5 Things You Should Know about SEO for 2013

 The year 2012 was one of the most active years for search engines especially Google. We have seen several official updates to Google’s algorithm and among which, were countless Panda and Penguin updates. These changes made a huge impact to most online businesses and SEOs need to adjust to these changes.

Did you know that Google did all these updates to increase their revenue and profits? In fact, Google relies on organic search just as much as their Pay-per-Click (PPC) product for profits. They value what users expect to find, because if users are not satisfied with the search engine experience, chances are they will look elsewhere (in other search engines) and these will result to a drop in Google profits.

As far as SEO is concerned, here are the 5 things you shouldkeep in mind to improve your website’s searchability:

1. Monitor Your Backlinks

You should forget about old techniques when getting backlinks to your website. Since the Penguin update last year, Google is now checking websites with clean and natural backlinks and place these higher in search results.

2. Optimize Your Content for Users

Remember to write content for users not for search engines. Anticipate what users are looking for and give them what they need. Try to look at your website from a user experience point of view, users expect to find what they are searching for and if they don’t get what they want, users will tend to look at other websites.

3. Have a Good Site Architecture

Maintaining a clean and organized site structure is a good start to optimizing your website. As mentioned in No. 2 above, user experience is important-- thus, you need to make sure that your website is user-friendly and inner pages are easy to navigate; to also make it easier for search engine robots to crawl all your pages.

4. Optimize Your Website for Local Search

Since search results are designed to place higher depending on the proximity of the searcher, you should optimize your website for local search. Failing to optimize for local search can be the difference between someone searching you and finding one of your local competitors instead.

5. Incorporate Social Media Marketing

With the help of social media, your website can generate more traffic. Many people use social media to create, share, and exchange information and ideas within their communities. Imagine if these communities from social media talk and share your website to their networks, no doubt it will have a positive effect on your website in terms of branding and traffic.

Source:

SEO Blog: 2013: Top 5 SEO Tips for Content
SEO in 2013: 7 Surprisingly Simple Factors That Will Take The Lead