Welcome to the New SEO

The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be downright confusing even for the most seasoned marketing people, so it’s no wonder it throws small business owners through a loop. To help you get the most out of your internet efforts, we at PayAnywhere have put together a list of what your SEO efforts should look like moving forward.

Let’s first define SEO. The folks at searchengineland.com define SEO as the process of getting traffic from the free, organic, editorial or natural search results on search engines. Simple enough isn’t it? Well, sort of.

Gone are the days of targeting key words and then creating an entire campaign on those words. Today, SEO puts a focus on quality and value. You want to create content that is relevant both your customer and your business, then wrap all that up in an excellent user experience. It may seem like a tall order, but you know your business better than anyone, so take the lead on SEO. Make sure your message is getting to the customers using a search engine to do research before they head out shopping.

So what are some of the “must dos” for the new SEO? PayAnywhere believes you need to start doing these 3 things to have positive search results:

1. Social media. In the old SEO, social media wasn’t really accounted for. It may not be a direct factor in your rankings in searches now, but it can build a network of people that will like, share and tweet your business’s message.
2. Blog. A blog is the best way to share the content you want to about your business. Posts shouldn’t be about upcoming sales, but how your business is going the extra mile to help the community, or focus on a new product that is unique to your business or area (i.e. are you the first to have it in town?) Be consistent on posting blogs by picking a day or two each week that you’ll write a post. To meet these goals, you might want to hire a copywriter to craft your blogs with notes you give them. And maybe the most important thing, other than quality content, is creating something someone wants to share with family and friends. This is great word of mouth advertising, and will increase your rankings in search engine results.
3. Be choosy with your links. Just don’t link to anything. Much like your content, you need to make sure that what you link to is relevant. Don’t link to forums or other sites that aren’t an authority you’re looking to feature. You need to have a good filter for any links you offer your customers.

SEO doesn’t have to be daunting, it can be a useful tool to help get more customers to your store or website. And remember, the SEO target is always moving so you never want to stay stagnant – if you do you’ll end up falling in the search rankings, and, in-turn, losing business.