Question: 2013 is nearly upon us, what are your best SEO tips for 2013? Any predictions for how 2013 will shake out?

Answer: SEO tips after 2012 and 2013, that sounds kinda scary. Don’t the Maya’s think that the world will end in 2012? So what will happen to SEO in 2013? Both the Google Penguin update for 2012 and the Panda update were really targeting ‘low quality’ websites – either low quality content (duplicate content) and/or bad inbound links. Penguin was particularly strong against low quality link schemes. So really it’s back to the basics – post-Penguin and post-Panda, the main SEO tips are really a) build good, original content, and b) create strong, ‘natural’ backlinks to your content.

Our classes avoid the phrase ‘post-Penguin and post-Panda,’ but instead give you practical SEO tips for small businesses. Here are some of the ‘post-Penguin and Post-Panda SEO tips’ for 2012 that I might recommend, post-Penguin and post-Panda not just for 2012 and 2013 –

I wonder what animals Google will think of for 2013…..

• What are the best practices for local SEO? – For LOCAL SEO, you need to a) claim the Google+ Local (formerly called Google Plus) listing for the business, add links to / from Google+ Local on the website, and c) GET REVIEWS. Reviews are hugely important to local SEO. We cover this in our class on LOCAL SEO, which is class no. 2 in the Social Media module.
• What are best practices for blog SEO? – Content marketing is the new, old thing in SEO. They used to say ‘Content is King.’ It still is, but I like to say it, ‘Well structured SEO content is king.’ FIRST, research your target keywords. SECOND, place the keywords in the right tag positions, as I teach in my SEO class on keywords and page tags. THIRD, write with good keyword density (> 5%) and with natural syntax. FOURTH, cross-link to other similar pages.
• For SEO localization, what are the best practices? – For localization, there are a number of key things to do. First, get your physical address on EVERY page and especially the home page. Second, as you indicate, create landing pages for each target locality. Third, sign up for Google Places and GET LOCAL LINKS. Inbound local links will help IMMENSELY. Fourth, yet, write some keyword heavy content and place on all pages. Finally, think of your local target as keywords and write lots and lots of blog posts, pages, content that contains the local target keywords in a natural syntax sort of way.