The web makes for the largest marketplace and most probably the most time and cost efficient marketplace too.
7 min read
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As an entrepreneur, you have an idea you are confident about. You have your initial investments in place, a functional business model and a clear idea about your target audience. The next obvious thing to do now is, spread out to your audience. There could be multiple ways of doing it, word of mouth, adverts or be on the web.
By now, you have probably seen for yourself how influential and helpful the web can be. It can connect you to absolute strangers across the globe at any given time. The web makes for the largest marketplace and most probably the most time and cost efficient marketplace too.
You are on the web now, how do you ensure you are ranked high enough on search engines? A better ranking on these search engines shows you in results when a prospective customer looks out for you. You don’t want to get lost in the crowd of searches, do you? Here comes the concept of SEO or search engine optimization.
You most certainly have a brief idea about SEO. My understanding of it is quite related to our real lives. I have seen relevant people refer to you or your business only when they see the value. Search engines are like those established figurines in society. They suggest your business only when your business seems valuable. Gradually other good websites give a link back to you as you have already been recommended by an established search engine. Wouldn’t you agree a shop is good when the mayor of your city says it’s good? It doesn’t always have to be in terms of how much you have achieved as a business, but about how smartly you have promoted yourself and your business.
Here are 5 SEO concepts entrepreneurs should implement in 2018-2019:
Plugins in work great for everything in general if your website is made on wordpress. Plugin doesn’t stop at just managing your meta descriptions and titles for you but does much more. It solves a lot of hidden technical glitches that your website might have been going through. As solopreneurs, we have hundreds of things on our plates and it’s not always possible to pay attention to such details. This Plugin acts like your name label when you go to a party. The name label helps others to know your name, designation and other basic things right. You can update the basic introductory attribute of your blog or landing page so that when Google crawler comes to your website, it quickly identifies you. And if you help Google, then Google is your friends. As the website owner, you can still have control over your features as per your choice. This plugin updates each time google algorithm updates ever so frequently. You can focus on writing and structuring your content while these plugins will take care of the technical SEO.
There are 2 extremely great reasons why interlinking your blog with relevant articles from the past, is good for your SEO. The smartest way of doing it is, strategizing which stage of the customer journey is the Blog targeted at. It could be Awareness, Consideration, Decision or Delight. This will make it easier to interlink your articles with your previous posts. Apart from making your website more relevant, here are the other 2 reasons interlinking is a must:
The amount of time a reader spends on your website increases significantly. This is great for you when you have relevant and interesting links included within your content. Here the audience spends a good amount of time without even realizing how much time has passed.
Interlinking also informs search engines which particular blogs on your website are relevant. These get better rankings based on the keywords you have used and the targeted keywords.
Linking the right articles within your blog will help the inbound lead generation in your marketing strategy. This will abet search engines and social media platforms to bring a customer to the content you have written for them.
You don’t want to distract your audience. It’s like when you go to X brand shop for shopping and come across a great shower gel from another new brand. You will feel seduced to check their store for better deal and content. On the web, the other brand is the website you have provided an out-going link to. You don’t want to divert your audience from your website. There is a concept of LINK JUICE in SEO which essentially can be imagined a juice pitcher with holes. The more holes (out going DO FOLLOW links) you have, the less juice you will have inside. So your aim should be to save the juice. So try giving less out going Do Follow links. If at all you feel link to hyperlilnk other external resources, link them by making them No Follow links.
The right way to do it is, add “No follow” status to all outgoing links. You can either do it by using a code every time you are making a hyperlink
<a href=”http://somelink.com” rel=”nofollow”>Some Link</a>
or by installing a plugin which makes all linking no follow by default. Manually uncheck the no-follow status and ensure all your internal links are “Do follow”.
Plugin name : Title and Nofollow For Links
This is an extremely smart way of putting out the word for your business in front of relevant people and a larger audience. It takes time to grow as a business, but there are established businesses out there with larger audiences. Contribute an article for their website and get a link back to your website. But for that to happen, you will have to make connections with editors online or at networking events. Here is a quick sketch note which I made showing the difference examples of emails you can think of sending to editors. Pitch them your guest blog, resources, infographics, research and many more.
Start publishing on established websites of your genre and link them to your best articles that are relevant to the content you are writing. Going back to the initial “Mayor” example, Google recognizes your links that have been added to an established website. Additionally, you get to reach out to this websites larger audience pool.
Your articles being mentioned and linked on different websites is not a great thing always. Chances are ill-intentioned websites are trying to bring down your SEO by linking your articles to irrelevant articles. Google has specific set standards for the quality of links that point towards your website. When too many irrelevant websites put your links, it raises an alert for Search engines. When your SEO starts building strong grounds, competitors can start maligning your SEO backlinks. IT could be porn websites, non-genre websites that do not go in line with your business, mentioning you repeatedly.
Analyze well in advance which are those bad backlinks pointing at you. This will allow you to see for yourself which are the good backlinks and which are the ones bringing down your SEO
After you have found the bad ones, share this will Google by going to this link and Google will then not count those backlinks and make them irrelevant to your google rankings
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main