We put up our Holiday lights, bought our presents, popped our champagne, took our holiday lights down again… *whew* another year down, thank goodness everything is back to normal! However, in the SEO field, our “normal” has totally changed over the past year.
Lots of classic SEO strategies (we’ll call it the Atkins diet of SEO), that brought great results in years past, have been taken down by Google’s algorithm updates, Panda & Penguin. So, as we are now dieting, hitting the gym, and trying to figure out how we can wiggle out of our New Years Resolutions, it’s also time to suck it up and get our SEO in shape for 2013.
In other words – it’s about quality, not quantity. For all those website owners that just wanted to get something up that was fast & easy, there just isn’t enough nutritional value in content that you’ve grabbed from a syndication factory, changed 5% of the wording then stuck up on your website as your own. It’s time to get out a keyboard / pen/ typewriter and start crafting original, interesting, creative content that your audience will actually like (and hopefully share with others).Here at Booyah SEO, we’ve got 5 elements of your “SEO fitness plan” to keep you on the top of your game in 2013.
No More Junk Content
Too many content strategies in days gone by were based on the “get ranking quick” strategy of finding a keyword, then writing a page of content that was super-optimized for it. This year, it’s going to be all about creating personas (or a brand voice), to help answer the question “What does my customer actually want to read?”
Time to Stop Dating & Get Engaged
Engagement is a critical component of a successful SEO strategy, to help expand your reach as well as send social signals to Google that your content is actually good stuff. Here’s a hint – if your only engagement point on your blog is “Contact Us” or “Buy now!!!” you are missing the boat. We are living in a social media obsessed. If your content isn’t getting liked / Google + one-d / pinned, etc. then you aren’t getting engagement.
Social Media for Branding
Ok – we’ve all known for a while that we needed to get on the social media bandwagon to help boost our reach & customer interaction (a bit like any good diet involves exercise and eating healthier). However, with the changes in 2012, Search Engines have made it pretty darn clear that social media engagement / sharing / reposting etc. is a firm building block in your SEO foundation.
Banking Before Ranking
In other words, conversions are a heck of a lot more important than keyword ranking. Wait…your SEO team is telling you to stop hyper-focusing on moving from #3 to #2? YEP. Google is essentially pounding us over the head to stop watching daily keyword rankings or trying to re-engineer the algorithm to scrape a spot or two ahead of our competitors. Instead, Google’s made it clear that if we take care of our customers with good content & good calls to action, Google will take care of our ranking.
Questions on how to get your SEO in shape this year? We’ve got a quality team of experts that can help get your SEO in gear for 2013 (and beyond).
