Guest Post: Do's and Don'ts of SEO

Guest Post: Do's and Don'ts of SEO

I'd like to welcome Tim to my space to share some quick tips from the ever evolving world of SEO. As the search engines refine their definition of appropriate optimization and ranking, we too should always be brushing up on our do's and don'ts. Thanks for your input Tim! 




Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short changes often. It is important to stay on top of things if you want your site to do well in the search rankings. Here are some do's and don't right now in the industry. 

Do's

Long Content:

The search engines love long content and likely always will. Good solid content that actually has a point and teaches people is the best way to get good rankings for any keywords that you want. Guest posting on quality sites and leaving a link back to your site is a great way to do this. Make sure you are providing value to someone's blog if they are kind enough to let you guest post. In fact when posting on your own blog as well providing value is the name of the game. When blogging make sure you are writing for actual people and not search engines. You don't want to stuff keywords into a post. At the most use your keyword or key phrase 3 percent of the post. 

Press Releases

Press releases are still a very effective way to boost your site's search engine rankings. When writing a press release you must have something newsworthy to share. It can't be that your cat played with a ball of string. Instead share a new promotion, contest, product, or award you won. Many things can be newsworthy. When writing press releases it's important to get your main keyword into the title of the press release and the first sentence of the  release itself. This is important because its possible your press release will show up on Google News. If you use a paid service like www.prweb.com it will show in Google News. If you don't want to spend money free press release sites like www.prlog.org and www.pr-inside.com can still be effective. 

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting on blogs with high page rank or mozrank can still boost your site SEO wise. I wouldn't do it too often. For myself I only blog comment and leave a link if really want to comment on the person's blog. This way I am always writing effective comments that relate to the topic of the blog. It's really lame when people just comment for SEO purposes. We've all seen the spam comments. The other reason not to do too many blog comments is that I believe at some point the search engines won't incorporate blog comment links into their rankings as much. They may even penalize it like one of the ways I'm about to talk about in SEO don'ts.

Don'ts 

Profile links

You probably aren't familiar with profile links, but if you are and you use them you should stop. Profile links are sites where if you sign up to the site or forum you can fill out a profile and leave a link back to your website. SEO people used to sell huge packets of sites that you could build profile links to. Google in the last year or so have pretty much put a stop to profile links. Instead of boosting a site in the rankings Google lately has slapped sites using profile links. These punishments have been quite severe where some sites have been temporarily de-indexed. To get back they have to start doing good whitehat SEO and write quality content. Basically don't use profile links.

Directories

Directories are websites that categorize other websites and allow you to leave a link. Directories used to be a big factor in SEO but now are pretty neutral. They might help your site a little bit at most or have no effect at all. Since writing long content, press releases, and blog commenting is a much more effective use of your SEO time I wouldn't bother much with directories. 

Paid links

Paid links are much like profile links. You used to be able to buy high page rank links to boost your website in the search engines. Now if you get caught buying links your site is going to be slapped in the rankings. Plus why pay for links if you can network with other people? Just make sure to give back to them so that it is a win win for everyone. 

Tim is a consultant for Interactive Music Teacher where they teach live online drum lessons.