Denver SEO Expert
As a SEO Expert, I was recently invited by Wix to participate in a couple SEO Q&A Webinars hosted by Wix. Check out our live Webinar from last week where us Wix SEO gurus, Kate, Mark and I discuss our top tips for optimizing your Wix websites for SEO.
Watch on Facebook:
facebook.com/watch/live/?v=662530287662768
Also be sure to check out our comment-based Q&A in this post from Monday:
facebook.com/wix/posts/10158139528890429
Lots of great info here! I thought you might enjoy listening to all the SEO tips discussed.
I also review some of the top questions I answered in this sister blog post: Wix SEO Hero Questions »
A little about me: I am a long-time Website Designer and Graphic Designer, I started offering SEO Services several years ago as I was finding that many local and national big SEO firms seemed to charge a lot of money and not actually do any on-website SEO work. Which, in my opinion, is what SEO is all about. Search Engine Optimization is not about building a whole bunch of low quality "backlinks" from internal networks of blogs. In fact, those types of faked backlinks on spammy blogs can actually hurt your SEO rankings in the long term once Google catches wind of them.
That's what many SEO companies sell, their ability to get you backlinks, at least, that is what several Denver SEO firms did with my clients. They would write phony blog posts with links back to our website on their own internal network of blogs and websites, and they wouldn't even show them to us as they were so poorly written!
These same companies required year-long contracts with thousands of dollars to be spent by my clients every month. And to top it all off, they even threatened that if we stopped working with them, our sites would sink in the rankings. But I knew better. I knew that because I was helping my clients write and build new pages for different terms that they wanted to be found for, that their websites would only climb in the rankings if we kept doing what we were doing. Backlinks come naturally if you write good content, answering common questions and provide useful, relevant information. Then if you use social media, reach out to related businesses, press and organizations, and email and use word-of-mouth to share links to your content, your website will naturally get backlinks if people find your webpages useful. Share a great infographic, or answer client FAQs, give your top ten tips – all of these can be great, shareable, backlinkable content. And that is what I've been doing for my clients all along. I knew it was good for SEO, and optimized their pages. I used to subscribe to the theory that SEO Firms had some magic dust they were using to do their SEO work and backlink efforts – but after years of my clients spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, I realized they were scamming my clients.
So, I began offering SEO Consultations and Optimization of my clients websites directly. And, over the years, I have really helped some clients soar to the top of Google for their services or products (search "Hatch chile seeds" and you'll find SandiaSeed.com, for example). I like to train my clients on how they can do their own SEO, and, for some who want writing or design help, I help them with their ongoing SEO. The important thing to know is that SEO isn't magic, anyone can do it! But you do have to keep your website updated and relevant, don't expect that a static website will do well for long in Google. Google likes to see original, fresh, good, relevant content! Infographic Design for SEO: I am also an Infographic Designer, and I love creating and illustrating infographics for my clients. Infographic designs are great for SEO as they're very shareable and can be useful. Infographics are a great way to quickly visualize ideas, concepts or statistics. Check out this recent Food Chain infographic I designed for SandiaSeed.com below:
So if you are working with a SEO Company and backlinks are all that they're promising, and they're not building real content on your own website, then don't use them! SEO is about keeping your website optimized with fresh, relevant copy related to the keyword phrases and terms you want to be found for. There is no magic red button you can press to optimize your website for SEO once and be done with it. SEO is an ongoing, long-term process of researching what people are searching for relating to your business, and putting good information about those keyword phrases on optimized webpages.
Watch the above video for some quick answers to some commonly asked questions about SEO. This was put on by Wix, so some of the questions pertain to the Wix platform, but all of these ideas apply to any type of website, whether you use Wordpress, Shopify, Wix, or other platforms – these same ideas apply across the board!
