Website content and link building: one, another, or both?
There is a lot to do for promoting a website: write content, fix page titles, write meta descriptions (for the people, not the search engines), add title attributes where necessary, make sure the site is search engine friendly, submit to some directories, promote the site using other techniques, etc. But does a single person has to do that?
Seth Godin has recently discovered that others take two aspects of SEO into account: passive and active. (Passive SEO is anything done on the site itself and active SEO is getting links and traffic to the site from outside). He also thinks that different stuff has to be handled by different people and coordinated.
Actually, it has long been known that there can be two things to do for a website: fix the site and promote the site. Depending on the available staff, both dimensions can be handled either by the same person (with SEO staff less than two) or a team. The main thing, though is to balance the efforts.
A website that can’t convert visitors to customers doesn’t need any traffic. Why get traffic if this results in no clients? This effectively brings us to a point: which one to do first, on-page SEO or promotion? Can passive SEO replace promotion?
In fact, on-page SEO, if we take page titles and website content into account, can replace SEO promotion in a way. Here is how:
- a search-engine friendly website is a part of the success with the search engines
- focus on words, which the target audience uses (would be the main thing to do before anything is done on a website)
- compelling page titles will not only help your pages show up in the SERPs, but will lure the people to click on them
- content, aimed to provide value to the visitors, will generate word-of-mouth advertising and also incoming links
When done properly and consistently, a site with a lot of unique, valuable content can generate a steady stream search engine traffic and, hopefully, potential clients.
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