The SEO Philosopher’s Stone

300AD. It was the first mention of the one thing that could turn any base metal to gold or silver, cause immortality, and rejuvenate life.

It was the all-encompassing holy grail, if you will, for those who believed in alchemy.

The Philosopher’s Stone was even thought to have passed from God to the first man, Adam, on and on throughout the generations. This would explain their long lives.

However, no one has ever found any such stone, so we are left to believe it legendary and nothing more.

What would you say if I told you that there was a Philosopher’s Stone–but not in the traditional sense–to SEO?

As if there was some secret to it.

The impressive symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone

Would you believe me?

What is the SEO Philosopher’s Stone?

The grail to present your information and business into gold requires much less than the nuclear explosion found in stars today (which is the only known way to produce gold seeing as it is not combined with other elements as many others on the periodic table).

In fact, the Philosopher’s Stone of SEO lies in these three means:

1. Fantastic, high-value content.
2. Engaging social media.
3. New search.

Fantastic, High Value Content

Content is crucial for brilliant SEO. It can come in the forms of blog posts like this one, podcasts, videos, or infographics. Each allow a different measure of engagement and pose individually as preferred methods with various audience groups.

• Work on slipping in your keywords occasionally through the content to keep yourself focused and on task.
• Include keywords within meta titles, meta descriptions (ensuring that they are also helpful), ALT tags for your pictures, and within the URL.
• And don’t forget that white space is your friend. As is graphics. Keep this in mind: if you write a block of text that you look at and don’t want to read or edit, your paragraph is too long.

Try lowering your bounce rate as well. Bounce rates refer to visitors who visit your website and never click on anything else–they simply exit. The higher the bounce rate, the lower your engagement score (and SEO) may become.

Engaging Social Media

Ever wondered how many tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, and so forth are shared in a given minute?

The Internet in Real Time documents it.

An estimated 90% of all global data has been created in the last two years.

Every 45 seconds equates to 90 hours of video uploaded to YouTube.

Think about how insane all of that is… And how many people are out on social media any given moment of the day.

Screenshot of the Internet in Real Time

Competition is fierce… Unless you remain focused on your target market, your story, your benefits, and engaging with your ideal client or customer.

Though there continues an influx of data creation from every source, none of us are compelled to consume it–unless it speaks to us, for us, or about us.

As far as SEO’s role in social media, Google has recently added Twitter updates to their search results page, integrating them prominently. Though some businesses’s target market may not necessarily be on Twitter, now may be the time to begin reaching out through the channel.

However, the most coveted social media response all businesses want to see is when their piece goes viral. Good news from the psychology side of marketing!

According to a study from the New York Times Customer Insight Group, people share content because of the image they would like to show online. Within the research, five key factors influenced if the content was to be shared:

1. Brand scored a high trust factor.
2. Message is clear and simple but strong.
3. Message was funny.
4. Message appealed to folks who would like to connect with others.
5. Message had a sense of urgency.

Searching for the New

Using the previous two methods will provide link building opportunities as well as an increase in organic search. However, an increase in traffic shouldn’t be the end goal.

The end goal should always be building your business and allowing for growth.

Give your search something to build onto–create content around your audience and SEO (around what has done well in the past). Determine goals and metrics that your business needs like sales, leads, or campaign ROIs.

Work on using the technical side of search to solidify the work you’re doing with your content and social media.

Marketing is never complete and it is seemingly an uphill battle, but if you keep at it, working all three of these sectors of the SEO Philosopher’s Stone, you’re bound to end up with gold.