Tag Archives | seo

What Do People Find When They Google Your Name?

By Jacob Paulsen on February 5, 2020 in Personal Development

There were 5 of us inside the cab of a Ford F350 driving back home from our week-long trip to SHOT Show in Las Vegas. 12 hours in the car doesn't exactly go by quickly and somehow we got on the topic of what one finds when they type their own name into Google.

I Know What I'll Find

Over the last decade, I've put some effort into tracking search results for my name and optimizing pages that I want to be found when people check me out.

For the most part my colleagues in the car it turns out, haven't given it much thought or effort.

Does It Matter?

I think it matters. When I interview potential employees I Google their name. When I meet someone at a tradeshow or get an email introduction to a new person, I Google their name.

A quick search tells me a lot about the person… even if what I learn is that they don't have much of a digital footprint. In 2020 when I'm writing this, the lack of a digital footprint can be a real bad thing depending on the business you are in.

So How Do You Control Searches For Your Name?

All normal SEO principles matter and of course depending on how common your name is the greater the challenge you have in front of you. There are a decent number of Jacob Paulsens' in the world but nothing like trying to compete on Google for Mark Smith I'm sure.

The things I've done over the years that seem to work:

LinkedIn is a SEO Giant. When I search for a name on Google the odds are very high that one LinkedIn profile will be in the search results. ONE. Make sure you have an up to date profile and make sure you have built out your profile really well. Do you have a cover image, a profile image, a description, etc?Do you have your employment history and credentials? Do you have recommendations? There are plenty of other good reasons to be rocking it on LinkedIn, but ensuring that YOU outrank others with your name on a search engine search is a really good reason.
Twitter is almost always there. For whatever reason when it comes to search power Twitter beats Facebook every time. Generally, when there is a Facebook link in a Google search result it just takes you to another search result page in Facebook. Not very useful. Twitter not only generally outranks Facebook in search but it also indexes specific user accounts and will take the search directly to your profile. Make your Twitter profile awesome and complete. Obviously make sure it has your name… not a nickname but the name someone might type into a Google search when looking for you.

These are the top 4 results on Google at the time of this writing when searching my name. LinkedIn, my business site, Twitter, and then my personal blog. LinkedIn and Twitter just dominate most of the time when I search a person's name.

Have a website that is your name as the domain. Having a website does mean there is a cost and you have to have some basic knowledge and skills to build and maintain said website but if you can get some version of yourname.com that is going to do wonders to control search traffic for your name.
Identify the single place that you WANT to be the #1 search result for your name, and make sure your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all other web assets you can control link back to that website.
As a general rule cross-link everything. On your LinkedIn profile and YouTube channel, for example, be sure to put in your Twitter link. The more all your web assets link to each other the easier it is for Google to see that all of that is associated together and that this “Your Name” is more relevant and popular than anyone else sharing that same name.
Rename images. When you upload an image of yourself anywhere online (Your website, Twitter, Facebook, etc) be sure to put your name as the file name of the image. Also if you are loading it to a website you control; add your name as the ALT title of the image. Almost for sure in the top 10 results on Google for your name is going to be some image results. Google is going to show 3-5 images and give the user the option to see more images that meet that search criterion. Uploading images online that have your name as the file name and/or alt text is going to help you control that part of the search results.

Use Google Alerts to find web content with your name and where possible link it back to you. Google Alerts are a free service from Google that alerts you anytime a given phrase or set of words are found newly anywhere online. I have a few Google alerts set up with different variations of my name and so on occasion, Google emails me to let me know the word Jacob Paulsen has just popped up somewhere new. I ALWAYS check those web pages. If it is about me I certainly want to know what people are saying about me. I might contact the website owner or publisher and ask if they can please link my name back to my website. I might leave a comment if it is a news story, blog post, or article that accepts comments and in that comment include a link to my website. The goal is for Google to see that this webpage that has my name on it also has a link back to this other website that has more information about me. This ensures that the website I control is more likely to be the authoritative source for my name that should rank higher in search results. If the web page is about some other Jacob Paulsen out there I may still try to leave a comment and say something like “hey nice name” and still link back to my site.

Business Owner? Wondering What to Do About SEO?

By Jacob Paulsen on May 1, 2017 in Marketing, Online

I was in church and a man came up to me to ask me a business question. My friend is a local business owner and heard from someone that I know a thing or two about internet marketing. He then asked the question that I hate most of all. Why do I hate this question… because it makes me feel the most helpless…

What Do I Do About SEO?

Ask me anything else about internet marketing and I probably have a solid answer for you. I might be wrong and my advice is only as good as my own knowledge and experience but ask me what you should do about SEO and you may get a look on my face that probably communicates something to the effect of: I feel bad admitting this but honestly you are in big trouble. You are opening up a can of worms that you don't understand, that is super important to your business's long term success, but ultimately is going to cause you more frustration and expense than you would ever willingly take on.

Of all the internet marketing topics SEO is fully in my wheelhouse (currently my greatest endorsed skill on LinkedIn) but even if it is among the things I have the most experience with and among which I've had great success… I would still much rather talk about paid search, display ads, email marketing, or virtually anything else that has some ground of consistent and reliable best practices and immediately measurable results.

SO… next time someone asks me the question, “What Do I Do About SEO?” I'm going to direct them to this blog post. Here is what you need to know:

SEO IS MISSION CRITICAL BECAUSE

Search Engine Optimization is the coveted holy grail of internet marketing because obviously your customers are searching on Google (and other search engines) for your products and services and being among the top of the first page of results will bring you a ton of web traffic and customers forever. Sounds great right? Here is where the problems begin…

WHY IS SEO A HUGE PROBLEM FOR MOST BUSINESS OWNERS

SEO is a long-term marketing plan. Unless your website already has a ton of internet traffic, content, and domain authority (more on this later) you should expect that it is going to take a LONG time to get enough organic traffic from search engines for it to make any substantial dent in your business's bottom line. It takes time.
SEO is a moving target… or at very least its super hard. Search Engines have the job of making sure that customers (searchers) find the very best results for any given search but they have to use code, algorithms, and patterns to determine what makes one website better than another for the end customer/searcher. Marketers spend a lot of money and time trying to optimize websites to those patterns and algorithms used by search engines in order to get to the top of the results. As marketers figure it out, the search engines change it. Its a bit of a game…. until you realize that in order to win you have to care a little less about the algorithm and start just putting out amazing/awesome website content that is actually the best thing the searcher could find/want… and that can be even harder than trying to guess what Google is thinking this month.
SEO is a chicken and egg problem. You need domain authority to get rankings and you need rankings to get domain authority…. (sort of). So, how do you get either? Well a little at a time… inch by inch… fighting for it with content over time. Sound fun?
SEO requires something far more different and expensive than money. Time. Most advertising and marketing is simple. You just give money to a vendor and wait for the clicks, phone calls, or walk-ins. SEO doesn't work that way. If you do it yourself then you have to invest a lot of time. You have to create content and that content has to be awesome. Its consuming and even more challenging when you do it for months on end without knowing if it is working (see number 1). You can always hire someone else…. but…
SEO Outsourced Is Mysterious. If you hire a 3rd party company to help with SEO you have a unique set of challenges. First they will rarely tell you what they are doing. If they told you, you would probably fire them and do it yourself. Second, you are going to spend money for weeks or months without results… and only if they do it right after time you start to see any results at all (see number 1). If they don't do a good job they can do long term damage that you can't even see or understand.

Now that I've thoroughly depressed you…

SO HOW DO YOU GET STARTED WITH SEO?

Here are suggestions that might take the sting out of all this doom and gloom:

Start With Paid Traffic

Your #1 Goal in any online advertising is to optimize your marketing funnel. It doesn't matter how much traffic you can drive if none of that traffic opts in, buys, or contacts you with interest in your service or product. In order for any marketer to optimize the sales/lead funnel they need to drive traffic into it. SEO just can't do that in the beginning. In addition having to pay for advertising will force you or your marketing agency to make the funnel as good as it can be… something you will be grateful for when your SEO work starts to pay off in the future.

Favor Quality Over Quantity

A big evolution of SEO is the move away from content for the sake of content toward content for the sake of a quality user experience. This favors a small business that is low on resources. Don't feel like you have to create a blog and post to it once a week. Instead carefully consider valuable content pieces and spend time and energy making them awesome… even if that means you only put out something once a month or less.

Get Obsessive With User Experience

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer, user, or reader and ask yourself how your website makes it easy (or not) to find the right information, research products, and make buying decisions. How does it look on a mobile phone? What information is missing that would make the customer's experience better?

SEO OVERVIEW CONCLUSION

The objective of this article is to explain the complexity of SEO for the small business owner, while still giving you some clear and simple things you can do to start. This isn't the end-all but it should at least make you feel empowered to start somewhere. Until next time!

Some other things you may want to read next:

The 3 Ps of Getting Web Traffic

SEO or Paid Traffic? A Conversation About Priorities

SEO or Paid Traffic? A Conversation About Priorites

By Jacob Paulsen on October 11, 2016 in Marketing, Online

I was talking to a business owner this morning who is in this dilemma. The business is starting to become stable enough that they want to invest in advertising (we should talk later about why they should have been advertising since the beginning). Today, businesses hear all about how valuable and important SEO is but they are also being sold paid advertising by a variety of vendors. Trying to sort out where online to allocate a small budget is really challenging. Vendors are calling and talking about directories, SEO, social, search ads, social ads, banner ads, text messaging, and much much more. I get it… I spent years being one of those vendors.

For the purpose of today's article I'm going to simply lump all the PAID advertising into the category of Paid Traffic and compare that to SEO with an emphasis on where a new business should begin to invest.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of TRYING to get one's website or web content to appear or rank high in organic search results. If I'm an attorney in Phoenix and people type “Phoenix Attorney” into Google I want my site to organically (not in the paid ads) be high in the search results. This is SEO.

Paid Traffic is any online advertising vehicle into which you insert a paid ad budget and expect to get some amount of qualified traffic to click through to your website.

Today's advertising community loves to talk about the benefits of SEO… and here is why:

When done properly, work can pay off for years in the form of “free” traffic because you did the work to rank well
Vendors who sell SEO services aren't held to a high standard because they are being paid to do something that is often unmeasurable and generally won't show any results for weeks, months, or years to come.

It is easy to see why some small business would be lured in by the idea of spending minimum amounts of money in advertising but getting super high on Google so that the leads and customers come in forever without any significant work. The pitch is however, a big fat lie. Here is how, as a vendor of SEO services, I would have to pitch you if I was being fully honest:

Mr Customer, being at the top of Google's organic search for your top search phrases will pay off endless future benefits but frankly, it often takes years to get into the top five results for competitive search terms unless your website already has a lot of traffic and domain authority from Google. Domain authority is built over time by showing Google and the other search engines that you can and do produce content that is relevant and valuable to an audience which brings me to my next point. The number one core activity in SEO work is content generation. Not junk content for the sake of having content… that stopped working in 2010. I mean legitimately valuable content that is better for the reader/consumer than your competitors content. Now, regardless of the work you are in; I suspect that in order to generate that type of content you will have to be involved. There is nobody at my agency/firm/office that produce content about your company and industry as well as you can so even though you are going to pay me to help you format it and train you to write it in the best way possible YOU are still going to have to write it. Lastly, you should know that because SEO benefits come so long after the work is done; if at all, we won't have enough traffic coming to the site in order to generate enough data to know if the lead/sales funnel is actually working. Meaning; the reason you want traffic to your site at all is because you have a service or product to sell. If we bring 100,000 new visitors to your website and zero of them contact your or buy your product then the work was for nothing. We need to optimize the marketing process and lead/sales funnel on your site in order to increase the CONVERSION RATE of that traffic to buyers/leads and in order to do that effectively we need a steady inflow of predicatable traffic… and SEO won't bring us that for a long time. So not only do you need to wait for any results at all but you also will waste a lot of eyeballs on your site because we won't have enough data in order to optimize the marketing funnel. You should also be aware that we do not own Google, Bing, or Yahoo and despite having some sense for what they are looking for in web content; we don't actually know for sure exactly how they choose to rank sites and they tend to change that criteria and methodology from time to time so its possible that our efforts even if successful could become worthless if the algorithm changes in a way that is negative to the work we've been performing at your cost. Lastly, please know that while we will do “stuff” for the money you pay us each month we won't be able to guarantee ANYTHING and may not have great answers about the impact that our work is having for at least 6 months until after we get started. Ok?

Would you Buy From Me????

Is this starting to make it clear why you need to prioritize Paid Traffic over SEO efforts?

In addition, while paid traffic sources are sometimes finicky or can shut you down for misuse; they are still FAR more consistent and reliable a source of traffic than is SEO.

Now don't misunderstand me… I'm a big advocate for SEO. We take content creation and SEO ranking very seriously in our business. We set goals, and we work to achieve them… but SEO is our long game… Paid Traffic is our short game and it should be yours too.

Resource: Entrepreneurs You Are Machine Builders

Resource: Our Content Creation Formula for SEO

Three WordPress SEO Tricks You Are Likely Neglecting

By Jacob Paulsen on October 7, 2015 in Marketing, Online, Tutorials

You have a WordPress based website and you pride yourself on knowing the SEO basics but are you forgetting to do a few simple things that could make a big difference?

1: Category descriptions. Visit the Categories sub-menu under the Posts menu. Does it look like this?

Its time to add descriptions for each category. Each category has it's own stand alone page called the category archive. Like any other page, you ideally want to have META title, description, and keyword tags on that page. You can find that page here www.yourdomain.com/category/categoryslug. Adding the description for these categories in WordPress will translate to the Description Meta tag on the archive page. Depending on your theme the description may also display at the top of the page.

2: Page specific Meta Tags. It isn't uncommon for me to sit down in a SEO consultation with someone who tells me they have worked long and hard to write awesome META tags for their website. I go deeper into an internal page and BAM… no meta tags at all. Are you so focused on the home page you forgot to write tags for all the internal pages and posts?

3: Bold, Underline, Italics. Another sometimes down played technique of SEO is to use Bold, Underline, and Italics to emphasize certain keywords on your website. Some SEO experts disagree on how effective this is but I've never heard anyone suggest it would hurt. Don't go over board but on each page/post be sure to emphasize at least one keyword you want the search engines to notice.

Becoming a Wikipedia Editor and Contributor

By Jacob Paulsen on August 5, 2015 in Marketing, Online, Tutorials

Anyone can contribute to the content on Wikipedia. Marketers have a particular interest in the site since a relevant backlink to one's site from Wikipedia can be very valuable. Naturally then it would make sense for any web marketer to become familiar with Wikipedia and where possible try to leverage it (within the Wikipdia guidelines) as a tool to drive awareness and traffic.

Relevant Wikipedia Guidelines:

As an author or editor it is prohibited to use Wikipedia to promote yourself, your website, or your organization. These are all considered conflicts of interest and are to be avoided.

Be neutral. This is not a place to get on your soap box. It is a play to play the role of non-bias editorial, confirmed, relevant, and valuable informational writer.

While I do not endorse trying to game the system or break the rules I do think you should consider the following:

Setup an Actual Profile

Anyone without a user account can make anonymous edits to Wikipedia pages but those edits are poorly trusted and impossible to followup on or track as the contributor. Setup an actual user account and work hard to build your reputation by following the below tips.

The More You Contribute The More You Are Trusted By Others

If you are a very active member of Wikipedia it shows in your profile. Editors and contributors are very weary of a new user who starts adding links to an external website. Red flag right? On the other hand if you truly work to benefit the website, content, and community everything you do is likely to be taken in good faith.

Legitimately Try to Add Value

If you focus on how you can create more value for others and less on how Wikipedia can create value for you, in the long run the relationship will be very strong and mutually beneficial. Don't look to articles where you would like to have a link back and work hard to find a way to incorporate it. Instead ask yourself if you have content that can truly add to the readers experience and knowledge. If so add it and do it in a way that will add value to the reader.

Take it Slow – Learn The System

Wikipedia is a unique community with it's own coding language, guidelines, and policies. Don't rush in and start making tons of changes, edits, and additions. It won't help you or the readers. Take it slow. Look for small edits you can make to truly improve content in areas where you have expertise or resources. Get familiar with and comfortable with the processes.

Document What You Do

Every time you make an edit to a page you will have the change to explain your changes and add any other relevant change notes to the “talk” page for other editors and contributors to see what you did and why you did it. If you are really adding value to readers you should have no reason not to be transparent and clear about the edits you have made. It will help your reputation and will also make it easier for you to track past contributions you have made.

Do Digital Marketers Need to Know All Of This?

By Jacob Paulsen on October 15, 2014 in Marketing, Online

Marketing and Advertising present a very complex environment. Marketing experts have to surround themselves with people who have expertise in each part of the marketing cycle and the various mediums where marketing and advertising are placed. Within the digital space there are a lot of unique media and marketing systems used by today's experts. Below is a quick summary of some of the higher level parts of the digital marketing ecosystem for those who may be beginners and are trying to understand the moving parts.

For the digital marketers out there I have to wonder; do we have to know all this stuff really well? Digital marketing expertise is hard to find in our current marketplace. For smaller companies who may not have the budget to bring on a full team of marketers to represent these different facets its going to be difficult to find someone who has a moderate to deep understanding of all of them. As far as making yourself a strong asset in the job market is it better to be widely versed or deeply versed in one or two different media?

I would say both. For the large and small players in the game there is a need for leaders and marketing managers who can talk all the talk and form high level strategies based on a working knowledge of all the aspects of the ecosystem. And that isn't limited to digital. Getting experience and training around traditional ad platforms like TV, radio, outdoor, and print is also key. Within the best organizations however there is also a need for people who are more deeply versed in one specific vertical or medium. Depending on where you currently are in your career in the digital marketing or more broad marketing spectrum in learning and building a track record, you may choose to go niche or broad. Pick your poison and drink it often!

Email

Email isn't dead. Ranked number one in a recent study among US marketing professionals as the highest ROI medium of digital advertising, email marketing is a critical component of any company's strategy no matter the size.

Social

Understanding how to create utility and engagement in the social space is as much an art form as any other marketing medium. Often considered a low cost to free solution, social marketing is a place to invest resources and expertise in order to build short and long term results.

Mobile

Speaking here more specifically to SMS and MMS marketing, retailers and big brands can leverage the number one most responsive communication tool to connect with consumers and drive them to action.

SEO

Currently 70% of online ad budgets are allocated to SEO. This moving target marketing method is about optimizing one's site to make it rank better on the organic algorithms of major search engines like Google. Its half cat and mouse games with the search engines and half an issue of creating truly valuable content and utility in a way that is compatible with technology best practices.

SEM

I prefer to use the term Paid Search but SEM is the term most often used to refer to the practice of buying paid ads (generally pay per click) on search engines like Google based on the location and keywords used by the searcher. The ultimate compliment to SEO efforts.

Display & Rich Media

Generally referring here to banner ads, streaming audio, and video pre-roll sold direct to site, through an ad network, or through an ad exchange while using a high number of data and profile targeting filters and parameters to make sure the ad is being shown to the right people at the right place at the right time at the optimal price.

Data and Analytics

The key need to look at the large amount of data coming from owned, earned, and paid media and advertising across all these various media and come up with key insights that strengthen future marketing efforts and products.

This RSS Trick Supports SEO Strategy and Sharing

By Jacob Paulsen on September 16, 2014 in Marketing, Online

Online marketers are taking and re-purposing your content. Did you know that? Have you see the tweets that say “The ____ daily is out” and tag you or a small number of other users? These daily sites are just aggregate sites that pull together blog posts from many other users that share a common interest or topic or event. If you feel a sense of pride that your content was worthy to be included you need to stop and rethink that.

Google and other search engines don't like duplicate content. The idea that your entire blog post has been republished is not necessarily to your own benefit. It could be hurting you.

There are other ways and methods that are being used to re-purpose content and all of them leverage your site's RSS feed to read and re-publish your content. The best thing you can do to ensure that this is not only to your determent but also becomes and advantage in your marketing strategy is to include a link at the bottom of every RSS feed item that links back to the original post.

If you include a link at the bottom of each RSS feed item you will also make it easier for your RSS subscribers to come back to your site and explore more content. You also will get more backlinks back to your site whenever your feed is picked up by an aggregate site. Lastly that link will tell Google and other search engines that you are the original author of the content.

If you use WordPress the easiest way to accomplish this is to install a plugin that automatically inserts the link for you into the RSS feed. My favorite plugin is “Copyright Footer RSS.”

Install and activate it and you are good to go. You will start seeing something like this at the end of your RSS feed:

SEO Rank Reporter WordPress Plugin Review

By Jacob Paulsen on June 6, 2014 in Featured, Marketing, Online, Tutorials

One of the frustrating thing of any SEO strategy is trying to measure your progress. There are a large number of great services and products in the market that you can buy or subscribe to but some are cost prohibitive for the small online publisher. A solution I've recently stumbled upon for publishers with a WordPress site is a no cost plugin called SEO Rank Reporter.

SEO Rank Reporter allows the user to input as many phrases and keyword queries as desired to track how any given URL ranks on Google for that query. The plugin refreshes data every 3 hours which and shows if you are trending down or up. This is represented in a line graph and in a matrix style report that makes it easy to see how your site or page(s) is performing over time for specific phrases.

One of the awesome things about this plugin is that you can report on any phrase for any URL. So this allows you to track internal pages as they relate to keywords or phrases. You could also track external sites such as competitors to see how their own SEO is trending.

You can also use a configuration page to see what potential keywords or phrases that the plugin recommends you add and start tracking.

You can set email alert notifications to be sent when any given ranking changes by a certain number of positions. This is an especially powerful feature.

The Visits/rank report shows the actual amount of traffic that you are getting to your site for any given phrase you are tracking. This gives you greater clarity as to the value of a high or low ranking for any given search phrase or query.

I've been using this plugin for about 4 months now and I'm impressed all around at how effective it is considering its a no-cost WordPress plugin. Enjoy!

Rules For Successful Blog Posting on WordPress

By Jacob Paulsen on September 27, 2013 in Marketing, Online, Tutorials

I have previously recorded a tutorial video about how to publish blog posts on WordPress but I have neglected to really cover all the necessary elements of a successful blog post… both technical and strategic.

A Compelling Title

Your title is a headline. It alone will generally determine who will read your content. Sell your blog with the title. Leave out symbols like the &, %, “, #, @, etc. These generally convert to code when syndicated to places like Twitter.

Always Include An Image

Images not only make the content more presentable and professional but they also help your content to stick out when you share it on sites like Facebook. It gives Pinterest lovers something to pin and many WordPress themes will look to your images to create thumbnails for your home page layout or mobile blog layout. Along those lines be sure to always add a featured image (this can be the same image you use inside the blog post content).

In Content SEO Tricks

It is important to try to include some of the keywords within the text body of your blog post. Try to specifically include some of those keywords in Headings, Bold, Underline, Italic, Image Alternate Text, and Titles. These are the ways to draw extra attention to those words when the search bots read the page.

Always use the Excerpt

The built in WordPress Excerpt field is your place to build extra sizzle. This is the text that will show up directly under the title if the page displays in search results on Google or the like. It is also the text that is used on social networks like Facebook when the link is shared. The Excerpt should include some of those same keywords but most importantly needs to sell the content and make a compelling case as to why someone should proceed to read the full blog post.

Using Categories Correctly

Categories within WordPress serve two important purposes. The first is to help site visitors navigate your site content and find what they are looking for. The second purpose is to further help the search engine bots to index your content. Don't have more than 12 categories and try to post content evenly across all of them.

Using WordPress Tags

By default the tags you list for the blog post act as the Meta Tag keywords read by search engines and they also act as a deeper navigation tool for site visitors. Depending on your WordPress theme, your selected tags may appear below your blog post content to help readers find other similar relevant content. Don't stuff too much here either; using between 5 and 15 tags is a best practice.

Linking to Your Own Content

Another best practice is to cite old blog posts in new content. Linking to other content within your own site does remind search engines to index that old content anew. This doesn't need to be a part of every blog post but on occasion, and as appropriate, don't miss those opportunities.

I hope these simple rules can serve as a guide to help you craft powerful and compelling blog post content!

The Three Ps to Getting Web Traffic

By Jacob Paulsen on September 18, 2013 in Marketing, Online

To get really generic and top level I think you can break any web traffic strategy into these three Ps.

Produce Quality Web Content

If the content on the website isn't of great value to a large audience then no further strategy is necessary because the traffic will rarely come and never stick. The cliche in the industry has always been “Content is King” precisely because it is the foundation to all other strategies. One must consider a content niche with a strong emphasis on understanding the target audience and their needs. Producing Content is the first P of the three Ps of Web Traffic in the same way that Content is the first C in the three Cs of online marketing. It is first and it is critical.

Proper Technology and Formatting

I have seen many organizations suffer from poor technology that stops traffic like putting a closed sign on the door of the business. If the search engines cannot read or index the content correctly they will not serve up your pages when people search for relevant content. This means a lot of things including the right meta tags, sitemaps, permalink structure, 404 handling, sub-domain management, and more. Some technologies have gone a long way to ensure this is made as easy as possible. WordPress, Joomla, and others are popular for that very reason.

Promotion

If you want to get traffic you have to let people know your content is there. Promotion can be done in a lot of different ways and this is integral to a search engine optimization strategy but also has everything to do with direct promotion in the more traditional sense. To be more specific, promotion includes much of what you may do with building communities on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, via Email etc. It also has to do with becoming a category expert on popular forums and discussion boards relevant to your topic. Where you may have an advertising budget, promotion also includes buying advertising online or offline.

This may all sound all to simple and obvious but I have found that if I can take seemingly big topics and break them down into three simple concepts it becomes much easier to teach and to keep all the strategies in line.

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