Romantic Tips for Married Couples: A Study in SEO

in search of... Originally uploaded by laz'andre.

I noticed a bump in traffic to my website. It is always good to know what is going on with your website. In this instance, the increased traffic seems to come partly from Google with the search "romantic tips". If you search Google for "romantic tips", the fourth item on the first page is a link to my Romantic Tips for Married Couples site. What magic did I use to pull this off?

1 - Work with the search engine, rather than against it People who run search engines like Google and Yahoo want users who use their website not once but many times. How often a user utilizes a search engine is a function of the usefulness of the results returned. If a user searches for "hotel hawaii", they will not be too happy if the search contains a lot of eagles "Hotel California" references. People want relevant results. The SEO people know that by moving up in the Google standings, a website will get more traffic. A lot of SEO advice consists of trying to manipulate the search engine. A lot of effort is spent trying to "beat the system", with varying degrees of success. However, the search engine operators know it is happening and are actively working to block many of the efforts of the SEO marketers. This tug of war between the SEO marketers and the search engine operators means that what trick used to work yesterday will not work tomorrow. Rather than fight the search engine operators, work with them. Put yourself int he shoes of the search engine operator.

2 - Pick a topic Pick a single topic and stick with it. Research your topic. Write on the topic. Become knowledgeable or even an expert in the topic. The natural result of this is that your website will be filled with the "keywords" related to your topic. The search engines will be able to then direct people interested in your topic to your website. Another benefit of picking a topic is people with similar interests will notice your website and link to it. Search engines often use the number of links pointing to a site to determine the relevancy of the site. Meaningful content dedicated to a single subject will make people want to link to your site so they can return often. Another note on topic: pick a topic with broad appeal. A website discussing some book no one ever read is not going to generate a lot of interest. Find a topic that appeals to you and has a lot of other people interested in it.

3 - Fresh content

4 - Develop a community