It seems everyone in the building industry is buzzing about search engine optimization or SEO — the practice of optimizing your website so that you will “be found” by the search engines.
Competition to top search engine results for long-tail search terms like “St Paul Remodeling” and “minneapolis custom cabinets” is intensifying. Before long, it will be impossible to achieve top rankings without a good link-building strategy.
In his recent Whiteboard Friday video, Rand Fishkin, CEO of seomoz.org, recommends the following quality-over-quantity strategies for article-linking:
1. Avoid mass-submission/ SEO-play article sites. It’s ok to submit a press release to the online services. But as a general rule, copying and pasting a poorly written article into the top 10 (or 50) free article directories is a waste of time.
3. Find sites with good metrics & relevant readership. For example, if you are a company that specializes in green remodeling, you might look for blogs and websites written for consumers who are specifically interested in reducing the size of their carbon footprint, or in saving energy. Build online relationships by contributing to the conversation. But be careful! Blatant self-promotion is a big no-no. Your goal is to join in the conversation and add value for readers. If you do, you can “earn love” and a valuable in-bound link to your website.
4. Make sure you put great content on your site too. So those in-bound links you work so hard to get, won’t be wasted.
Filed under: online marketing
