Bruce Clay is a world renowned SEO expert, and runs one of the world’s largest SEO companies. In a recent interview he laid out his top 10 tips for SEO success - take a look at what the master recommended below…
1. Do things naturally
There are a lot of SEO consultants out there who advocate the use of ‘black-hat’ SEO techniques - whereby you try to manipulate search engine results, rather than providing the best User experience possible to improve your rankings.
We agree with Bruce here - Google’s objective is provide the most relevant search engine results to its Users. Where you appear in these results is based on a combination of factors - including how well optimised you are, how great your content is, how relevant you are to the User’s search query, and how popular you are to other Users. You can achieve all these things by just building a great website - so why try tricking Google, and risking banishment from their results? Google success can make or break online businesses - don’t make an enemy of them.
2. SEO takes time
“We have done quite well in 6 months (plus or minus) for many clients.” The key point here? SEO is a long term strategy. It takes time to realise success - it’s not an overnight traffic driver. If you’re looking for that then use PPC - Google’s paid search program - however it will cost you! The long term cost-effectiveness of SEO is what makes it so successful as an internet marketing technique - but patience is key.
3. SEO is all about traffic, not rankings
Bruce claimed “Measurement of the success of an SEO program is going to be based on how much traffic it can generate and not based upon just ranking.” SEO is all about driving traffic - so whatever your keyword rankings - make sure you’re tracking how much it’s driving! You can use the free Google Analytics programme to do this easily - which we can install for you.
4. It’s all about the links
SEO experts can get so caught up in the importance of inbound links to rankings, that they can forget they are also a key traffic driver. Without links, Users couldn’t hop from one site to another. By getting links from relevant internet communities to yours, you’ll get new streams of tailored traffic arriving at your site. So give other websites a great reason to link to you - and get creating some great content.
