By: Sarah Snider

Search engine optimization has been a field I’ve been wanting to explore for quite some time.  Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to have landed an SEO internship with DinoMite SEO. Prior to this internship, I had dabbled with Google Adwords and Webmaster tools and thought those tools encompassed the majority of search engine optimization. They are certainly two of the biggest online marketing tools but little did I know that there are many other resources, platforms, and applications that become an integral part of a practicing SEO.

As an SEO intern, what I’ve come to realize most is how challenging and tedious search optimization can be and how many moving parts are involved. During my internship I’ve written many blog posts here on the DinoMite website and in addition to my current copy writing internship, I’m learning more and morehow crucial content marketing is to online search. Whether you use infographics, photos, video, slideshows, or PDF’s it is absolutely necessary that your business continually produce high quality content that provides value to your readership. To summarize, here are three things I’ve learned as an SEO intern to date.

1). You Can Always Rely on High Quality Content Marketing

The importance of content marketing cannot be dismissed. We hear it everyday from every guru on every website. But, until you simply cave in and produce high quality, relevant, and engaging content on a regular basis you won’t drive consistent, return, and new readership.

As an intern I’ve enjoyed writing blog posts on search and social marketing. My background is in journalism so I’ve always been familiar with writing. However learning how to optimize my writing for search, adding in sub headers, including keywords, and linking to relevant content within your website was something that was new to me.

Understanding your readership is important before your write online. Most bloggers make the mistake of writing about what is most interesting to them while they should be writing about what is most interesting to their target market. (A quick read of, The Top 5 Blogging Topics will give you guided direction on what you should be blogging about. ) When you write specifically to provide value to your readers they appreciate your work and that is exactly what you want. High quality and valuable content attracts links, social shares, and encourages return website visitors.

2). Infographics Might Be the Most Underutilized Online Marketing Tools

Infographic marketing may just be the most underutilized online marketing tactic. Infographic marketing is certainly more difficult than say link building. After all a good infographic includes interesting and hard to find statistics, provides enlightening insight, includes quality graphic design, and delivers a message that a reader might otherwise might not comprehend.

However the work that goes into the research, analysis, creation, and marketing of an infographic is not far beyond the scope of the work that goes into composing and marketing a high quality press release. After all the only extra step is graphic design. Now granted graphic design requires more resources and time but that extra step is not so big that your business should ignore infographic marketing all together.

During my internship I’ve learned that businesses and marketing firms can leverage the power of infographic marketing by simply evaluating their priorities. A simple change to their blogging schedule should free up enough resources to add infrographic marketing to their online strategy.

For example if your business blogs weekly then every other month schedule out only two blog posts instead of four. Use that extra time and those resources that would have gone towards two extra blog posts to invest into buying an infographic from a marketing firm. The value, brand recognition, and direct traffic that an infographic will directly build will far out weigh the two blog posts sacrificed to free up resources.

3). WordPress For SEO Or Bust

Everybody has heard of WordPress but prior to my internship,  I had little understanding why it was glorified as the premier content management system. After spending some time within a few different WordPress hosted sites I confidently say along with the masses that WordPress trumps all.

In comparison to Dreamweaver, blogger, or other smaller content management systems and online platforms, I found WordPress much easier to work with. WordPress is not only more user-friendly, but it is also search engine friendly and really helps to maximize your online marketing efforts. No matter what your end goal is for website functionality, looks, or feel there seems to be a plugin that can quickly install to help you achieve you desired goal. And of course, none of these plugins requires extensive knowledge of coding. Most of them are “drag and drop” so that anybody who can operate a computer can make sure of them.

For any young SEOs out there or even smaller local business owners who are in need of web design; be sure you build your new site on the foundation of WordPress. Doing so will save you massive headaches and time down the road as you upgrade, redesign, and desire to add new features to your website. 

photo credit: cc

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