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Getting tired of waiting around for your search engine rankings to increase? Make no mistake. SEO is an ongoing process, and results won’t appear overnight. However, there are things you can do to help speed up your SEO efforts.

Focus on increasing social sharing of your content — Building buzz around your content is one of the best ways to speed up your SEO efforts. The search engines now incorporate social signals when generating results. The more times a particular page is shared across Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, the higher it is likely to rank in the search results. This means you need to focus on creating content people want to share. Your content needs to be unique, interesting, and worth talking about. And you have to promote it. You need to push it across all the social networks, and you need to focus on getting the major influencers in your niche to share it as well.

Use guest blogging to get more links — Link building is a very important part of SEO. The more high quality links you have from other websites pointing to yours, the better. But building links can be time-consuming. One of the most popular methods of link building right now is guest blogging. By becoming a guest author on other blogs, you get to share valuable content, raise awareness of yourself and your brand, and include a couple of links back to your website. Check out My Blog Guest to find guest blogging opportunities more easily.

Study the competition — Checking out the competitive landscape in the search results is a good way to see what others are doing that you might be able to mimic and what they’re not doing that you could capitalize on. This offers a quick way for you to develop an SEO plan for overtaking the competition in the search results.

Take it a little at a time — There are probably dozens of keywords you’ll want to rank for and countless pages on your website that need to be optimized. Tackling all of this at once is a daunting task, but if you focus your efforts on just a few things at a time (e.g. building links around a few keywords, optimizing a certain section on your website, etc.), you’ll start to see results more quickly, and you can move on to other tasks.

Ensure proper site architecture — The layout of your site is very important for SEO purposes. The more disorganized your website is, the harder it is for the search engines to crawl it and rank it. Make sure your site has clear, easy-to-follow navigation, and use keyword-rich internal linking strategically on your website.

What are some of your best tips for faster SEO results? Share them by leaving a comment below.

By now, you probably already know that social media affects SEO. The ultimate goal of the search engines is to provide users with results that are highly relevant to their interests. By incorporating social signals into their algorithms, the major search engines are now able to provide results that are more personalized to the individual searcher.
But what exactly are the social signals that are important for SEO? And what does all of this mean for you? Read on to find out, and share your own thoughts by leaving a comment at the end of this post.

Sharing and participation amongst friends
If you’re signed in on Google and perform a search, you’ll notice that many of the search results have annotations showing which of your friends shared this link on various social networks. In the eyes of Google (and other search engines), a search result has more relevance to you if one of your friends liked it than if no one you know has liked it.
Simply put, people trust their friends and other people in their social circles. Whenever you’re looking for a recommendation for a good restaurant, you’re more likely to go to the place one of your close friends recommends than the place some restaurant reviewer you’ve never heard of gave 5 stars.

Level of influence
Not all sharing is created equal. The whole premise of incorporating social signals into search is that a link that people share must be valuable, and if that link is shared by users with high influence, it must be even more valuable. In other words, a link that’s Tweeted by someone with 10,000 followers will be seen as more important than one shared by a guy with 5 followers.
Level of influence matters when it comes to social media and SEO. What does this mean for your SEO efforts? It means you need to strive to get your content shared by the influencers in your niche. That requires building relationships with them over time, so that they’ll begin to notice you, read your content, and share it with their followers.

Volume of shares
Finally, the total number of times a link has been shared across the various social media sites influences its ranking. It makes sense when you think about it. If one link was shared 500 times and another was only shared 2 times, it’s a strong indication that the first link has more importance and relevance than the other.
This means you really need to focus on making your content easy to share, interesting, unique, and relevant to the needs of your audience. And you have to put in the work to really promote it on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, ReddIt…you name it. The more your content gets shared, the better it will be for your SEO efforts.

How do you think social media affects SEO? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

The times they are changing. If you’ve been keeping up with SEO news over the past year, you know that Google released an algorithm update that’s been dubbed the Panda update. The purpose of Google Panda was to put an emphasis on quality over quantity, as it relates to the content on your website and the back links you have from other websites.

Google Panda has served to reduce the rankings of low quality content farms, like article directories, press release directories, low-quality blogs, etc. This way, websites couldn’t any longer artificially boost their search engine rankings by getting thousands of low quality links from these types of websites.
This begs the question: How should you approach link building in the Google Panda era? Here are some tips to help you out.

Steer clear of low quality content farms — In the past, you probably got a lot of your back links from article directories and press release distribution websites. While those websites aren’t totally dead, most of them are on their way out. If you still want to use article and press release marketing, at least be more selective in which sites you publish your content on.

Look out for spammy-looking, ad-heavy websites — You are who you hang around with. If your back links are mostly from spammy, ad-driven websites, it will reflect poorly on your website in the eyes of Google. Do your best to avoid publishing your content on these types of sites.

Skip the blog commenting and forum blasting — Blog commenting and forum blasting used to be moderately effective for earning more links pointing to your website, but now, it’s a total waste of time. And even worse, it could cause you to look like a spammer to Google.

Guest blog on trusted blogs in your niche — Guest blogging is one of the most effective ways to build links. You publish original, quality posts as a guest author on other blogs in your niche, and traditionally, you’re allowed to include a couple of links back to your website in your author bio. Pitch other bloggers in your field to see if they’ll let you submit a guest post to their blog.

Focus on creating link-worthy content for your website — You’ll get the most juice for your squeeze by creating content on your website that other people naturally want to link to. Think of the type of stuff that hits the front page of Digg or gets a lot of ReTweets. That’s the type of viral content you need to strive to publish.

How have you changed your link building strategy in the Google Panda era? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

Working in and around the SEO industry for many years, I constantly hear clients (and SEO companies too) talking about rankings, rankings, rankings. That’s all anyone seems to care about. They want to increase their rankings, so they can get found by more customers and drive more website traffic.

These are all very important things, but guess what? They’re meaningless if one important piece of the puzzle is missing—the conversion. You can have top rankings for all of the most competitive keywords in your niche and your website can get thousands of visits from qualified customers, but if your website isn’t optimized for conversion, it’s all for nothing.

Results are the name of the game. An SEO campaign that doesn’t produce more leads and more sales is a failure. Period.

How to Improve Your Website’s Conversion Rate

All of this leads to one important question: How can you get more conversions on your website? There are many different things you can do, and I’ll go over a few of the tactics I feel are most effective below.

Have a defined purpose for each page – A well-organized website is a website that usually gets results. When each page has a specific purpose, the visitor is able to find what it is he or she is looking for more easily, leading to more conversions.

Eliminate anything on the page that doesn’t need to be there – Contrary to what you might believe, it’s okay to have blank spaces on a webpage. Whitespace is your friend. Whenever you cram your page with all sorts of text, graphics, videos, buttons, forms, etc., you overwhelm the visitor and pull their attention in too many different directions at once. The result? They take no action at all.

Make sure every page has a strong call to action – If you don’t tell your visitors what you want them to do, how can you expect them to do it? If you want to get their email address and personal information for lead generation, tell them that’s what you want (e.g. “Schedule a free consultation by completing the short contact form on this page.”). If you want them to place an order now, tell them to order now. Simple enough, right? You’d be surprised at how many websites get this wrong.

Study your analytics – Hopefully, you have some sort of analytics tool you use to monitor the activity on your website. Pay close attention to this data. Take note of how visitors are arriving to your website and what they’re doing when they’re on your site. Are there certain pages that have high exit rates? Do visitors seem to be lost on your site? Study your analytics and make the necessary adjustments.

What are some other tips you’d offer for improving website conversion rate? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

The question of whether or not to hire a professional SEO agency may not be as deep as what Hamlet was pondering, but it is an important consideration, especially for small business owners.  An entrepreneur is only capable of addressing  a limited number of business issues without sacrificing the well-being of the company.  An I-know-it-all or I-can-do-it-all mentality limits the business owner from concentrating on running and building the business. It also places an owner on a fast track to becoming burned out.

An online presence is a must for 21st century business.  At the very minimum this entails a website.  A website and search engine optimization (SEO) goes hand in hand or else the site is merely a needle in the proverbial Internet haystack.  Accepting this premise moves the question forward to include Who and How.  Who will perform the required SEO and how will it be accomplished?

As far as the company is concerned, the question of  Who is easily determined by a process of elimination.

• Who in the company is an expert in SEO?
• Who is capable of developing SEO rich content?
• Who in the company has the time and skills to focus on SEO and rankings?
• Who is qualified to determine which search engines will be the most beneficial?
• Who can keep up with the changing algorithms of several search engines?

After completing the inquiries, a blank page is a good indication that hiring a professional SEO agency may be in the best interest of the company.  If not totally convinced as yet, then also consider the following:

Cost-Effective Measure
There is a great deal of truth in the old adage, You have to spend money in order to make money.  You can also save money in order to make money.  Hiring professionals in SEO will lessen the cost of the inevitable mistakes made in-house and speed up the ROI with increased traffic to the site. To further  this, conduct research and compare both domestic and international agencies in order to secure reputable services at the most cost-effective pricing.

Dedicated Services
Outsourcing to a professional SEO agency ensures a dedicated commitment to the promotion of the company without sacrificing in-house resources. These resources will be best used preparing the back-end operation to receive the increased traffic and sales that will occur over time.  Opt to receive reports from the agency in order to plan for ramping up operations in line with SEO progress.

Professional SEO Strategies
Strategy is at the very core of search engine optimization.  The most effective strategies are born out of a combination of expertise and optimal implementation.  SEO agencies can supply both, as well as the ability to keep track of and forecast changes in the field.  In this time of unprecedented technological change, an SEO agency is poised to shift strategies commensurate with technology. They also keep the client informed of any new trends that will impact other business strategies as well.

Professional Tools and Analytics
It is the business of SEO agencies to possess all of the state-of-the-art content marketing,  analytic and reporting  tools necessary to provide their clients with optimal results. Their expertise also affords their clients with the tools that address their specific promotional needs. There is no way a small business, absent a fully equipped SEO division, could replicate these benefits without a greater expenditure of time and money.

Access To Learning SEO Standards and Best Practices
Learning is a key component in the success of any business enterprise.  A part of hiring a professional SEO agency is the knowledge that can be garnered about the best standards and practices in the field.

As owners know the story of their own business and industry, the SEO agency is knowledgeable in how to best implement SEO across a number of industries.  The client also benefits from learning what works and what doesn’t work for their particular field without experiencing the pain involved in trial and error processes.  The learning curve is expanded with the professional feedback received from SEO experts.  As the company grows and readies itself to take over some or all of the SEO responsibilities, the existing agency relationship can serve as a continuing learning resource.