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I’ve been in the SEO industry for a long time. I’m well aware that there is a plethora of information available on search engine optimization (SEO) and its successes and failures, but I promise not to boring you with numbers and charts in today’s piece.
Instead, I’d like to tell you about my life, what I’ve done, and what I’ve learned so that you can improve.
It’s likely that you haven’t heard of most of these teachings before.
1. It’s better to update content often than to build more links.
I am aware that you need links to rank. Therefore, if you have no links, you should build some. Consider that I have acquaintances whose websites produce hundreds of thousands of dollars every month in affiliate income. And we have clients from all around the world, so we have access to a wealth of information about what works. Yes, links are necessary, but they can only take you so far. We discovered that if you develop fewer links but update your material more frequently, you do significantly better from an SEO standpoint.
And by updating, I don’t mean adding a few words or images here and there; rather, I’m referring to changing that page to be the greatest for your users, regardless of what it takes; in other words, to be superior to your competition.
Consider Wikipedia and how frequently they update their content. It is determined by what is best for users, not Google. Funny enough, this helps them in the long run with Google, as Google also optimizes for consumers. Spend more time maintaining your link building, especially if you have an established website.
If you’re a new website, you won’t have much content, and you probably don’t have many links; therefore, you should focus on establishing more links.
2. Shortcuts are not worth
So, there existed a website known as Battlefield Bypass, which was an expired domain with numerous authoritative links. Due to the fact that it was a national park and a battle occurred on that ground, these links were produced organically and were not purchased. Therefore, I acquired it and converted it into an online c4sin0 site many years ago when I began my SEO profession. Within a few months, I ranked in the top three for the term “Online c4sin0.” This keyword generates affiliate revenue of hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, or millions of dollars annually.
That’s a lot of money, but Google penalized me within a few months, and the site lost all its rankings overnight. I was essentially attempting to scam the system in order to obtain traffic and rankings, rather than offering value. Long-term, the websites that rank highest are those that provide the greatest value, not those that scam their way to the top.
Now I’ve learnt a great deal from this error and others, but when I was younger, I had a shortcut mentality, and if I could go back in time, I would have stopped taking shortcuts and done what was best for users, which would have been best for my career.
3. Brands can rank more easily.
When I was younger, I tried to improve my SEO skills by learning as much as I could about everything, from on-page SEO to off-page SEO. I still try to learn as much as I can, but I’ve gotten smarter over the years, even though I still have a lot to learn. And I’ve learned a lot from working with big companies at my advertising agency, NP Digital. One thing I’ve learned is that brand queries are very important to Google and their algorithm.
If a lot of people who search for your brand click on your result, Google knows that your brand is good and strong. And if your brand is more well-known than your competitors’, Google knows that people like you better.
And as your brand searches go up, you’ll see that your rankings go up, too. After I found out that, I put more effort into building a brand. Building a brand takes more than five years, so you have to be patient, but it helps a lot with SEO.
4. Going global is the fastest way to get more people to visit your site through SEO.
I was once told by a Google employee that most searches on Google aren’t in English. That makes sense, right? At the time, I thought, “Yeah, most people don’t speak English, so what?”
But the next thing she told me wasn’t as clear. She says, “Yes, they don’t speak English, and most searches aren’t in English, but Google doesn’t have enough pages in all these other languages for most topics.”
Once I understood that, I thought, “Oh yeah, I need to translate my content into more than one language.”
So I started doing that, but I didn’t say “translate.” I said “transcribe.” Because you need to change it to fit the local languages.
Now, only about 25% or less of my traffic comes from the United States. This is because I have expanded to other countries. If you want more SEO traffic, you should go global.
5. Don’t only rely on SEO.
I used to think that SEO was the best way to get my business out there. Because of this, I started by focusing only on SEO. Surprisingly, I still like SEO better than other marketing channels, but I don’t think it’s the best. I don’t think any marketing channel is the best.
I now see things in a different way. All marketing channels are good as long as you can get traffic, brand awareness, leads, and even sales from them. So I don’t ignore SEO, but I also don’t only pay attention to SEO.
I pay attention to all marketing channels, both old and new, as long as I can make them work. And if any of them get shut down because a platform changed its algorithm, I don’t have to worry because I have a lot of different ways for people to find me.
