In the end, advanced search engine optimization is not just thinking outside the box.
SEO is thinking without the box.
The good-ol’-days of keyword stuffing and hidden text are behind us. Google and its fellow search engines have made taboo any of the easy methods of getting a website ranked on the front page.
Assuming that the title of the article with the important word “Advanced” was read and clicked on with the understanding that this is not going to be about directory submissions, we can proceed. SEO has evolved into a competitive arena where more effort must be expended to achieve results. There are certain things that are being missed by most companies here, and while I am loath to reveal them, it will happen eventually and I would like as much credit as possible for discovering them on my own.
Social Media
It looked like a trend last year. It’s apparently here to stay based on the explosion of social bookmarking, user driven news, and shared tag sites that are popping up and reaching a sustainable level of presence. Websites like Digg, del.icio.us, and Furl have become increasingly difficult to master.
It isn’t just about submitting and moving on. There are many variables: watching for nofollow tags, indexing preferences, and the ever difficult quest to get to the front page. Mastering these take time, but the rewards are potentially huge.
Blogs
Comments and random postings are no longer viable for SEO. Blogs must be created, maintained, kept fresh, and linked from wisely. Content is imperative. Luckily, it is possible to keep quality content on several blogs at once without too much effort.
Unlike article marketing, blog marketing and link building requires much less in the way of content. As long as most of it is fresh, some can come from feeds, clippings, and Diggs.
A network of blogs in your corner is like a wall of pawns in front of the king. Alone, they do very little, but in groups, they can be very effective.
Articles
Some would say that article marketing is dead. I counter that crappy article marketing is dead. Great articles still rise to the top and yield multiple links to your sites.
The latest twist to the strategy is the order of submission. Google is onto the bulk submitters and will devalue most links from large amounts of sites at once. The key is to get an article indexed on either the target website or an owned blog first. Once it’s indexed, submit slowly over several weeks to the article directories and reap the rewards many times over.
Domains and 301 Redirects
Some websites are simply parked on the wrong domain name. Google especially gives unnecessary weight to keyword matches in the domain. Where it used to be futile to redirect, doing a 301 permanent redirect from a poor domain name with backlinks to a quality domain with none offers a certain measure of recourse.
Interlinking and Subdomains
What used to be a no-no is now working. With subdomains counting as their own and the cluster that c-class checking created for the search engines in this growing web world, there is now better weight given to links from the same main domain to each other in separate subdomains.
Have doubts? Ask Yahoo and Amazon how they’re doing with it.
Final Thoughts
The best of the best do what the others dread. Read patents. Don’t rely on the interpretations that get posted on the forums and blogs. Often, the juiciest tidbits are kept hidden in the vaults of those who actually read the patents and recognize opportunities.
A willingness to work hard, do the research, write the content, and drink lots of coffee is what is going to separate last year’s lazy SEOs from the current ones whose websites will rank at the top. It just takes perseverance and a willing to count to 4 in three easy steps.