Ah, yes. Inspiring words of wisdom from Chris Rock. Not the most motivating way to start a post, is it?
Whoa. Hold on. Let’s turn this around.
First, I get where Rock is coming from. If failure is a possibility, the pressure’s on. But when it comes to creative work, you can’t think that way.
Here at TRIdigital’s Studio, we take on audacious projects on a daily basis. Trust me—we’re not nervous all the time. We’re energized by the creative process and excited because we assume success.
And that’s kind of how you have to approach SEO marketing.
SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is a big, looming topic. It drives fear into the hearts of marketing noobs. It can feel impossibly technical, like trying to do cartwheels across a tightrope. But you can’t let the complexity of the topic keep you from making strides. You don’t have to be an SEO marketing expert to improve your site’s traffic, and SEO doesn’t have to be a nightmare topic.
Have no fear. The TRIdigital team does handstands on highwires every damn day, and we’re happy to share our secrets.
About Those SEO Secrets.
Okay. I need to come clean. There actually aren’t any SEO marketing secrets. There’s just industry knowledge you may not already know. Every tip that follows is something you could easily find on plenty of other sites. In that sense, this is nothing new.
Unless, of course, it’s new to you.
There are no top-secret insider tidbits. But there are proven best practices. This two-part series will give you a behind-the-scenes peek at how we do things at TRIdigital—and we’ve had enough success to be confident recommending them to you.
Getting Started.
To get you started, check out this short video we put together to explain what SEO marketing is. It’ll cover the basics in less than 2 minutes.
Helpful content is helpful.
Bill Gates declared that “content is king” all the way back in 1996, and we believe that still holds true. (FYI, the article on the other side of that link is a few years old, but it makes some good points that are still relevant.)
Every piece of marketing material you put out there should be chock-full of practical, useful stuff. There was a time when you could keyword-stuff your content and still get ranked on Google. Those days are over. Not only will you fail to get your page ranked, but you’ll actually push clients away, as well.
Instead, publish blogs and post articles that have value on their own. The more your customer base sees you as an invested expert, the more likely they are to turn to you when they need a pro.
Get your meta on.
Meta titles and descriptions are essential basics. Not only will they help with page ranking, but they give potential site visitors a clear idea of what they’ll find if they click through to your website from a web search.
The meta title is the page title that appears in search results. The meta description is (you guessed it) the description that appears in the very same search results. Here’s what they look like:
Meta titles should be 50-60 characters long. Meta descriptions should be no longer than 160 characters.
Never mislead with meta titles or descriptions. Building a little suspense is okay. You want titles and descriptions that drive clicks without compromising your credibility.
More To Come.
That’s enough SEO marketing info to get you going. In the next part of this series, we’ll explore keyword linking, embedded videos, duplicate content, toxic links and more.
