The best answers to this question are Content and Social Sharing. Having the right content with the right length, talking about the right things, to the right people all while being great!
Social Sharing consists of creating great unique shareable content that is done in the context of the platform.
When you do these things well, Google and other search engines take notice and move you up the rankings.
You're probably going to hear my answer in one form or another from a couple other people here on Clarity. Working the last couple years in this crazy online marketing business one thing always seems to top the latest shiny object in regards to SEO. Are you ready?
Content and Context.
You have to have the content that people want to see and you have to use that content in the correct context for the online platform you are using.
You still have to have the content that people find helpful or at least fulfills some sort of need for your audience. If you don't have this then why would people help your SEO by sharing your stuff? Make sure your content is worthy of being found by the search engines.
And when it comes to content use the correct content on the platform you are using. This means if you're using YouTube then you better have some great videos. If your on Tumbler and you're not taking advantage of the fact that you can use GIF's you're missing out. Pinterest with horrible photos? Don't bother.
Pay attention to how the platform is displaying content. With Facebook right now you can see them trying to move more toward a visual platform as opposed to text based sharing. With your posts in the past you would just past a link to the page you wanted to share and hit enter. Now, for Facebook, many suggest pasting the link and then when the image preview comes up deleting the link you posted. This leaves a link to the site via a preview image and looks much better and gains more attention when people see it in their news feed.
With SEO you can try to outsmart everyone with the latest schemes to game the system, but content and context always matter. Build your SEO the correct way and then you won't have to worry about the next Google update making your web site disappear.
With a little more detail I could help you out in regards to specific SEO tactics you could use. All you need to is schedule a call so we can chat about your unique situation.
Until then Good Luck!
SEO techniques that gained popularity in 2014 were as follows:
1. Social Bookmarking: Let us start first to find out what you mean by social bookmarking. In simple words suppose if we find something interesting on the internet like website, picture or fact then we save its URL link in our computer for future use, but suppose if we want to share this link to our family and friends then instead of saving this link to our computer you can save it to the web. Now since your bookmarks are online, you can easily share them with your friends. In other words, a social bookmark contains a link to a web page that people want to share or remember. There are many websites on the internet like Digg, LinkedIn, Reddit, Fark where you can bookmark your content by submitting it to them. These are called bookmarking sites that are extremely useful for getting traffic to your content and website. Therefore, these sites help you to collect such links and resources that can be shared or organized in the manner you want and under different categories to suit your needs. You can also choose to make them either open to the public or make them private for your own reference.
2. PDF File Submissions: You can create a search engine optimized PDF file for your business website and submit it to PDF submission websites to get better traffic for your website. Search engine gives the same importance to PDF files as it gives to HTML files. Getting a backlink here will get your keywords optimized and bring more traffic. PDF file submission sites such as Slideshare, issuu, yudu etc. are frequently updated and hence search engines crawl these sites more often.
You can make use of MS Word to make a PDF file. Write an article or story related to our websites in MS Word and embed important keywords and backlinks into the article. Then convert these text files into PDF file. After conversion into PDF file, we just submit into the PDF file submission websites that boost rankings.
3. Infographic: There is a “three-second rule” the techies talk about according to this rule, a regular user of the internet just take three seconds to decide whether to stay on the page or move on. So our information should be so clear and visual so that a user doesn’t take more than 3 seconds to understand the information. So Infographic is a new SEO technique that is a visual representation of information. Instead of writing an article or blog post that takes a lot of time to read and understand and confuse readers, you can just create an Infographic that ties it all information together in a handy dandy image. Although Infographics are images and Google does not count an image but here our target is impatient web users. An infographic benefits SEO campaign because, if it’s good, it will be shared and build your link portfolio.
Page loading time really affect the Google ranking so infographic can help you decrease your page loading time. They are also more fun to read than a long blog post or article and tend to be visually appealing using attractive design and graphics. Since infographics display information in a pretty package so people can quickly grasp a concept, and as a result lots of inbound links back to your website as more and more people share it.
4. RSS FEEDS: RSS, also commonly known as Really Simple Syndication, is a feed format used to publish frequently updated content from sources such as blog entries, news headlines, and other standardized formats. An RSS feed is important for your site because you can allow your readers to subscribe to your content. In turn, they can share these feeds on social networks. The sharing process continues, and your site can get more exposure. So by this, you can get a huge traffic on your website.
Some search engines also allow you to submit your RSS feed and they use it to index your site. Adding RSS feeds can help a site ranking, but in a less direct way than the unique content available on your pages. Obviously, if you are directing multiple feeds to your page, it is not practical or useful to take all the links and rewrite the content on your own pages.
5. Social Networking: Social Networking is now the most important part of changed SEO techniques. The social networking sites have a reach on the internet that is far and wide and indirectly will help in getting your business on different sites and search engines. You will also generate traffic for your website and may find many subscribers for it too. Each social networking site has its own unique benefits that are completely different from the other. Let us tackle two of the most popular networking sites namely Facebook and twitter. All other networking websites such as Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram also work on same principles.
By creating profiles pages on these most popular social networking sites using your own name or business name and linking all your accounts to one another you will be creating a larger network of your own which will present you to the search engine prolific user and the chance of finding you and your business on the network is much better. You can choose any networks that are popular among your usual customers. Be consistent in your posts and publish only relevant, interesting content.
6. Business Reviews: Reviews are a key factor in local SEO. Search engines show reviews in several places and often use them as a ranking factor too. Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like Google+, RateitAll, Shvoong, Stylefeeder, etc. Reviews left on your Google+ Local page are the most important ones, with reviews on authoritative sites, like Yelp, Yell and Scoot being secondary to those. Reviews are typically in a written format (from one sentence to several paragraphs) and are accompanied by a score or rating, which could be numerical (e.g. 1-5) or descriptive (e.g. Poor – Excellent). Only a score or rating given holds less weight than a written review.
Reviews are important for three reasons – they affect your ranking in Google’s local search results, they affect which search results get clicked on, and they affect the buying decisions of customers. This makes them as important as backlinks and citations in a local SEO strategy. Even if you do manage to rank your business at the top of the local search results for your chosen keywords with very few reviews, or even none at all, you probably won’t get many new customers if the businesses ranked below you have more reviews and/or a higher rating than your business.
7. Linkbait: Linkbait, also known as click bait is a piece of content placed on a web page – whether it’s an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace – that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible. In simple words, we can say that “linkbait” is something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. With the rise of the blogosphere, meritocracy and social bookmarking sites, all it takes is one interesting page on a site, someone to notice the page, and a few people to share the link – building up a large number of links across the internet. Linkbait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature. This is another way to increase your link popularity. If your linkbait is quite interesting and unique then it is shared by many people on social media websites. And this starts a chain reaction by which you can get a million backlink to your website without doing anything.
8. Exploring Multimedia: Multimedia is the most important part of 2014 Off-page SEO techniques. Develop interesting videos, images, and presentations, about your products, their usage and about frequently asked questions. You can post photographs and appropriate content on picture and video sharing sites. Some of these could be YouTube, Slideshare, Pinterest, Flickr, Prezi and Instagram.
9. Competitor Analysis: A basic guideline to keep in mind while developing any strategies or links is diversification. Be vigilant and if you notice your competitors doing something at a forum or directory that you do not have a presence on, register immediately and create a profile. You must try to be on the maximum possible number of forums to ensure additional reach.
10. Search Engine Submission: Search engine submission is submitting your website URL to most popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, AOL etc. There are thousands of search engines on the internet but make a list of the major search engines for submission of your website. Directory submissions are an Off-page SEO technique. Very often people tend to get confused between Directory submissions and Search engine submissions considering both as same. But both are different. Search engines use computer programs called Robots to automatically crawling each page through the web, reading content, and adding it to their databases. As webmasters, we add our website’s URL getting our site indexed. Whereas the directories used in Directory submissions are run by humans who review websites and categorize them within their directories. Yahoo and DMOZ are the two biggest directories on the web. You can also use local directories for your state, town, and niche for submissions.
11. Questions and Answers: QA websites are also a good technique for getting good traffic. There are many QA websites on the internet. You can choose some of them which are having good Page Rank. Now, first, find any question related to our website content and then answer them and give backlink to our website. But when you are submitting a backlink in the answer of the related question then it should look natural otherwise your backlink will be removed from the website. If you do not find a related question, you can add your question and submit your link in the answers. But before answering any question do some research on the internet about the question and try to submit unique and fresh content.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
