Anytime I talk to marketing students at UBC, SEO seems to be that illusive, mystifying subject no one fully understands. But everyone really really wants to. It’s like Google’s that popular gal in school everyone wants to ask out, but no one knows how.
So what is the deal with SEO?
I’ve been learning a ton on the subject, from SEO Guru Avinash Kaushik‘s book “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” to random blogs, and eBooks of all kinds. It seems to me that while Google makes its ranking decision based on thousands of factors, there are three that seem to repeatedly come up as the driving forces. Now, make no mistake, SEO isn’t some special sauce you can throw together to get your website dominating search; it takes blood, sweat and tears. But you can do it. Here’s what I think is a great start:
1. Good, Relevant Content
2. Good, Relevant Meta Page Titles
3. Backlinks, Backlinks… and more Backlinks.
These are what I like to call “The Founding Fathers” of SEO. If you get these bad boys down pat, you’re well on your way to crawling up the Google Search ladder.
So now that I’ve told you.. so what?
Let’s elaborate on each section a bit.
Good, Relevant Content
By good content, I don’t really mean good content. I mean this-is-the-BOMB! kinda content that people will share, post, re-post, and read until the day they die. I mean content that highlights topics of interest for the keywords your aiming to rank high for. Want to show up when people search “Marketing Guru Vancouver”? Write a blog about it and use those keywords. Get the blog shared, and re-shared. Get people linking to the blog on their blog, talking about the blog and tweeting about the blog. Alright, I think you get the point.
Good, Relevant Meta Page Titles
This is simple. You know when you have a tab open on your browser, and the tab has a short description of the page? That’s the Meta Page Title. You should be looking to carefully craft this to include all relevant keywords you want to touch on.
Backlinks
Backlinks will come with great I-gotta-have-it type content. But they can also come by developing relationships with people in your industry that might take an interest in blogging about you, mentioning you or referencing you on their website. Keep in mind that Google will know if you’re getting backlinks from sites that are totally irrelevant from your own. “G” will also care more about your backlink if it’s from a popular site. Now get networking and see what’s available out there!
Leave a Reply