The “Holy Trinity” of SEO

It’s so sim­ple, just three sim­ple meth­ods — it’s a won­der every­one doesn’t do it! Search Engine Opti­miza­tion is one of the most effec­tive meth­ods of gain­ing higher SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) — yet so many devel­op­ers neglect the basics and only a hand­ful uti­lize it. The tech­niques used by web-masters and blog­gers alike today range from sim­ple “BOLD” texts to black-hat marketing.

Today, main­tain­ing an online com­mu­nity and writ­ing con­tent for your read­ers is eas­ier than ever. Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tems such as Word­Press & Blog­ger makes it just too easy for one with an idea to share it with mil­lions of poten­tial read­ers. I think, given the sim­plic­ity of such pro­grams, that most tal­ented devel­op­ers and even new com­ers to the game — tend to over­look the basic foun­da­tion needed to reach those “mil­lions of poten­tial readers.”

Almost every blog­ger, web devel­oper and online mar­keter would try to reach the high­est pos­si­ble SERP for their selected list of key­words. This is nat­ural, sim­ply because traf­fic gained from Search Engine Results are extremely tar­geted. Nev­er­the­less, it’s eas­ier said than done — with almost every com­pet­i­tive key­word you can think of — rank­ing sev­eral hun­dred mil­lion results! Still, don’t let that throw you off course, because just THREE sim­ple steps will have you rak­ing in those loyal read­ers and poten­tial clients.

Qual­ity In-Bound Links

First on the Trin­ity of SEO is ‘Qual­ity In-Bound Links’. Links to your site from exter­nal web­sites are very impor­tant for search engine opti­miza­tion. Not only do they help the search engine find your site in the first place, they can also improve the rank­ing your site achieves. If a large num­ber of sites with related con­tent link to you, the search engines will look upon you favorably.

The core algo­rithm behind the infa­mous Google PageR­ank relies on in-bound links and dom­i­nates the minds of many web­site buy­ers across the inter­net. Scour­ing a few web-development forums, you will see that the major­ity of the ques­tions or issues raised float around Google and its PageR­ank. The sys­tem depicts how impor­tant your web­site is, by assign­ing it a PageR­ank and this value solely depends on how many author­ity web­sites link to you.

A lot of the hype recently about “Do-Follow Com­ment­ing” helps a lot, where you seek out blogs that allow do-follow on your URL tag and com­ment on them. It’s one of the more recently appre­ci­ated meth­ods of link-building because it can get you tar­geted links from related con­tex­tual web­sites, and can also bring in a vis­i­tor or two. The biggest pos­i­tive is that, it’s FREE! Com­ment­ing on rel­e­vant sites is obvi­ously free unless they have a paid-membership of some sort. The trick to this tech­nique is to find author­ity blogs in your niche that haven’t been exposed yet as “Do-Follow Blogs”. It requires hours and hours of per­sis­tent search­ing… or at times — just a bit of luck.

Web-Standards Com­pli­ance

If your web­site is coded to com­ply with the W3C web stan­dards it is more likely to per­form well in search engine results or SERPs. The rea­son for this is sim­ply that they are less likely to “trip up” on some code they don’t understand.

Search engines, espe­cially Google, take notice of the HTML code that makes up your page. They are always on the prowl for out-bound links and new con­tent. The more code there is rel­a­tive to the amount of actu­ally con­tent, the worse your site will per­form in the eyes of the crawler. So, you need to make sure that you have the min­i­mum amount of cod­ing required to meet the W3C Stan­dards and also your expec­ta­tions as a blog­ger. The less has­sle for the crawler, the more favor­able you are as a higher con­tender on the SERPs. Always aim to please both your read­ers and your crawler. I would rec­om­mend run­ning all your web­sites through the W3C Valid­tor, to pick up any errors in your coding.

Allow­ing the crawler to under­stand your cod­ing and also let­ting your read­ers enjoy a leg­i­ble arti­cle was near impos­si­ble with ‘key­word stuff­ing’ back in the day. How­ever, these days’ crawlers are much smarter and are able to pick up most of the con­tent as a nor­mal reader would. I said most, and empha­size on this because “Google is the web’s blind­est use.” Even though crawler intel­li­gence has grown expo­nen­tially, they still aren’t capa­ble of pick­ing up images, dif­fer­ent col­or­ing and styles etc., so ensure the mean­ing of such ele­ments is also avail­able in text format.

Rel­e­vant Text Content

Last but def­i­nitely not the least aspect of the trio is “Rel­e­vant Text Con­tent.” The absolute num­ber one thing your website/blog needs for good search engine per­for­mance and ulti­mately loyal read­ers — is unique rel­e­vant con­tent. If your site is not about what it claims to be about then no amount of other tips and tech­niques will help you. Regard­less of design and how visu­ally appeal­ing it is — your web­site won’t rise to the top if it doesn’t deliver con­tent. In sim­pler terms; writ­ing unique con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis is the key to success.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the say­ing “Con­tent is King” and I couldn’t agree more. The many pop­u­lar blog­gers today have offered their read­ers some­thing unique and spe­cial that sim­ply can’t be found any­where else. This is what made them famous, so you think about it your­self — what do you have to offer?

Search Engine Crawlers like com­ing across your unique con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis and that is why Google prefers blogs. If you can pro­duce con­tent that is appeal­ing to your read­ers, and keep pro­duc­ing such con­tent on a fre­quently — you will con­quer the search results within no time!

Go to top