Opportunities Outside of Typical Optimization

MoreVisibility - July 25, 2008

So you may be thinking something along the lines of, “I have optimized my meta data, looked at the keyword density on the pages, made sure that my URLs are search engine friendly, but I still am not happy with my site’s rankings. What else can I do?”  Well the real answer, is what else can you not do?  The opportunities that fall under the umbrella of ways to improve your site’s rankings are seemingly endless. Today I wanted to focus on a few different ways that can help to improve your overall online presence, all of which come back to the same goal- bringing visitors to your site.

It’s a great start if you have optimized the current content and meta data on your site, but are you adding new content and with what frequency?  Blogs are a great way to share news, ideas, or facts about certain topics with visitors to your site. Yes, this goes back to the saying which still holds true, “content is king” and this is just another way to keep it fresh and updated.  As topics are discussed frequently, visitors will become engaged, will be more likely to view your site as a resource, and will come back often for more information or discussions.

Another way to interact with potential customers is to have a presence in social media. A presence in online communities can enable you to reach a whole new market of potential customers that you may not have been able to reach otherwise. Through profiles on social networking sites, you can communicate and build trust with these potential customers. This can often make them feel more comfortable about working with you. Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn are probably the first three social media sites that come to mind, but there are many others that you can benefit from.

Press releases, which we all know can help with branding efforts, also can contribute to your site’s visibility in natural rankings. When optimized and distributed, press releases have the potential to be picked up by the search engine spiders almost instantaneously.  A keyword rich and targeted press release can provide inbound links and can also be added to the site as another way to incorporate fresh content.

The value of linking should never be overlooked. Inbound links can be gained through all of the above- blogs, social media, and press releases.  These ‘votes’ to your site tells the search engines that another site considers yours to be a valuable resource.  Local directories, organizational directories, and chamber of commerce directories are also great places to start obtaining quality inbound links.

So if you are interested at looking into ways to enhance your site’s visibility outside of the fundamental SEO efforts, these are a few important tactics to consider.