Tips For Search Engine Optimization
The key to search engine optimization these days is to not worry too much about it. As soon as you appear to be writing too much for search engines, and too little for real people, those search engines are going to lose interesting in your site.
There is a very fine line between optimizing a website and filling it with spam. Google isn't a fan of spam anymore.
In 2013, it wants to see users engaging with your site and returning if possible, it doesn't just care how many links there are pointing to your site. It wants quality.
You can still put keywords in your titles and opening paragraphs, and you can still use the odd keyword "alt tag" on your images, but the days of worrying about meta tags, keyword density, and back-links are done. I personally have dozens of page one rankings for my sites and have never filled in a meta box.
What You Can Do
Here's what I would do if writing a new post on my site:
- Choose a keyword as the title/topic of my post. It 100% has to make sense. "Best fishing spot beach miami" isn't going to cut it.
- Put that keyword naturally in the first paragraph of my post.
- After that, forget about the keyword and just write the article as well as possible.
- Share the post with my social networks, Google+, Twitter etc. Encourage interaction and shares.
- Move on to the next post and repeat the process.
Does that sound simple? It is! That is as "optimized" as your sites need to be these days.
You can still use SEO plugins but just fill in the titles only, don't worry about cramming keywords into them, in fact, this can actually hurt your site's rankings.
If you aren't comfortable writing articles, you can always outsource them to others. Give them instructions about keywords and let them go ahead and write it. Don't bother using article "spinning" techniques or other lazy techniques, Google is most likely smarter than you and knows every trick in the book.
Don't bother trying to trick it, embrace it and write good quality content.
Be Patient
Sometimes, when rankings don't appear over night, you might find yourself wondering if you have done something wrong, or what you could do to make an improvement. In all honesty, all you could do to improve is just to ignore your rankings.
If you are doing a good job writing, they will come sooner or later, there is no doubt about that. You have to earn them in 2013, but the good news is, you are no longer competing with millions of "cheaters", Google has taken them out of the game already.
Search Engine Optimization could not be simpler these days. There are those who will point out that you need a sound strategy and a solid campaign, but they are most likely trying to sell you their services. You don't need to listen to them anymore, just concentrate on your content.