Using SEO Shortcuts to Bring Traffic to Your Website

I have yet to find the weight loss shake that helps me drop pounds without exercising and watching my diet. And if there was such a thing, I’m sure there would be other drawbacks or health issues, because this just isn’t natural. Similarly, I have not found a way to get to the top of Google by taking shortcuts and not putting forth the effort. Sorry, fresh out of magic pills here.

The point is if you want to see true results that are long term, this takes hard work. This applies to other areas of your life, and it applies to search engine optimization as well.

It’s not easy to continually produce valuable content and strong link networks. It is easy however to use link directories, leave a few comment spam links, keyword stuff, and purchase fake likes. But these SEO shortcuts, often called black hat techniques, won’t last long with Google’s last algorithm update.

Just as exercise and a healthy diet will always help you lose weight, there are some SEO techniques that will always help bring traffic to your website.

Use the Right Key Words

If you want to bring targeted traffic to your Website, make sure to do your homework and research the keywords people actually type in when searching for products and services. Do not assume that you know what these keywords and phrases are. You may know your industry but you might not know the terms others use to describe your services. For example, a carpenter might refer to his work as “millwork”, but people who are not in the business simply say “carpentry”.

Make Sure Google Can Crawl Your Site

Go through your site and make sure you can reach all of the pages by clicking on regular links. If you cannot, this means Google cannot either and will not index or crawl all of your pages. Not only should Google be able to find all of your pages, it should be very easy to figure out what the page is about. This means that fancy java script and flash are probably not ideal from a search perspective. This will only make crawling your site more difficult.

Make Sure Everything is in Working Order

This may sound like a no-brainer, but more often than not there are details that are overlooked that can be detrimental to your SEO efforts.

Be sure there is no duplicate content, no broken links and your site is easy to navigate. You can create a Google Webmaster Tools account and receive a notification when there is something on your site that needs to be corrected

Provide Valuable Content

This does not mean to constantly talk about your products and services and how you are the best company out there. It is alright to sell your services on your website, but you should also post content that provides value to the reader. Provide content that people care about. For example this could be “how to” tips related to your industry. People always appreciate information that helps them do things better.

When it comes to search, Google’s job is to provide quality search results that real people(not computers or bots) will find interesting. Remember, Google is smart enough to know if people click out of your site after being there for 5 seconds and will rank your site accordingly.