What’s the easiest way to make fast cash with search engine optimization (SEO)?
If we knew that, we would be too rich to lower ourselves to write blog posts like this.
That said, we were not exactly the last kid picked for Team SEO, either. We do know a few things. And here they are. Or at least some of them. Not gonna give away the store, folks!
Noise is flooding cyberspace. So many different attention-grabbers vie for a limited slice of the consumer attention span. To stand out, you must shock in some way. Maybe this means creating a wild YouTube video. Maybe it means simply just being amazingly fantastic at what you do. Or maybe it means cornering a bizarre little niche of the internet (legal, please!).
2. Don’t Go it Alone.
Don’t be fooled. The web is not heartless. Its currency is human relationships. This is important. It doesn’t matter whether you have the most shockingly cool content in the universe. If you can’t get people to see that content, you lose. Good SEO can drive traffic to a particular site. But ultimately you must have something people will want or will get use out of.
3. The Key is Keywords.
Whether you love Mother Google or live in fear of her, she rules the roost here in cyberspace. To get Mother Google to lay her golden eggs for you (continuing the “ruling the roost” metaphor here), work on your keyword optimization. What language will your potential customers use in Google searches? Build content and other artifacts around those key terms.
4. Get Feedback.
Is your SEO campaign working? Who knows. You must measure it and test it and then measure and test it again. Without quantification, you will be essentially shooting in the dark.
5. Don’t Do It All – and Don’t Do It All Once.
You could go crazy reading all the SEO blogs and tactics and strategies and techniques and “do nots” and “urgent-to-do-nows” and so forth. Don’t succumb to analysis paralysis. Just get out there and pick an SEO approach, and stay with it for a while. Switching horses midstream is no way to make progress.
6. When in Doubt, Simplify.
Remember the old Aesop’s fable of The Fox and The Hedgehog? Every morning, the hedgehog would come out of his little home, and the fox would hunt him down. The wily fox tried hundreds of tricks to nab his prey, but every time, the hedgehog rolled up into a ball, and his prickly little quills repulsed the fox. The moral is that the fox knows hundreds of little things… while the hedgehog knows one Big Thing. Find your one Big Thing. Great SEO will follow.
