SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is an art. One thing with art, it is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the one who ranks first! In researching how SEO is accomplished there are a few hard and fast rules that seem to form a consistent theme:
- Relevance is key
- Consistency prevails
- It’s all about the content
When designing your strategy, you need to understand what your goal is? Are you trying to market an item? Are you trying to get people interested [for now] to pitch to them later? What is the main reason for your efforts? Are you selling a service?
Once you have the direction, the first action is to research those you will compete with. This also comes after understanding what your business strategy is. How can you research competitors if you don’t know what you are going to do in the first place? See what it is your competitors are doing well. What do you like about their site? What is it about you that will make your offerings stand out from those around you. Define your competitive edge. Once you have the primary difference that sets you apart, above, all others, you now have your marketing focus.
Take that key item and write a few brief sentences on what it means to you. Write some more about what it will mean to your clients. From this, we can start to form our search strategy. We use each of the search engines and start typing in our key word items. What starts to auto-populate in the search list? What are others looking for with regards to localized markets. This is the start of a really good key word marketing strategy.
Simple, yes. Only the beginning.. you bet!!
