The Three Key Aspects to SEO – Post Panda

SEO as most people know is a constantly changing target and the reason why is because the search engines are constantly trying to stay ahead of the SEO gamers that seek to position their’s or their client’s web pages in prime positions in the search engine results pages. Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. on the other hand seek to present what they consider to be the best and highest quality matches to the enquiry that has been entered into the search box.

You may ask why do the two objectives clash? And the simple answer is that people with the best sites that provide the best information, solutions to problems, services and or products, in other words content, may not necessarily know very much about SEO at all. The consequence of this is that they can be left at the starting blocks when it comes to being found and listed high up on search engine results pages. Don’t get me wrong, great content is always the starting point for getting a decent page rank and, for natural evolution of a site to a position of authority with the search engines, there is always a need for top quality unique information. The problem for the search engines is how do they determine that is the case with the tools they have available.

The latest thinking on the subject is that there are now three key aspects to SEO:

1) On-Page SEO
2) Off-Page SEO
3) Social Signals Optimization

The on page SEO has pretty much stayed the same in recent times, it involves selecting the best keywords and placing them in the correct positions on the page. Locations such as URL addresses, Titles, Headers and throughout the textual content. This has all been discussed in greater detail in this category Keyword Optimisation

Off page SEO is primarily about getting more links to your pages using all the means available. This can be acheived through article writing and syndication, press releases, blog commenting, forum participation, link exchanges and many other means. Again this has been discussed in greater detail on this post – Link Building Strategies

The main thing that has changed with respect to this particular aspect according to many experts is that the links have to be from high page-ranking sites and the recommendation is no less than page rank 3. Personally I think that this has yet to be proven and that testing the theory a little more is probably necessary. That is not to say that the links don’t need to be both indexed and relevant, plus of course a higher page rank should indicate quality content, so of course if you can get PR3 or higher from a relevant site then it certainly wouldn’t do any harm. I am just saying don’t dismiss lower ranking pages too readily.

Social signals optimization is all about activity and how much of a presence your web pages are seeing on the social media sites. Managing your presence on social media sites can be very time consuming and with the best will in the world most people will struggle to fully engage on more than one or two social media sites effectively. The intention for any social media site is that you interact and establish relationships within the communities there, the objective being to find potential customers through networking and relationship building. Selecting the sites that compliment the topics you are involved with is critical to succeeding in this endeavour. For professional businesses offering services or products, LinkedIn is an obvious choice and many companies these days also establish business pages on Facebook, a facility that Google+ also now offers. Another major player is Twitter, and every entrepreneur worth his salt will at least have an account, maybe several if they operate in different genres, to promote their on line presence whatever it is.

With search engines checking how many tweets and re-tweets your pages are getting, who mentioned you on LinkedIn and Google+ and how many people you are reaching on Facebook, you cannot really ignore this aspect. But going back to my original statement, you will find it difficult to manage more than a couple of sites effectively, so don’t even try.

Use services like OnlyWire to post your web pages, articles or blog posts to multiple social media sites and then concentrate on your one or two chosen social media sites that compliment your activities best for full engagement and relationship building. This will mean of course you are only paying lip service to many of the social media site, but at least you will have a link posted there and you will be able to manage your primary social sites much more effectively.