I'm no expert in best practices for sure, but from what I am seeing, some common sense and some knowledge about how web traffic works has a lot of impact on the results that you will see.
From what I have learned through reading and implementing different techniques, how you structure your content and pages is very important. Many web properties try to game the system by stuffing description tags and page content with keywords that will generate the best search results. While this may work to some extent, you can reap some noticeable benefits just by paying attention to how your content is presented on the page and what tags you are using for different sections of content.
For those of you that blog using Google's Blogger platform, for instance. If you examine the way that Google generates its default template codes, you will see that it uses h3 heading tags for post titles, while it uses h2 heading tags for widget titles. In essence, they are placing a higher value on the widgets than the titles of your blog posts. The way the heading tags are "supposed" to be used is that h1 tags have higher importance, h2 next in importance, then h3, and so on...
If you edit your code to change all of the widgets to say h5 tags, and then change all of your post titles to h2 tags instead of h3, you will be telling search indexes that the post titles are of higher value, as they should be. If you use the blogger platform, take a look at your code and see what tags are being used. Chances are, you will see that your post titles aren't getting the respect they deserve. A few quick edits may leave you with some noticeable benefits.
In the case of driving traffic, my experience has been that paying attention to the sites that refer you traffic and continuing to deliver links to those locations referencing your updated content will continue to improve traffic. If someone is linking to you and you like their site and content, why not return the favor? I plan on creating a list of some of my favorite blogs to share with readers soon.
Links in and out play a huge role in how high your page will rank in search engines. It's pretty simple... if a link to your post or content appears on a page, and that site gets crawled and indexed, it makes a note of your link and incrementally raises its value. The same is true for site links you place on your page. Basically, it shows search engines that you are participating in the web experience and are not just siphoning value out of the indexing system. In addition, by providing links to valuable content, visitors to your site will have a higher tendency to return, hence giving you more credibility and repeat traffic.
There are several tactics that SEO "experts" employ to harness prime search results for content. Many that are experts in the field deliver on their promises, but many do not. In no way am I trying to belittle the skills of those that consider themselves experts in the SEO field. I certainly am no expert. However, I'm willing to say that if you are willing to do some research, and put in some quality time, you can do a pretty good job at SEO on your own.
One great tool is Google's free Analytics tool. By paying attention to where your traffic is coming from, and by referencing what search terms are bringing people to your site, you can structure your content to benefit from that knowledge.
I'm continuing to tweak my blog to provide valuable content to my readers. I'm also pretty diligent in seeing what brings people to my site, making adjustments, and using my findings to increase the visibility of my content.
As I learn more and can reference how using different techniques to improve traffic help or hinder that goal, I'll be sharing some more posts on the subject of SEO.
Do you have any SEO tips or tactics that you would like to share? Have you ever used the services of an SEO expert? I'd love to hear from you in the comment section below.
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