It’s known that most people prefer to watch a video than read text or look at static images. Video usage is on the rise, with more than 95% of UK homes (and rising) have broadband its becoming much more accessible.  YouTube is rated the 3^rd most popular site in the world, video is here and here to stay.

This is the conclusion of the SEO lessons from Identity, we have hoped that you have found them useful and informative. In closing there are a few other important things that I wanted to go over.

Site Builders

I didn’t talk at all about Site Builders and this is an important topic.

Unfortunately many people are living a perfect example of “If you build it, they won’t come“.

Now that your site is optimized, your link campaign is under way and you are diving into social media, it’s time to talk about maintenance.

SEO is an ever changing industry. Optimization is not a “set it and forget it” kind of thing. You have to monitor rankings and tweak your site if the results you were hoping for don’t happen. Even if you get the results you were after, you need to stay on top of industry news and make any necessary changes to your site. If you don’t stay current with what the engines are looking for, you risk losing your rankings.

• The blogosphere is now 70 million weblogs wide
• About 120,000 new weblogs are created each day – which means 1.4 new blogs are created every second
• 1.5 million posts per day which means 17 posts are made every second

What does that mean?

Some people might think it means there are so many Blogs out there how could my little Blog get noticed and make a difference? That’s not the right way to look at it though, and here’s why:

The search engines like to see that your site is growing. They like to see new content being added. It’s actually an important part of their algorithm. Many people add content when they optimize their site, and that is a great idea but you shouldn’t stop there. Create a plan to add content on an on­going basis. We all get busy and forget, but if there is a plan to guide and remind you, you are more likely to remember.

Links are important to the search engines because it shows the engines that other sites think your information is worthy of sharing. Each link is like a vote for your website.

Links are not only good for the engines but good links open up new sources of traffic from relevant, complementary but non­competing websites.

Linking has gone through so many transformations over the years. First all reciprocal links are good, and then only relevant links are good. Then reciprocal links are not helpful, you need one way links.

Google has given us the gift of Google Webmaster Tools. In one convenient location you have access to great tools. In Google’s own words, Google Webmaster Tools is:

“Statistics, diagnostics and management of Google's indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.”

Next we are going to focus on the tweaks we can make within your website and website code to “prepare” your site for the search engines.

These techniques change over time, so staying current with the engines is vitally important to the on­going success of your webpage.

Please note: you should never abuse any of these techniques. Everything with moderation!

Let’s start with your Meta tags.

What does everybody with top rankings know that you don't know? That's the question that drives most people in their quest for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) information.

The foundation of a top ranked site should be SEO Friendly or SEO Ready – both are terms used for making sure the foundation of your site is clean, concise and “friendly” to the search engine bots that crawl your site. Have you ever tried to build a house of cards? Your strategy as the house grew more complex was very important - but none of it mattered without a solid foundation.

To get top rankings and have long term SEO success you simply cannot ignore the foundation of your campaign. 

A solid foundation consists of the following:

Identity will be giving you a series of short lessons to help you with getting better results in search engines. Currently Google has over 200 algorithms that are used to determine how your site will rank. No one knows the details of these algorithms work, but with industry testing and analysis we can use certain techniques that will help with your website ranking. There are no shortcuts (that are safe to use) or magic tricks. The closer you follow and implement the guide the better your site will perform.

Lesson One: Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis

Finding the right keywords is the foundation to your campaign.

Here is an outline of the steps you should follow for keyword research: