Once you know exactly what is meant by SEO and what are the various processes involved in SEO, it is time to decide on an SEO strategy. Getting your website optimized for the search engines to put you higher on the search result pages is a long term goal. So you simply cannot afford to waste your time with confused attempts at doing it right. You need to have a plan.
SEO Strategy |
Search engines have two kinds of links that they serve when you submit a query - paid or sponsored links and organic links. Organic links are what you are really fighting for when you are doing SEO. They are important because that gives your much more credibility than paid links. Also, they are free! As long as you are doing SEO right, you will be sitting in the top positions of search results for the queries related to your niche.
Organic results are build up mostly from link popularity. And that no longer means that the website with the most links directed towards it will win over the others. Search engines now use way more complicated calculations to determine which links are 'good' links and which are 'bad'. For example - links from government sites and University sites are regarded very highly whilst adults sites are disregarded and even seen as a negatives.
So part of you strategy has to be about getting good sites to link back to you. There are several ways to do this. You can buys links from certain places. The best ones will always be priced the highest. Start networking with other webmasters and exchange links with them. You can also start calling them up and emailing them with link back requests. You'll be surprised how nice some people can be.
But link building is just one part of the game. Search engines are very sophisticated nowadays and they can actually tell if the content is read worthy or just rehashed nonsense. They do this through exceedingly complicated algorithms. This and the necessity to have a long term, organic audience makes it necessary for you to have really good content on your website. Think about it - if you have good rankings, people will come to your site. Then it depends on the content. Good content will keep them on your site and will make them share your link on their social networks. Bad content will simply drive them away.
The other part of your campaign can include paid links, if you have the budget for it. Here you will have to choose your targeted keywords. When these keywords are queried for, your ad will show. The pricing is based on demand. So you have to find out some not so in-demand keywords that work for you.
Doing these things for a month or two should give you ample data to decide where to strike the balance. Crunch the numbers and see what worked and what did not. Add them all up and you will have your strategy in front of you.