Search-Engine Optimization, or SEO, can seem like a mystery
to even informed social media professionals. With so many components that go
into getting your page a good ranking, how can you keep track of all the pieces
that matter AND implement a winning SEO strategy? SearchEngineLand.com has
taken a stab at organizing the apparent chaos with its Periodic Table of SEO,
arranged by on-the-page SEO, off-the-page SEO, violations, and
blocking. Here are a few takeaways gathered from it; for more information,
view the chart from Search Engine Land.
Content is King – Topping the “on-the-page SEO”
category, content continues to be the most important element to a webpage’s
success. Winning content is that which includes quality (both in being written
well and in having information of substance), researched keywords, engagement
(tracked by bounce rates), and freshness.
Link it Up – SEO success isn’t just about what you do –
it also involves what your readers do on your site, including what links they
post on your pages and how much your page gets linked elsewhere on the Web. Are
the links from trusted, respected web sites? That builds your SEO credibility
as a likewise trustworthy, respectable page. Again, quality matters more than
quantity.
Beware Spam and Blocks – SEO is smarter than some give
it credit for, catching those “tricks” some try to implement to up their page
rankings. This includes the major faux pas of paid links, linked spam, and
cloaking (showing search engines a different page than humans). These techniques
make the quality of your content questionable – after all, if it could stand on
its own legs, these sort of techniques wouldn’t be necessary. Another SEO
damager is if – and how many – people are blocking your site from their search
results. If someone actively avoids your site, it reflects poorly upon your
ranking.
