There are a couple of acronyms that force me into a trance-like state as a survival technique. Churn is one of them. For those of you who haven't spent the last decade living with someone who's worked in the cel phone industry, that's the people that leave your service. At least I think so... and I'm 90% sure it's an acronym... though I really don't know what that would stand for. Customer something or other? Yeah. I'm going to knock that down to a 40% sure. At any rate, SEO, or "Search Engine Optimization" is a deadly boring and I'm extremely positive that it is, in fact, an acronym. At any rate, it used to mean hiring someone to get into some really fancy keyword voodoo and making your site come further up the google page. This was accomplished by working some keywords into the content of your site and getting other sites to back link to your site. There were a bunch of methodologies for accomplishing this, some good, some bad, but they were all about manipulating Google's algorithm for search results. Google periodically changes their algorithm, so things would need to get reworked whenever google upgraded. PS - Google makes changes to their algorithm specially defend itself against many of the tactical SEO maneuvers. Just saying. That's true.
So what does that mean for a regular person that's just trying to run a small business? Let's pick a random microcosm and work from there. Wellness Industry in Toronto. You're in luck - we can do this one.
Now most of the yoga teachers I know are pretty social media savvy. There are a couple reasons for this: 1. It's fun (or at least it used to be) 2. it's free 3. If you're friends are savvy as well, you've got a cross promotion media blitz ready to go.... which means your content can hit all of your friends, all of their friends and so on and so forth. That's reach. We are waaaay into reach.
The idea behind SEO is that Google wants good or poplar content at the top of their list. The best way to accomplish this on a small scale (Wellness industry Toronto) is to:
1. Have good "sharable" content and post regularly. Pictures are solid here. Using real, actual language here is also a plus. Google's latest algorithm (called Hummingbird) is designed to better understand real language as opposed to just linking together a bunch of keywords. So if you start sounding like a marketing guy in a bar because you're just linking together buzzwords like synchronicity and organically, that's bad SEO and just poor form on a basic human level.
2.Have good friends - people that will share your content with their friends on any social media platform. Except Myspace. That's not doing anyone any favours. If you're friends are media savvy, then they're doing this anyway. It's a gift that your friend gives to you. Don't ask people to post things for you on their page. Again, poor form. If you want people to post for you, post for them. It's a two way street. There has to be manners about this sort of thing. The first word in social media is social. Don't make yourself a pariah by focusing on the media.
So it really comes down to write what you know. Post pictures. Share your friend's work and they will share yours. Easy.
If you really want to get in there and find out more about SEO, these are some good articles:
This one is an ad for their services, but the inforgraphics are great - so it's in.
http://www.j6design.com.au/ClientArea/SEOismorethanjustkeywords