Review
We have covered a lot of basic ideas here, so it is time for a short recap:
• Identify audience and set targets (research)
• Do on-page and off-page tasks to increase search engine rankings
• Track progress and adjust as necessary
• A short-term solution
• Online advertising or public relations
• Free
To be successful as an SEO, we need to know how search engines work, how they have evolved in the last few years and in which direction they are moving.
Each project and website is different in scale and targets. A non-profit website has different goals than a site
that is geared to earn money from ad clicks. Do your research, and adapt accordingly.
Long term planning where SEO is concerned allows you to do things once and then not worry about periodic
changes to the search engine algorithms.
Search engines are using time as a variable in evaluating several ranking factors, so expect to be in it for the
long haul.
Do not blindly follow what other people tell you – there is a LOT of misinformation spread about SEO, and the funny thing is that no one knows for sure what they are talking about.
SEO is an art, but more importantly, the only thing you can trust is what WORKS (in the long run).
Having a system to do your SEO will save you a lot of time as well as help you be more effective.
Follow the Pareto principle (80-20 rule) and make sure that you do the most important things first.
Rankings and traffic are not worth much if you cannot convert them to meet your site’s initial targets.
I hope that the ideas presented in the last few pages have helped you understand better what SEO is about and why it helps to approach it with a specific mindset.
This chapter was just the first part in building that SEO mindset. In the next chapter, I will discuss how search
engines work and how you can use that information to streamline your SEO strategies and build a search
engine-friendly plan to dominate search engine rankings.
And once that is done, we will move on to the actual process of doing SEO on a project, from start to end.
Everything we have talked about here – customized approaches, SEO systems, prioritization, long term planning – will show in the processes and strategies that are discussed in this book.
But I am getting ahead of myself – first, we must understand how search engines work.
Great article, a lot of useful information.The news and SEO information has been explained here briefly form the beginning.