New Year's SEO Resolutions
A new year is a great time to break out of old habits and establish new ones. At the January meeting of the DesignHammer hosted RTP Search Engine Optimization Meetup, the group discussed our resolutions for improving our search engine optimization efforts in 2012. Here are some of our top resolutions.
Create Content
Creating interesting, well-written, and original content (sometimes referred to as linkbaiting) is one of the most widely recommended practices for increasing site traffic. As incoming links are widely believed to be one of the most important contributing factors to a site’s search performance, any content that is likely to be linked to is valuable.
Understanding the value of creating quality content is only half of the battle. The real challenge is carving out time in a busy schedule to regularly create new content that others will want to read and share. A modest goal of creating one quality blog entry a month is a good starting point.
Share Interesting Content
Just pushing your own content via your social media channels may result in your followers seeing everything you share as an advertisement. A better strategy is sharing content that your followers may find interesting, often because you find it interesting. Read about creating sharable content.
Content creation is good. Sharing quality content of your own and others is better. Speaking of sharing interesting content, here is an infographic about sharing interesting content.
Continue SEO Education
As search engine algorithms change, SEO practices must adapt. Fortunately the SEO professional is not alone in confronting these changes. Staying up to date with recent SEO developments such as Google Analytics's exclusion of logged in users' keyword searches.
Some sites we read at DesignHammer:
Structure your websites with SEO in mind
Sticking to the above resolutions will not deliver their best possible results if your own website’s structure works against you. Most modern websites are powered by content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress.
A CMS can make it simple to create new content, but most CMSs are not initially set up to support SEO efforts. For WordPress, take a look at our guide to using the All in One SEO Pack for WordPress.