SEO An Hour A Day: Small Tasks That Make A Big Difference

A lot of work goes into improving a website’s rank on search engines, and most of the tasks that are performed to realize that goal take a lot of time and a lot of energy. Along with those big time consuming tasks, though, there are a few small, quick things that can be done that can go a long way toward getting your site to the top. These tasks are ongoing, and can be accomplished within an hour a day.

These ‘hour a day’ tasks focus on ‘off the page’ factors and the creation of inbound links that generate traffic.

Contacting other websites and requesting a link back to your site is one particularly useful option. Generally, you give something in return, which can be creating a link on your site pointing to theirs or some other form of payback. While swapping links can be useful, it is good to know that doing it too much (or doing it with a site infamous for the use of reciprocal links) can have a negative effect. Thanks to spammers utilizing this method in the late ’90s and early 2000s, search engines today may penalize a website by lowering its page rank if it determines that the website in question is swapping links with other sites too much, and any site that is linking to them may fall with them. For the most part, it is easy to spot a potential problematic site, and there should not be a problem for you as long as you pay attention.

It is also worth mentioning that inbound links from sites in the same field of business or study as yours can boost your rankings the most, as search engines interpret such links as a ‘vote of confidence’ from knowledgeable sources. Having a site about physics and the material laws of the universe link to your site about alternative cancer treatments would not benefit you much, or vice versa.

Getting your site listed in directories is a good way of generating some traffic and increasing your search engine rank, and there are directories focused on every topic imaginable. These, along with the more board directories that host a variety of sites, give you plenty of options for generating inbound links. As with most services on the web, there are directories that will host a link free of charge while others require payment.

Inbound links from blog posts is also worth the time and energy to solicit them, as these have great potential benefits. As with the website linking above, receiving inbound links from blogs related to the same field of business or study as your website can yield greater results.

The performance of these tasks can fit into any schedule, and the benefits such tasks can yield are very much worth the hour you should spend in doing them. Not only are such tasks an efficient use of time (and therefore money), but the continuing positive results can give you the motivation to continue working on your personal site, or make holding your job easier if you are working on a client’s site.

About the author: Rune Risom, passionate SEO entrepeneur from free seo suite SEOsupporter.com. Also the founder of Hubdir.com, a PHP link directory script.