10 Steps to Success on the ’Net Without SEO
Tadeusz Szewczyk of onReact.com is a freelance search engine optimizer, blogger and journalist born in Poland.
He’s been living in Germany for two decades now. Tadeusz writes about art, design, and SEO.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as we know and detest it is obsolete
in this day and age. When some while ago Philipp asked me to write an
article “How do I optimize websites” I couldn’t do it: The way SEO
works in Germany on Google.de can not really work for international
websites in English. Moreover nowadays you do not need conventional SEO
tactics to have success on the Net or in Google. In order to make a
site succeed in these times you have to forget everything you know
about on page optimization and link building first.
Now we can start our ten step guide to Google and traffic heaven.
- Discover your niche
Be different, choose a topic or product that not everybody else already
covers or sells. Discovering it is not to be confused with “keyword
research” as in conventional SEO. You try to introduce a new niche not
just obeying the Google users demands. Try a different angle. Even a
very crowded place like SEO itself does have new ones. I am indeed the
first blogger to tackle mainly the SEO 2.0 topic.
- Use Wordpress
Instead of “on page optimization” you can install Wordpress that is
search engine friendly out of the box. Wordpress is not only a blog
software, you can use it as small scale CMS
and it will suffice for most average websites. Also “search engine
submission” even with XML sitemaps is not needed anymore with
Wordpress. It pings Google Blog Search automatically so your blog posts
end up in the Google index just a few hours later.
- Create a killer CSS design and submit it to CSS galleries
Traditional SEO is all about link building or getting links. Sites
doing SEO often look crappy. These days people link web sites that look
great just for the sake of the design. Unlike some years ago nowadays
CSS and web standards are the best way to design a site. Now it is not
difficult to create a great design, especially
with Wordpress. Create a killer design for your blog and you will be
linked everywhere. Just check out this
list at CSS Juice.
- Allow trackbacks, use dofollow
Blogs thrive in connection with each other. The best way of connecting blogs is the trackback function. Install the dofollow plugin in order not to treat other bloggers like spammers.
- Socialize, write comments and link other blogs
Link
and mention other blogs and bloggers in your posts. Also commenting in
other blogs is much appreciated as blogging is not a monologue if it’s
done
right.
- Include social media on your site, use social media yourself
Include buttons to your favorite social bookmarking services like
del.icio.us or Stumple Upon. Be careful with social news sites like
Digg or Reddit. They may crash your server and/or cost you lots of
money by driving tons of useless traffic in short periods of time to
your site.
- Write your own content, say something new, express yourself
Write about stuff out of your niche that you know about. Write your own
content, do not just post links to other sites. Say something new that
wasn’t already said by everybody else. Express yourself, do not repeat
yesterday’s news.
- Compile what you know or what others said and publish it
If everything was said and done already in a particular case, compile
it and create a list. Top list are the best solutions as a “200
Wordpress plugins” list is just too big. “10 indispensable Wordpress
plugins” is far better.
- Contribute to your favorite online publications
Do not just publish at your own blog or site. Contribute to other
publications that cover your topic. Try your favorite ones first, as
you probably know
exactly what kind of topic they would like. Most publishers will link
to your site
- Add new content at least every second day
Add new content often enough to create a stable readership. People that
visit your site once a month might forget about it. It’s not always
necessary to post every day but if you write a real blog do it at least
3 times a week.
As you see most of it is not very spectacular and you probably
already do some of it. Moreover no SEO as you know it is really
involved until now. If you are not satisfied by now, you probably need
some advanced SEO or SEO 2.0 as I call it.
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