[Sponsored Post: This post is brought to you by Rich Gorman and you can follow him on Twitter @RichAGorman]
Here are a few new SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies that Rich Gorman sent me that you should use to build your online presence and optimize it for Google:
1. Co-Citation
Co-citation, as Rich Gorman explained to me, refers to virtual link building without actual links. Co-citation does not require an actual link to the website. For example, suppose there are three websites, A, B and C. If a page on Website A links to Website B and to Website C in correlation to each other, Google will look for similarities between B and C. If these are found, Google will now link Website B with Website C, even though there is no direct link between the two. So Website C benefits from an enhanced ranking, due to the respect it gets from both Website A and Website B, even though the only link is to Website A, and the same is true for Website B.
2. Outreach Link Earning
Outreach link building is where you analyze your target audience, along with industry leaders, and search to determine where these groups are. Then you find applicable and related content. Once that source has been identified, reach out to that website and initiate a request to link the pages together.
3. Content Marketing
Rich Gorman says that the best way to attract links and page popularity is to create extremely useful and interesting content on your site that people will want to share. You should make your posts easy to share by having social media sharing buttons so readers can share on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
4. Optimize Images
Rich Gorman also says to add “alt” tags and a title to all of the images on your site so they start to come up in Google image search. This can bring you a significant amount of traffic and it’s usually overlooked. By optimizing your images, it can improve your sites speed and versatility too.
5. Post Authorship
Google allows you to claim your content by adding a “rel=author” tag to your posts. In order to begin the process of adding the tags, you need a Google+ account. When someone conducts a search, they will not only see your post, but that you wrote it and your avatar next to it. It’s a great way to brand yourself in Google.
Author:
Dan Schawbel is the founder of the Personal Branding Blog and author of the upcoming book, Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success.