Business owners who rely on the Internet for any part of their income understand that SEO is an important part of their online presence. Whether you are working with a limited budget or just getting started in online marketing, you have to incorporate SEO strategies in your marketing plan. Many businesses, wanting to cut corners or costs, will ask SEO service providers ‘what is the most important SEO strategy?’
Are keywords more important than link building? Is social media the way to go? Are web designs and met tags the most important things? The answer depends upon who you ask.
The real answer is there isn’t just one strategy that will miraculously work its magic and bring you droves of visitors. The key to success is a strong foundation and that really comes in three parts: Keyword rich text, information architecture and interface and link building.
Keyword-Rich Text
Keywords are those that your customers will enter into a search engine to find you, tour products and your services. The text on your site needs to be rich with these keywords, marking your site like a road map so the search engines find it easily and can route traffic your way.
The pages on your site should focus on these keywords. The keywords should figure prominently on your pages. They should appear in text, image captions, titles, subtitles, any place that they can reasonably be expected to appear without seeming overdone.
Without keyword rich text, your site will not draw the traffic in needs to. What traffic it does draw may not be easily converted to sales unless this step is done correctly.
Information architecture and Interface
Now that the keywords have been selected and the text for the site has been created, the placement of information on your site is the next step. The location you choose to feature text, images and other media on the page will tell the search engines, and ultimately your site’s users, what you consider to be the most important data.
Link Development
This phase is also called link building and has been referred to as a popularity contest. There is some truth to that reference. Search engines not only give weight to the keywords and their placement on your site. They also consider the number of links that exist to your site. It’s like driving past a restaurant and looking to see how many cars are in the parking lot. The more crowded it is, the better the food and atmosphere are supposed to be. A site that is linked to numerous other sites tells the search engine that others consider your site a valuable and relevant source of information.
Together, these three SEO strategies form the basic building blocks of a sound marketing plan. There are other strategies and techniques you can add as you progress with your site but these three will give you a solid foundation on which you can build. From here, you can add social media platforms and a multitude of other SEO techniques at your discretion.