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Since the rise of Google back in 2000 SEO has become a crucial element to any brand’s marketing plan.  More users are spending time on the internet in searching for various products, services, research or comparison shopping.  This presents a tremendous opportunity for any brand that’s seeking online visibility.  With over 75% search market share alone Google leads as the top dog in offering business owners the opportunity to get found by their target audience.  Reaching your target market though isn’t as easy as it may sound and will definitely require some serious elbow grease to get the results you’re looking for.  In 2011 alone we saw some dramatic changes to Google’s search algorithm which have made a drastic impact on SEO.

“How do I get to page 1 of Google?”  Perhaps a common question that every domain owner across the web would like to get answered.  If SEO is an area that you’ve been involved in for quite some time there’s a bit of a mutual understanding here in the following.  For the newcomers I would highly suggest that you take good note of some of these tips.  SEO stands for a huge part of your internet marketing plan and shouldn’t be taken lightly.  Fortunately there are a few tips that you can take note of to improve your SEO rankings for long term success.

Top 5 Tips for SEO Improvement

  1. Content Is King – In 2012 we will experience a serious shift in visibility of domains that provide relevant content (for good).  Forget about what anyone has told you in the past regarding content on your website.  Contextual-based search engines such as Google feed off content and this year GoogleBot will be looking for lots more of that.  Ensure that content on your website is easy-to-read, provides relevance to your target audience and gives value to readers.  Content marketing strategies such as blogging  on regular basis can help with your visibility and ensure that there’s ongoing connectivity between your brand and target audience.
  2. Be Social.  Get Social – Making a mark with your brand starts with social media engagement.  Regardless of your industry it’s imperative that social media  becomes an integral element of your SEO strategy.  Facebook now has over 800 million users of which 49% alone are right here in the U.S.  A huge chunk of potential customers that may be looking for your products and services.  As Twitter continues to burst with over 200 millions user accounts and millions of tweets being sent out on daily basis it’s important that your brand immerses within to capture untapped potential.  Additional social strategies beyond networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTUBE (just naming a few) consist of content sharing integration with your website content.  Your domain should be bursting of relative content around core products and services that you offer while providing user sharing capabilities.
  3. Blogging Has a Meaning – It’s not a new marketing strategy by any means.  Perhaps one utilized for quite some time although as of the last couple of years become an effective strategy for content marketing.  Your website needs a blog that contributes to thought leadership and establishment of authoritative content that speaks to your core offerings.  Blogging for SEO offers tremendous amount of potential in reaching your target market, promoting core offerings and contributing towards your organic visibility in search engine such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.  Even more so relevance, consistency and freshness are three main factors that would benefit your brand.
  4. Link Building – One of the areas that most business owners struggle in when it comes to SEO is link building.  It’s a crucial component to your organic success in ensuring that your domain acquires additional search visibility.  The purpose of link building for SEO improvement consists of establishing visibility of your domain on the web by linking into other relative domains or directories that are industry focused.  Even though the majority of search takes place on Google, Bing and Yahoo there are various other directory website utilized by online searchers that can help benefit domain visibility.  This particular strategy helps create authority and contributes towards overall PageRank performance.
  5. Measure, Analyze,  Optimize – Benchmarks and traffic analys should be an integrated part of any internet marketing plan.  Over the last few years I’ve become an avid user of Google Analyticsand have found it to be a crucial component in online marketing.  With its recent changes and improvements in platform functionality there’s lots more you can squeeze out of it in tracking, measuring and optimizing brand performance.  For SEO reasons specifically Google Analytics provides an insight into individual page activity along with search queries used by your target audience.  An integral part of your SEO plan should consist of extracting these organic search queries that have relevance to your core offerings and using them accordingly in content marketing endeavors.

Avoiding the SEO curve in 2012 may simply be detrimental to brand success.  Following these simple tips can help ensure consistency in organic visibility and acquisition of new targeted leads.  The recent Google “Freshness” Update always provides relevant information on how the search giant continues to improve and refine its algorithm in an effort to continue the improvement of search results.

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