As a former Search Engine and Social Media insider I can tell you the core of SEO never changes.
1. You have to have a steady stream of unique content preferably related to a niche topic that boost one or more of it's related search terms. You need to know what you wish to rank for and what people are searching for when they find your competitors.
2. You need to be wired for social media. Every post needs share buttons and you media like photos and videos should also have sharing capabilities. Social media shares build natural inbound links and social influence.
3. If you are not already using Google Plus Authorship on your blog post and forum site you need to start as soon as possible. G+ Authorship is you claiming your unique content and establishing the date you posted it with Google. That way if someone copies your content Google will know it's a copy and not penalize your original post by mistake. In addition it creates a ongoing repository of your content that allows the person searching for you as an author to easily find all your great content. This is also commonly called content curating.
4. Build links naturally. While a few exchange links with other blogs in your niche are a good thing it is better to have your great content sighted as a resource in other articles by other authors. Likewise those articles that are shared on social media will generate links as stated before and re-shares will build additional clout for your site and generate social buzz. Don't use link farms or paid linking schemes even automated social bookmarking because Google can tell by the sudden and like clockwork boost your site gets that these results are artificial and they will penalize the content as search engine SPAM.
5. Curate your content or build internal links. Have you ever been on a major news site and noticed that between paragraphs or at the end of the post they will link to other articles on their site that are at least semi related to the one you are reading? These curating links help users find related content worth reading on your site which reduces your bounce rates and increases your average time on site number. It also boost relevance of older content and extends it's shelf life.
6. Don't over optimize: As much as your SEO tools and SEO friends will tell you to repeat X keywords so many times per post etc.. You have to write for humans and not just machines. You can have the perfect 2-4% on page keyword density and read like a tech manual driving away readers. If people aren't reading your content you will still not rank for it so write for humans first. Some of the biggest sites on the web have little to no optimization on their content. Look at Facebook and Twitter as examples of this.
7. Use Alt tags for images and media. Too many images are posted and never indexed losing you valuable traffic and rankings. Make sure your blog or website CMS allows you to easily add an alt tagg which is a short message summing up what the image is of, and also allows you to set a meta title and description for your images.
8. Ping Engines when new content is posted to a blog. I use Feedshark and the internal Wordpress Jetpack tools for rapid syndication and indexing using rpc ping services which are basically blog search engines that update in real time. This benefit to a good self hosted blog means getting new post listed on Google in hours instead of days or weeks.
We could discuss SEO and Social Media Marketing for days so I am going to leave off here with these tips. Search engine optimization is a ongoing topic that will require constant retraining as just when you think you know it all Google changes everything. Follow Moz and Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and other publications and make small adjustments over time. You will love the resulting traffic and targeted visitor sign ups.
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As a former Search Engine and Social Media insider I can tell you the core of SEO never changes.
1. You have to have a steady stream of unique content preferably related to a niche topic that boost one or more of it's related search terms. You need to know what you wish to rank for and what people are searching for when they find your competitors.
2. You need to be wired for social media. Every post needs share buttons and you media like photos and videos should also have sharing
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