Part 2 of SEO and Visitor Engagement..(Read Part 1)

Safe Ways to Increase Your Search Presence

The recent Panda and Penguin updates at Google have wreaked havoc among webmasters. Nobody knows for sure what works and what doesn’t work. Some SERPs are dominated by low quality websites while thousands of high quality websites have been banished. This has all created a climate in which webmasters are afraid to make big moves.

The good news is that not all hope is lost. It is still entirely possible to build backlinks and rank well for keywords. The key is to do it the old-fashioned natural way. Buying links in bulk does not work like it used to. In fact, bulk link buying is more likely to hurt your website than it is to help.

You might already know the basics of natural SEO, but let’s mention them again:

• Produce fresh, original content and add new posts frequently
• Make your website worth linking to
• Contribute guest posts to other quality websites
• Issue press releases that actually contain news
• Fresh Content

Fresh content is always a good thing. Google likes websites that are updated frequently and your websites has more pages that can rank for long tail keywords. The more pages your website has, the more traffic it gets.

Big Caveat: Do not add new content for the sake of adding new content. Every piece of content you add should serve a real purpose. A million pages on your website will do absolutely nothing if you get pegged as a content farm. Take your time to write every page with a purpose and to engage your visitors.

Make Your Website Worth Linking To

The whole first half of this page basically addressed this point. You make your website worth linking to by engaging the visitor. Useful websites receive links. There is no better SEO strategy than to build a website that people think is awesome.

This is the most important part of building a successful website. A truly useful resource will sustain itself for years. Cheap websites that rely on SEO and new visitors do not last. They do not retain readers and they die as soon as the algorithm boots them off the first page. Make a website that people remember and want to link to.

Press Releases

Webmasters have been abusing press releases for years now and Google knows it. As a result, the typical press release doesn’t do a whole lot of good. But, that doesn’t mean press releases are dead.

Find newsworthy content and issue press releases that are actually worthy of their own stories. For example, don’t waste your time with press releases that talk about the awesome new website you just opened. Take a survey, collect data and issue a press release that provides a unique look at an interesting subject.

Don’t look at press releases as a “gimme links now” SEO tactic. Your press releases need to give more than they take. Mention your own website in there somewhere, but don’t focus everything on your website. Give the journalists out there real news that they can use in their own stories. This gives your press release the maximum potential to get picked up by major news outlets.

This type of press release is a perfect example of balancing SEO and visitor engagement. You are giving people something they want, while also getting something you want. The old days of just taking, taking, taking are gone. You have to produce stuff that people really want to see.

Guest Posting

The same thing also goes for guest posting. Guest posting is still a great way to build links to your site and make connections with other people. Look for high quality websites that produce real content and approach those webmasters with ideas of your own. Do not write for websites that obviously sell links or websites in which almost every new post is a guest post.
Make sure to make your guest posts as valuable as possible. The better your guest post is for that other person, the better it is to you. Make your guest posts so great that they get their own links. This will not only give you more link juice, but it will give you greater recognition as an author. You would be surprised at what kind of a name you can make for yourself with the help of guest posting.

About the Author: Wes Burns is a full time freelance writer and student of SEO. He values old fashioned, high-quality content over the latest link building gimmicks. His latest project is an online storage website located at OnlineFileStorage.com.

The traditional view of SEO is that webmasters must walk a fine line between visitor engagement and writing optimized content. This view says that webmasters must build content that targets specific keywords and find ways to keep that content interesting for readers. It’s a delicate balance between writing for visitors and writing for search engines.

I personally disagree with that point of view. The traditional view of SEO makes it out to be a battle between writing for search engines and writing for real people. The truth is that visitor engagement comes first. Search engine optimization should always come second to visitor engagement.

Bear with me. This is not another “content is king” piece. I still plan to explain how you can rank for keywords and build a profitable website. I’m just going to take a different point of view than what you see at most SEO forums.

Writing for the Readers vs. Writing for Search Engines

Let’s start with writing for the readers. If you don’t write for your readers, your website is doomed in the long run. What I mean by “writing for the readers” is writing content that other people actually find useful, entertaining or controversial. This is how you create a long-lasting website.

The other way you can go is to write specifically for search engines. This means you do lots of keyword research, you base new content ideas on keywords that you want to hit and you try to stick your keyword in the content as often as possible without getting dinged by an over optimization penalty.

The problem with writing for search engines is that it places your website at the mercy of search engines. The next time Google changes its algorithm, your website might be knocked off the map forever. And since you never wrote for the visitors, it’s unlikely you will get much return traffic or type-in traffic. As soon as your website disappears from page one, it is forgotten by everyone.

When you write for your readers, you build a search engine-proof website. You can handle the minor ups and downs because you get traffic from a variety of sources. Your visitors have you bookmarked, people recommend your site in forums and people come back to comment on old articles. This is also known as building an authority website.

A Healthy Balance

Write every article with the visitors in mind first. Even on your high converting pages, make the content useful. Give people your honest opinion and explain their options. If your conversion pages come across as salesy, it will turn people off and search engines will rank it poorly.

And speaking of which, not every piece of new content has to be designed to get more sales. Don’t be afraid to write content that serves no purpose other than to serve the reader. That alone is a good purpose. You will build good will among your visitors, Google will see that not every page is riddled with ads and other people will be more willing to link to you.

For example, I run an online storage website (here) whose goal is to earn money by referring visitors to online storage services.  If you visit that site, you’ll see that not every page tries to sell storage space. I have written long how-to guides about encrypting files, downloading music and increasing computer security. The purpose of these articles is to give visitors useful information, not to sell storage space.

Read more in Part 2

About the Author: Wes Burns is a full time freelance writer and student of SEO. He values old fashioned, high-quality content over the latest link building gimmicks. His latest project is an online storage website located at OnlineFileStorage.com.