I have the privilege in my day job to see the thought process of search engines on very, very, very large scales. We spend hours studying logs, page ranks, statistical software, and even other websites to see why they do/don’t show up and search engines and what we can do better to win the game.


That’s right. SEO is a game. And we love it. The rules are always changing, and the players are always getting smarter — Being able to stay a step ahead of them makes us “winners” in our own weird geek ways.

But most people (99.99999% of my friends) don’t need this level of in depth analysis for basic SEO return. They just need the basics. They just want their blog to show up for their name, or have their small business have a fighting chance in local searches. So, last night, while having this conversation with a close friend of mine, I came up with what I call the “Four C’s of SEO Basics” — (Leave comments if you have ideas to expand the Basic “C’s”)

• Content: Make sure the site/page that you’re trying to get traffic to has textual content in it. I see so many small business websites that have images for their address / phone numbers. This is a huge non-no. In this case (and because of who I had the discussion with — I’ll use This link for an example.
• Context: Just get one contextual link to your website (Not on your website). That’s all it takes. Google / Yahoo / Etc. Need to know where to find you, and what you’re about.

  Example — Bad: Random Link Good: Kyle Platt’s Resume

• Container: Try to find a site that can surround the word with topical content. If you can’t find one, then try to use words around it that will give the link minor relevance.

  Example: Kyle Platt Is a brilliant aerospace engineer based out of Orlando, Florida.

• Consistency: Be consistent about placing the link around the Internet as often as you can. Slow and steady wins the race, and the long term effects will be increased relevance over time. Use relevant context when you add it, and switch up your ‘container’. If Search engines see the same one over and over, they will discount the value of the link.

Now, this is an absolute drop in the bucket of the SEO game. But, if you follow these basics in the long run, it’ll be a hell of a start.