If you want to keep in favor with the search engines, you need to keep up with the best SEO guidelines for the New Year. Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and all the rest are constantly changing their algorithms. To keep to the top of the list and to make sure you receive all the traffic your server can handle, you need to remain cognizant of those changes to make sure you’re not only staying in line, but that you’re also providing real value. Ah, there is the key word in the 2013 SEO guidelines equation. Provide true value and you will prevail. Here are more of the best SEO guidelines for 2013.
The Trust-Factor
Most of the best SEO guidelines for 2013 have to do with trust. The search engines want to be able to trust you to provide value for your future visitors. If you try to get one over on them, they will penalize you and you could find your rankings hurting for a long time to come. Keep your web design relevant, your content of great quality and focus on providing a pleasant web experience for your visitors. Do that and the search engines will bend over backwards to elevate your rankings to the top of the search engine listings.
Let’s Start Socializing
It’s official, the best SEO guidelines also have to do with social networking. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube – if you don’t have presences on one or more of these platforms, the search engines may think that you don’t have much going on. The search engines instead want to see that your business is active on the social networks and that you engage your social followers. If you can get your followers to share your content, that will help you even more.
Put links to your social networking profiles on your website so that visitors can click-through. You may show your friends list or your latest tweets. You may even decide to send people to your Pinterest page. The more the party gets started, the more attention you’ll get from Google and the rest of the engines.
Natural Links are the Only Way
When it comes to link building, don’t even think about cheating. Build your links naturally with other high-quality sites and pages. It’s tempting to buy 1000 links, but the best SEO guidelines tell you to build your links over time, such as five or ten per week. You may do more or you may do less, but if you do too much too soon, you may be penalized and banned from the search engines forever.
Diversification
You will also want to diversify where your links come from, as well as diversify the anchor text you use. The search engines like it when many people are sharing your links around. If you always use the same link with the same anchor text, they suspect it’s you going on a massive link-building rampage. Think different and your links will seem much more natural.
Constant Content
The search engines reward content that is frequently published. If you have a Google+ account, you can have your photo and article or content history right there in the search results (with the rel=author tag). The other search engines will also propel you to the pinnacle of their lists, as long as you keep the high-quality content coming.
Relevant and Eye-Catching
For these last 2013 SEO guidelines, think of your average visitor. You want to produce web content that is relevant to that person’s interests and that succeeds in catching their attention. If you can do those two things, you’ll gain favor with Google and the rest and you’ll increase your rankings by quite a bit.
Use engaging headlines, mind-blowing imagery and bring it home with easy-to-use web navigation. The idea is to stand out amongst your competitors so that your audience comes to you whenever they need whatever it is you’re offering. Make sure you are studying your competitors so that you always know what they’re up to and how they’re being perceived by your target audience. You need to be able to strike with excellent content the moment you catch one of those competitors slipping.
These 2013 SEO guidelines come from experts who are constantly testing what works and what doesn’t. We only have to look to these experts who constantly keep abreast of the latest and best SEO guidelines and succeed very much doing so. Of course they also stumble along the way. Luckily, we don’t have to stumble along with them. We don’t have to make the same mistakes, oftentimes very expensive mistakes, in order to learn the lessons we need to learn in order to be successful full-time online marketers. We can go from where we are right now to the very top using the lessons they’ve generously offered to all online marketing hopefuls.
The above 2013 SEO guidelines will help you get to the very top, as long as you put your focus into providing high-value for your visitors, prospects and customers alike. Do that and the rest is all downhill.
