SEO and Backlinking
It's no secret that Google is the industry leader for Search Engine Optimization. Ultimately whatever they do, other Engines such as Bing and Yahoo are quick to follow. Now more than ever content creation is king. Backlinks are still a huge piece of the website industry but Google has been wiping out Black hat practices (making thousands of temporary junk links back to your webs in an attempt to trick the search engines) left and right as of late. Because Google has now leveled the playing field for backlinks, it is actually easier for us to rank based on quality content more than ever.
Silo Site Structure
Siloeing is common term for a website architecture that where your website is divided into content sections based on categories. For example, if our website is about fruit, we would keyword the root page for fruit, but focus on category pages for Apples, Oranges, Bananas, and Pears. These are called silos. Within these silos we write many articles about each category, but we do NOT link to another silos. Without getting into too much detail here, the main concept is that these silos are blocked off from each other. An article within the Apple silo does link to other Apple articles, but does not link to articles in the Orange silos. The silo structure is difficult to setup and often involves a professional to be involved. Siloeing does work, but the results will take time. You also need to be committed to publishing content regularly to your site.
10 SEO Strategies that work before involving backlinking
- Claim / Link your Google My Business page, your website, and your Google Business together.
http://www.google.com/business/,
https://support.google.com/business/answer/4569085?hl=en,
1) Create at least 1-4 new articles/pages per month. Add a section where at least excerpts or headlines rollover on your homepage. This is the key to being crawled/indexed by Google often. Sites that update content more often, are crawled more frequently. Articles should be around 500 words. My rule of thumb is 4 paragraphs, with four sentences each. Do not worry if you have less or more, it is just a guide.
2) Write with a 1-3% keyword density as a maximum. Do not sprinkle throughout your articles the same keyword phrase over and over. When you build up a reputation with Google, and have generated dozens of articles all centering around similar topics they will know who you are.
3) Create a Facebook page and post links to your articles often.
4) Create your Twitter Profile and link it to your Facebook Page. Anything that is posted to the Facebook page will now automatically be posted as a "Tweet"
5) Have an aged domain name with high quality keywords in the name. Let's Gus Smith owns a shredding company. He also owns gussmith.com. The problem is that the site will have a very tough time ranking for keywords that have anything to do with shredding. We aren't saying you can't own gussmith.com, but we recommend you also buy tulsapapershredding.com. A Google user is much more likely to search for the term "Tulsa Paper Shredding" than "Gus Smith". This is called an Exact Match Domain (EMD). Here are some other tips on buying domain names:
6) Only buy a domain name that ends in .com, .net, or .org. Do not buy any other extension, unless you can get your hands on a .gov or .edu.
- No more than 4 (key)words in the domain name.
- Find a domain that has been aged
- Once you have purchased a domain, do a 301 redirect to the main site.
- Do not buy domains with dashes in them. This has been termed a low quality EDM by Google and will not help as much as it once did. Instead try to add "Best" or "Buy" to your domain name to make it unique
7) If you haven't already, incorporate Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Analytics to find out where your traffic is coming from. Review these monthly to find out what is working and what sections will need improvement.
8) Get Reviews. We are no future tellers, but reputation used to not matter in Search Rankings. Now it does. We don't know how much stock Google will put into your online reputation, but we know it has grown in the last few years. Get Google reviews, Kudzu Reviews, and Yelp are great places to begin. You will be called by each of these websites to see if you want a premium listing. You do not need one, but it is always interesting to see what they have to say.
9) Provide different pages towards low hanging fruit. Tulsa may have a lot of competition for "Tulsa Paper Shredders", but guess what might not: Broken Arrow, Owasso, and Bixby. Instead of trying to go after the big search words, set your gaze towards the outlying areas and optimize where there is simply less competition. Go one step further and highlight down to the elementary school district.
10) Add meta descriptions, Open Graph, and Twitter Card, and alt tags to your pages. These are items that are not visible to the person browsing your page, but they are important. Meta Descriptions should be unique between each page. They should not be excessive in length (120-150 characters). Meta Descriptions are an old practice that has not gone away. Make it unique to the page you are referencing.
Have a question? Need some advice? We are here to answer your questions. We understand that you do shredding and that not everything in this article makes as much sense to you as it does to us. Every site and situation is unique, and we would love to chew the fat with you if needed. We can be reached at 800-616-9598.