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13 Mar 2013
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Mind-Mapping

As SEOs, link building is one of our primary duties, whether we’re developing our own websites or working on client projects. It can be a real challenge to come up with new and exciting ways to get links, but that’s our job – we are the creative engines of link building online.

One of the newest and most popular techniques for scooping up rankings for the longer tail keywords is to use mind maps. Most people use mind maps in the past for brainstorming, planning, and working on projects. The visual display of information in a tree structure has been very helpful for those that are much more visual learners. It’s a valuable way to display information, so it shouldn’t be relegated just for your own personal use! Share it with the world and you’re sure to garner some quality links and rankings for whatever topics you are mindmapping.

The first thing you need to figure out is how to get it working online. The best software out there right now is MindMeister, which is an embeddable plugin that you can add to your pages. It’s scrollable, zoomable, and sharable – all things that you absolutely need when dealing with mindmaps online.

When you create your mindmap, make sure that the title is aligned with the keywords that you’re targeting. The actual words that you use within the mindmap should be aligned with longer tail keywords as well. In addition to the optimization of the actual mindmap, you should seek to conduct standard on-page SEO to the blog post as well.

If you target lon tail terms that are highly targeted with low competition, your hosted mindmap can quickly and easily rank for those terms. Place a clear call to action within your mindmap and you will have another source of traffic for your main terms.

Making sure that the post you’re creating has more than just a mindmap in it is key. No one wants to link to, share, and consume a piece of content that looks like it was written just for rankings alone. That’s not a profitable long term strategy for ranking, and it shouldn’t be one that you focus on at all. Instead, seek to create a post that is naturally enhanced with mindmapping. There are plenty of examples of bloggers who create a post with a mindmap on something that has no business being put into that format. Don’t do this.

SEO is getting tougher post Google Panda and Penguin, but the truth of the matter is that it is stronger than ever if you’re a creative, enterprising SEO. It’s going to take a little more brainpower to put together some good ways to make links and get rankings, but this is where you’re going to find your edge as an SEO. Strategies like using MindMeister to add amazing visuals to your post is going to go a long way towards getting you the organic rankings and traffic that every SEO craves.

Still not sure?  Here is an example of a creative use of a mindmap:

Social Shares is the new SEO

 

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Search engine marketing expert with 15 years of experience in the industry, working with small mom and pop shops as well as large corporate websites. I have experience with all aspects of inbound marketing, including SEO, Link Building, Social Shares, Usability, Conversions, PPC, Email Marketing, and more.