Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

"Content is King," according to our Cord Silverstein, our Engagement Marketing VP here at Capstrat. “Content and links are the two main players in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That’s it. There’s not even a close third. Sure, a few minor things can be done to help out, but it’s a lost cause if the main players aren’t in the game.”

Content
Search engines want to deliver the best results to their users. So how does Google decide what your site is about? They evaluate pages much like Web users do: by looking at the words in the page title, in the headers, in bold, and mentioned repeatedly throughout the text.  Google calculates "keyword density" to see what your site is about.

Links
Search engines count the number of links pointing to your site to evaluate how credible and popular it is. Only one-way links count -- you can’t swap links with someone else and get credit for it. Best way to get links? Write good content. Once that’s done, you can participate in online forums, blogs, and social media to get the ball rolling. If you’ve done your job well, people will naturally want to link to your site. They will want to share it with their friends. They will bookmark it on StumbleUpon and recommend it on Digg.

So as you're creating your site, don't focus on SEO, but rather focus on creating great content. Keep in mind how Google reads your site, but remember that if your site has something to offer, the rest pretty much follows suit.


Tools:
See what search engines think your site is about:
http://www.seomoz.org/term-extractor

See what links Google gives you credit for:
www.google.com (search for “link:www.YourSite.com”)