When I think of all the things I do to improve client’s search engine ranking, it is enough to make a non-SEO and non-geek’s head spin. It all gets so complicated and geeky that there should be no wonder why many SEO will not shake your hand unless there is money in it.
Today I want to offer you a fast, free, and easy to understand list of actions you can take right now to improve your search engine ranking in under one hour. I don’t mean an hour per day, an hour per week, or an hour per month … one hour, and that’s it. Then you can go back to doing things you enjoy. I even broke these steps down for you in maximum increments of ten to twenty minutes, but none of them should take you that long to complete. That is, unless you don’t want to take my word for it and you need to do a whole bunch of extra research to see if I just made this all up to trick you.
This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of SEO tricks and tips to put the SEO industry out of business (I still want to earn a living, after all). This is just sixty minutes we are talking about here. Sixty minutes that will count! So, here it is … a list of six ways to improve your search engine ranking in under one hour. Better yet, it will only take you a few minutes to read this.
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 1-10: LinkedIn Links
Add a link to your website on LinkedIn. LinkedIn can provide valuable link relevance for your website that search engines will recognize. If you do not have a LinkedIn profile, set one up right now. It will take less than ten minutes, and it will be worth it. It is simple, and even if a squillion people do not see it, search engines will, and they will follow the link to your website, thus improving your authority with search engines. This goes for many other social networking sites as well, but the clock is ticking and we only have an hour to get through this list.
If you already have a LinkedIn profile and you have your link on your profile, that is great. You are not off the hook, though. Update your LinkedIn status with a link to a compelling page of your website that others maybe have not already seen, and that search engines may not have not already seen. You can automate this process with a service such as Ping.fm or others, which offer updating of multiple services. Update each of your social networks with the latest content from your website, unless you are ashamed of it and you want to keep it a secret.
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 11-20: Google Profile Links
Add a link to your website from your Google Profile. If you do not already have one, it is very simple to set up, and the value of the links on a Google Profile are fantastic. They may not look very fancy, but Google Profiles are a good place to be sure your links are present. You may add multiple links, and I suggest adding some of your top priority links that you want people or search engines to notice.
In case you are not familiar, here is my Google Profile and you can create your Google Profile here. If you do not already have a Google account, the setup is simple, and it offers many other tools, but we are keeping this under one hour.
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 21-30: Link to Social Media Profiles
Create links to your social media profiles from your website. This not only allows others to communicate with you more closely, it will add link relevance to your social media profiles, which already link back to you. You may think that social media profiles all come pre-built with link authority, but it is not entirely true. Some seem to be valuable almost from the beginning, but others can use a little help. Linking to them will boost their link relevance (which you should want anyway), and when they link back to you the wonderful circle is complete. Don’t worry, it does not need to be as elaborate as my list of social networks, but your website should link to some of your most used social networks.
Your social media profiles already receive link relevance from outside sources, and you probably already made certain that your profiles are relevant to your business. Whether your business appears in searches by way of a social network or to your site directly, you still win. You win even bigger if they are cross-linked, sharing and boosting authority for the same topics. This is making sense now, right?
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 31-50: XML Sitemaps
Create or update your XML sitemap. Since I want to keep non-geeks from going googley-eyed and falling asleep, I want to explain that this is easier than it sounds, and is important to help search engines index the contents of your website. XML sitemaps are not the kind of sitemap that people use to find their way on your site. They are a kind of sitemap which is used only by search engines.
If you have a WordPress blog (as many millions of people do), simply add the massively popular Google XML Sitemaps plugin to your blog. It is a free plugin, but it is definitely worth a donation to Arne Brachhold for his efforts and your time saved. Roughly 3.8 million people have downloaded this plugin, so don’t be silly and say that it is way too hard to use.
If you do not have an XML sitemap because your antiquated website does not generate sitemaps automatically for you, then use an online sitemap generator to crawl your site and create one for you. Once it is created, simply upload it to your website and then add it to your Google Webmaster Tools. Yes, you already have this, because you have a Google account. You were paying attention to minutes 11-20 above, right? Great, then you already have a Google account, and you can follow the simple directions from Google about creating and submitting XML sitemaps.
I gave you 20 minutes for this one, just in case you need it. The clock it ticking, and you can do this!
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 51-55: Feedburner Feeds
This assumes that you have an existing RSS feed, but even if you do not, you can create RSS feeds and still get a lot done within this hour. Create a Feedburner Feed, and do not skip this part, because it is a big one. It will only take a tiny little bit of your time, but it is extremely valuable. You can create a Feedburner feed here. Just look for “Burn a feed right this instant” and enter the link to your feed (usually something like http://awebguy.com/feed).
The links from a Feedburner feed are quite valuable, and since it is suggested that you link to your RSS feed from every page anyway, it only makes sense that you should link to a feed with all the SEO usefulness of Feedburner. Plus, if you have great information to share, odds are good that you will also benefit by having people subscribe to your feed, which is the more obvious reason for Feedburner. See my Feedburner feed for aWebGuy.com to see what the feed looks like. It allows users to subscribe by email or RSS, and there are many Feedburner options that you may tweak later. In fact, the email subscription forms on my blog are Feedburner subscription forms. We are going to keep this under an hour, so for now let’s just be excited that you will have those awesome links pointing back to your website from Feedburner.
Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 56-60: Blog Comments
You now have just four minutes left, so let’s make these count in a big way! I want to preface this by saying that you should never, under any circumstances spam a blog comment form. It is a huge point of contention among bloggers and it is very rude to the blog owner. At the same time, it is not only very acceptable, but also very appreciated by bloggers (me included) when readers leave their productive or considerate comments. It does not have to be a perfectly crafted work of art, but it should be relevant to the article.
You may be shocked to know the value of your comments on a reputable and popular blog. When you add your URL (web address) where it is asked for in a blog comment form, it creates a link. Somehow between absurd rumors that “nofollow” links do not provide great value in search engines and people’s hurry-up, scan-and-click way of Internet life, the tremendous link value of a blog comment is often overlooked.
Although I would discourage focusing on blog commenting as a cornerstone tactic in your SEO efforts, adding your comment to a blog post can greatly increase your website link authority over time. Doubt me if you like, but you read this far, and there is surely a good reason you found this article. This blog has significant link authority (see SEOmoz mozRank), and if you comment with courtesy to my blog and my readers, your link will be right here for search engines and people alike to follow.
Improve Search Engine Ranking BONUS Minutes: Content Sharing
If you finished the list early, the next big step would be to create some website content that is worth sharing with others on social media and social bookmarking sites. When people share a link to your website because you provided something useful to them or that they think will be useful to others, it is extremely valuable to your search engine ranking. (Hint: Something like this article. ;-))
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