In my previous articles I wrote about how to achieve total SEO Domination--that''s Search Engine Optimization Domination--in your industry or niche market. First, I talked about patience, which is almost never talked about in SEO, especially to clients, because no one wants to be the guy who has to tell his client it could take up to a few months to achieve the kind of positioning he or she is paying good money for. Patience is a virtue in normal life. In SEO life, patience is the Golden Rule. In the second article, I wrote about Local Search Engine Optimization--that is, optimizing pages for local search results. This is paramount, as the new web is more tailored to local, individualized results than ever before. People want to know where the nearest deli is, the nearest mattress store, where the nearest coffee shop is. If you have your paw in a city, raise your leg and make your mark. If you are targeting a larger geographic region, like a state, you can still do the same thing. The key is to think large and act local. Now I''d like to talk about the third way you can totally dominate SEO in your field, and this is something that most people don''t really want to consider because it is an ego-shattering, ball-busting, irksome fact of life.
Ready?
Get help. Yes. Get help with SEO. But not from a quote-unquote SEO expert like me. (That''s barely saying anything, and I''ll explain why later.) You have friends who somehow are always on top of the latest "big thing." They''re the ones who started using Digg and Reddit when you were still trying to figure out how to get a Gmail invitation. They''re the ones who send out videos of their friends doing stupid stuff on camera and getting traffic surges from viral linking. They''re the ones who wrote that killer web app or new software gadget that has the TechSpot and Slashdot crowd talking. They''re the ones who run celebrity blogs and mock Martha Stewart and hang out on forums with other people who have got this social media thing down.
In other words, they''re more hip, more with it, and more able to boost your SEO abilities than anyone else around, because they''re tapped into the pulse of the web. SEO standard stuff like properly formatted meta tags and page titles and canonization is easy stuff to learn. It''s the guerilla campaigning that''s going to get you the love, and that''s only going to happen when you hang out with people who get it and learn what they have that you need.
SEO is a collaborative effort anyway, when you get down to it. Me--I''m a self-styled expert, though I haven''t been doing it very long. At least, not officially. I learned all the official stuff by reading intensively for months. But I also learned that good SEO also comes naturally if you''re making content that is open for the masses. And I''ve met and gotten tons of ideas from other people who are doing SEO either officially or unofficially, but who all, to a tee, are working the web the way a masseuse works a lumbar.
I have no problem opening up for ideas and getting other people to help--after all, that''s how I learned the basic ropes of SEO--by reading the free knowledge put out by hundreds of other people. I don''t shy away from getting other people who are good at the other stuff to help me in my quest to grab those keyword rankings.
Neither should you.
