The most important element of SEO

There are many elements involved in search engine optimization. SEO is like tiny pieces of a puzzle. When you have one piece, you don’t really see anything and it doesn’t really do anyone any good. If you have a couple of pieces you can start to make out what the puzzle is going to be. Once you get them all together, you have a pretty awesome picture of spring flowers. Or , in terms of SEO, people that conduct a search for a topic that you blog about are able to find not only your blog, but they are able to find content that is pretty gosh darn close, if not exactly, to what they were looking for. Isn’t that a wonderful thought. It’s like digital matchmaking or something.

But no matter how many pieces of the SEO puzzle you have, none are really quite as effective as providing QUALITY CONTENT (the one I need to work on most, yikes!). For example, someone might find you blog easily on a search but if you haven’t added a post in 6 months they may be unlikely to come back. Or if they find your blog and the content stinks, again, the are not going to link to your content (a.k.a. recommend your site to friend).

I don’t know about you guys, but for me, the content is often times the hardest piece of the puzzle. To try to overcome that I follow several blogs that are about improving content.

Copyblogger –  Copywriting tips for online marketing success

Seth Godin – He is a marketing guru

ProBlogger – blogging tips to help you make money blogging

Chris Brogan – Focuses mainly on community and social media

Digital Photography School – Tips to improve the photography of your blog

If all else fails, I look for inspiration in my daily Google Alerts, which are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. They are pretty handy at helping you to  stay current on a particular topic or industry.

The point of the story is, if you write good content, they will come. But if you couple good content with Search Engine Optimization and marketing, the right readers will show up faster.

I have decided to create a new weekly series of posts covering the topic of  Search Engine Optimization for bloggers. I will post a new tip every Monday for the next several weeks.   Some of the tips you may already be familiar with but I’m hoping that with each tip you get a better understanding of how Google robots crawl your site. Ultimately using that knowledge to apply those principles to other areas of your web site.

Now I’m not claiming to have hidden secrets that will send you to the top of a Google search.  Also, there are no guarantees on how this will all work for your site. Anyone that promises these things isn’t telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  But the principles I will discuss will not only help visitors to your site but will also help search engines index your site. So in my opinion it’s a win-win.