. This can be quite painful as not much thought is put into it in the beginning and changing it later is almost impossible.
Paramjit Sidhu´s last blog ..3 Reasons Why New Year Weight Loss Resolutions Usually Fail
January 20, 2010 at 7:50 am
Your right Paramjit. Links may be the currency of the internet now, but you don’t get good links without good content.
January 25, 2010 at 12:55 pm
I think we will begin to see social media content working itself more in the SERP’s in 2010 and beyond.
Getting a a solid social media profile handle is also a component for SEO and is also becoming more difficult.
Social Media Consultant´s last blog ..Social Media Marketing vs Email Marketing
January 29, 2010 at 3:09 pm
I agree with these top 4 criteria. But, remember that search engines also look under the hood. So, if your website has code bloat and broken links and no sitemap, your website will be penalized to some extent. So, I would add a fifth criteria to be search engine friendly architecture.
Bernie Borges´s last blog ..B2B Content Marketing for SMB Business
January 29, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Your absolutely right Bernie. Especially now with Google putting more emphasis on site’s page/load speed.
February 20, 2010 at 2:53 pm
I understand and agree with these 4 SEO methods; however, for the Content point, how do you add relevant and high ranked content when your site is specialized in selling clothes, for instance? Would you recommend adding an Articles/Blog page in the website where you can post relevant information to attract, at the same time, quality-inbound links?
February 20, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Yep. You could have a blog or articles section on your site. You could write about the types of clothes, fashion, etc. Adding the content will help your site in the search results. You could submit your articles to article sites to build links and if they are ineresting enough (perhaps the style/fashion articles), can be submitted to social media sites.
Good question!
February 21, 2010 at 2:14 pm
To add to that, it is also good to grow your site overtime… constantly add more pages, add more content.
The more quality content/pages you have the more opportunities for other people / other websites to link to, and the more traffic you can get for long tail non competitive keywords you could rank for these pages, and the more authority any individual page on your site might have (especially the home page and its ability to rank for competitive keywords) due to the volume of internal links pointing to the main page.
Roy Sencio´s last blog ..How to Rank on Google for the Phrase Cebu Wedding Photography
February 22, 2010 at 6:29 am
Definitely great advice for getting found on the web. The next step is conversion. How do you take that traffic and convert it into a lead. That where engaging content, Social media and solid web design come in. you mentioned that even poorly optimized content can deliver high SERP listing, with strong SEO links This may be true but traffic for traffic sake is not a goal conversion and lead production is. Thanks for the artical.
Don
2ndistinct.com
February 22, 2010 at 3:49 pm
DMOZ and Yahoo Business listings too