How To Do Decent SEO

How-To Guides

How To Do Decent SEO

If you’ve read anything about SEO you’ll know that there are many methods you can use to push your site closer to that elusive first Google page. But this blog isn’t going to go through them all. It would take pages and pages to cover every trick, organically and artificially, and besides, it’s already been done plenty of times. Instead, we’re going to focus on just one element – arguably the most effective: content.

So what does it take to use content to improve your SEO, drive more traffic to your site and therefore make more conversions.

Create content


When people search on Google they have a goal. It might be to learn about something, it might be to buy something. In many cases it’s simply because they’re bored and want to be entertained. If you can provide content that addresses these needs, searchers will have a reason to come to your site. Your content could be anything: a blog post, a video, a photo, an infographic, a how-to guide… just make sure it’s interesting, well written and most importantly, it provides value. If it doesn’t have value, even just as a source of entertainment, no one will want to consume it.

Here’s an example: Icon Printing is a company that provides custom t-shirt printing in London. On their blog Icon write content on tips and tricks about what they know: everything from logos, screen printing to t-shirt artwork. For anyone looking for advice on t-shirt design it provides real value.

But the process doesn’t end there. If your site doesn’t already get visitors then the content will just be left sitting on the site unread. That’s why the next step is…

Promotion

People need to know about your content and there are plenty of ways to tell them. Use your social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+… wherever you have built a community you need to place your content. Find already established communities who might be interested and show them.

Icon Printing used the social news aggregation site Reddit to publish one particular blog: ‘5 Things to Consider When Creating a Logo‘. Reddit is a vast archive of content divided into ‘subreddits’ with millions of active users. Submitting the post to the Design subreddit (which itself has over 60,000 subscribed users) meant that in one day traffic to Icon Printing’s website shot up.

Engagement

It doesn’t have to be Reddit; there are thousands of forums online, each with its own potential audience for you to find. The key is to behave like a human, engaging in conversation and helpfully handing out free, relevant advice where it will be appreciated; not dishing out thousands of soulless, hastily-crafted links in the hopes of grabbing any meagre traffic you can find. All that will achieve is getting banned from forums quicker than you can paste those links.

Engagement is crucial to sustained growth. Start conversations, listen to your audience and with any luck they’ll want to spread your content.