It seems like every week I’m reading (or writing) another article about how important regular content writing is to the success of any website or ecommerce solution when performing an SEO campaign and/or just keeping up their position in the SERPs. Regular timely content is also important for keeping your customers engaged and coming back to your site. On top of that, if you really care about whatever the topic of your website is, then you should have plenty blog about on a regular basis.
However, it can be easy to get trapped in the content zone. The blinders go up and you don’t see any other aspects of good SEO health. But there’s much more to ranking well over time than just writing stuff for your own site. Take a look at some of our ways to shake up your SEO rituals.
Write for Someone Else
This first one isn’t far from the writing sphere, but it does have an added benefit: inbound links. When you go outside of your own site and do guest blogs for someone else, they come with valuable links back to your website. These are good because they not only boost your reputation with Google and other search engines, by telling them that other sites link to you and find you relevant. They also have the very tangible benefit of boosting traffic by boosting the number of eyes who see your writing and can click that little link back to your site. Guest blogging is win-win and should definitely be part of your SEO methods.
Tag Things
You site should be a rich media experience, with pictures, video, and sound (podcasts, etc.). If you run an online store, make sure to include lots of images of all your products. But just including images isn’t enough – you need to tag all those images to help them show up in search engines. Make sure that your tags align with your keyword needs for maximum SEO effect. Even if you can’t always squeeze the proper keywords into all your images, their ability to show up in search engines will bring people to your site based solely on their interest in whatever the image is. They can still convert into shoppers down the line, though.
Videos need tags too! Make sure that the meta data for your videos has all the keywords that people searching the net will need to find their way to your website. A good video can sometimes be more effective than an image when it comes to converting customers, as videos have greater potential to be entertaining and encourage users to linger on your page for longer.
Get Social
This can mean a lot of different things. For sure you need to be reposting your blog posts and other writing/SEO efforts via your Twitter feed and Facebook wall (as well as LinkedIn, and whatever other social networks you use). But you can also grab links back to your site by posting on other people’s blogs and on forums. These links aren’t as strong as the ones you’ll get from guest blog posts, but they do serve a purpose.
For starters, they put your name out there, which is always important. Readers see you sounding off about topics. The more they see you, the more they start to think of you as a knowledgeable voice within the community. Sooner or later they end up following a link back to your site. Then you’ve got another regular reader, or Twitter follower, or Facebook fan, or (hopefully!) maybe someone who converts.
Being a regular commenter on a guest blog can also help you out when trying to get a guest blog spot. If the blog owner sees that you’ve been coming around for a while, he or she is more likely to trust you and give you a chance to post.
Wrap Up
There’s a lot more to keeping up in the SERPs than just writing timely, topical content with good keyword density. You need to diversify you efforts with videos, images, guest blogs, and comments on other sites. The more places your name, website, ideas, opinions, and links back to your site appear, the more chances you have that someone will end up where you want them, and then happen into that revenue funnel. Remember: creativity counts for a lot in SEO.