Things You Should Know Before You Do SEO

Where your website ranks on Google makes all the difference in the world. You need to make sure that you’re using search engine optimization in your business plan. These days, just about every business owner around understand how important a Google ranking can be. A good ranking leads to more leads coming to your website and more conversions for whatever business you’re in. The most beautiful web design and greatest content in the world won’t do a thing if no one ever sees it and with SEO, you can make sure that they see it.

With all that power, a lot of people go into SEO a little bit uninformed about what it really requires. There are three things that you need to consider before embarking on any SEO plan.

Selection

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The first and most important part of any search engine optimization plan is selection. There are millions of keywords that get plenty of traffic. There are some keywords that just about anyone can rank in. There are other keywords that virtually no one can compete to rank in. You need to select the right keywords for your business or all your efforts are going to be wasted.

An obvious example might be trying to rank in Google for the keyword, “pants.” Millions of websites with thousands of customers are competing for that keyword. It’s just not feasible for the vast majority of businesses. A more reasonable keyword for the average business would be “where to buy the best men’s pants.” That is called a long tail keyword. There is plenty of internet long tail landscape that has never been explored. That’s where any small business should start their SEO.

Use a keyword tool to research keywords with some traffic but not too many big name competitors in the results.

Content

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Many of the resources that teach SEO are pseudo-scientific and a bit excessive for the average user. They discuss every possible detail that you need to look out for on your page to perfect it. Many of the things they discuss can help your SEO but it’s not worth spending hours perfecting a single page when there are more efficient ways to increase your traffic.

If you’re planning on doing your SEO without the help of professionals then you need to make sure you focus on what really matters in the long run. Google’s goal is to provide its users with good content, over time they’ll reward it more and more. Don’t get caught up in SEO too much or you’ll lose the focus on creating content that’s actually enjoyable for the readers. Good content comes first. SEO comes later.

Be Careful With Black Hat Strategies

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With that same concept in mind, you need to watch out for black hat SEO strategies. Black hat is the term that people use for the more manipulative forms of SEO. Whenever you consider doing anything to improve your SEO, you need to ask if it’s going to hurt or could hurt any internet user’s experience. Some of the black hat techniques that I’m referring to would include poorly written content spun over different sites for links and other strategies that are just used for manipulating search engines results. Some of these techniques can improve rankings but Google repeatedly ruined previous black hat methods there were and they’ll do it again.

That means, eventually, people who use these strategies will suffer the consequences of lower rankings. Unless you’re a professional that focuses on updating SEO daily, it’s probably best to focus on improving customer experience.

With these three things in mind, you should people able to head into your SEO plan with confidence that you can succeed. SEO is not a short-term business but with a little bit of consistency and a little bit of experimentation, you’ll be raking in the rankings in no time at all.

About the Author

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Justin Hernandez, He like write post about SEO for the past two years. Follow him @ www.zinzz.com.