If you’re a beginner to SEO, then you’re going to want to read this whole blog because I’m going to show you how to start attracting customers from the world’s largest search engine. This blog is “SEO for Newbies” because even if you haven’t got the slightest clue what SEO is, you’ll have evident and easy action items that you can implement into your website right away. So we’ll be covering the most important things that you should know to ensure that your website is search-optimized.
3.5 billion searches are performed on Google every single day. Seriously, no matter what you do, people are looking for your products and services on Google;
Cell phone repair shop: 1,700 monthly searches.
iPhone charger: 34,000 monthly searches.
Best smartphone: 41,000 monthly searches.
And these search volumes are only for US-based searches. But here’s the thing: Even though there are billions of searches every day, our recent study shows that 91% of content gets no traffic from Google. How do you join the other 9% of web pages and start getting free, consistent, and passive transport from Google?
So What Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s optimizing your website and webpages to get free organic traffic from search engines like Google. Think of Google as a filing system in a library. The library has millions of books with hundreds of trillions of pages.
So let’s say that you want to find something on “global warming.” Then Google would search through these books and extract pages that contain your keywords or closely related words. But as I’m sure you know, search results aren’t returned in any random order. Google tries to answer the most relevant results first by using sophisticated algorithms. And they’re so good at this, that most of us never have to click through to page 2 of the search results.
Nobody knows exactly how these algorithms work or the specific factors it looks at to rank a web page, but we do know many of the so-called “Google ranking factors,” so we can make some optimizations.
What Are These Google Ranking Factors?
So your job is going to be two-fold: Number 1, we need to make sure that it’s easy for search engines to understand what your page is about and create that content that matches what we call, “The Searcher’s Intent”. And number 2, we need to show Google and other search engines that it’s ‘Worthy of Ranking”.
Find Relevant Keywords
Step 1 is to find relevant keywords that people are searching for and see how these search queries fit into your business. The easiest way to start finding relevant keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer.
It is a good thing to do because you already know that Google is ranking this single page for all of the keywords, so why wouldn’t you be able to rank for these keywords and maybe even more? Try and remember this part because we will be exploring things like keyword usage multiple times throughout this tutorial.
On-Page SEO
Once you have a list of keywords, it’s time to optimize your pages. In the world of search engine optimization, this is called “on-page SEO.” Since we know the keywords that people are searching for in Google, it gives us clues on the language we should use to let Google and potential customers understand what your page is.
But I do need to make two things very clear: First, you don’t have to use your exact match keyword since Google has gotten pretty smart at understanding what your page is. And second, it’s essential to note that you shouldn’t try to trick Google by using keywords where they don’t belong.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Your priority should be to optimize for people because the last time I checked, robots aren’t going to pay you for your services. Here’s an example of what you shouldn’t do: “I’m a Toronto wedding photographer that does Toronto wedding photography for your Toronto wedding.” It is known as keyword stuffing and long story short, and it does more harm than good. So the key takeaway? Don’t do it.
Title Tags And Meta Descriptions
For on-page SEO, I want to pass on four very basics, but essential tips that you can use on every page you optimize. The first is to optimize your title tags and meta descriptions. When you look at Google’s search results, you’ll see this part in blue and the text below.
The top part is called your title tag, and the other part is the meta description. The purpose of these is to entice someone to click through to your page. And if people are clicking through to your page, then that’s telling Google that your page is likely relevant to the reason why they had searched for the query in the first place, right? And you can see that Google even bolds these keywords and similar keywords within the search results, making them stand out.
Creating The Actual Content
The last part of on-page optimization is the most important, and that’s the actual content on the page. Without over-complicating things, you’ll likely want to use your primary keyword phrase in the main headline, often referred to as an H1 tag. And looking at one of the top-ranking pages, you’ll see that they did this right here. Remember, your job is to help Google best identify your page as relevant to the user’s search query.
So this step is vital to ensure you’re targeting keywords that will provide you with the most exposure for your pages. The last thing you should do is to include your primary keyword phrase in the URL of the page.
Check Your Competitors
A rapid hack you can do is look at the top 10 rankings and see how they’ve optimized those pages to rank. There are opportunities to overtake some search results. Google has no choice but to choose the best options from a lousy pool of pages. Alright, so by this point, we’ve optimized our main pages for our different services, and we’ve covered the basics of on-page SEO. You’re miles ahead of your competitors if you’ve done this for all of your key pages.
Off-Page SEO
The next part and arguably, the essential piece of ranking high on Google is off-page SEO. Off-page SEO often refers to link building. And link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your web pages. Links act as votes or other people vouching for your website saying: “hey, these people are good at what they do, and I trust them enough that I would send my visitors to their website.”
It works in a similar way that you would refer your friend to buy a product from whatever store because you’ve tried it, used it, and loved it. In general, the more quality backlinks you can get from relevant pages, the higher you’ll rank in Google. Now I’m putting the emphasis here on the word “quality” because there are many different types of links you can get from like forums, directories, and editorial links, to name a few. But if you think about it, a place like a forum where virtually anyone can place a link will likely hold less value than a link from someone else’s blog.
Backlinking
But to be clear, other types of links will still hold some kind of value, but probably not as much as links like editorials would. So if you’re focusing on quality, then you’ll probably want to prioritize editorial links. And the primary way to get links from other people’s blogs is through something that SEOs often refer to as “outreach.” And outreach is precisely the way it sounds.
You’re contacting people and asking them for a link. But you can’t just email someone and be like, “yo! I need a link. Hook it up.” It doesn’t work that way.
There are three things that you need to make your outreach campaigns more successful.
- Look at people who are interested in the stuff that you do.
- You need to have a good reason to contact them.
- Pitch that somehow benefits them.
As a general rule of thumb, the better the ‘excuse’ you can come up with to contact the author, the better your chance will be to get the link.
Guest Blogging
Another good reason to reach someone is to offer a guest post. Blog owners are always on the hunt for new content, and since your site is new, you’ll be getting in front of someone else’s audience in exchange for some of your time and content where you could easily use some watermarked photos that you’ve taken.
With guest posts, your reason to contact them is pretty reasonable, and you’ll be providing value, which is free content (that should be good), that benefits them and their website. The next outreach prospect you can find are businesses in a lateral non-competing niche.
Just think about it for a second. Your businesses go hand-in-hand, and you can pass on referrals to each other, link back to each other as a ‘preferred vendor’ or link to others’ content in guest posts where it’s relevant. And this isn’t limited to just local businesses. It applies to everyone.
Find some reliable partners who are on that same journey as you in a lateral niche and help each other out. Now with link building, there are numerous tactics and strategies, so if you want to expand your knowledge in this sphere, then I highly recommend watching our series on link building where you’ll get a full scope of how to do this effectively.
Start Blogging
Alright! We are on to the last SEO tip that I see a lot of beginner’s avoiding. Now, if you have something to sell, setting up your homepage and product/services pages are probably the first thing that you’ll do or did and for a good reason. These are the pages that will directly generate leads and revenue for your business.
Now, I’m not telling you to write about how you changed your storefront sign from red to green. By blogging, I’m referring to providing useful content that will help your prospective customers solve problems.
In Dr. Jonah Berger’s book, Contagious: “Why Things Catch On,” he shares his research on why content gains popularity and even goes viral. Content that provides “practical value” was one of the critical factors to success. People don’t just share funny cat videos or emotional stories. They share things that help others. And the same goes for gaining links. People are more likely to link to your content if it’s helpful, actionable, and solves a problem.
Benefits Of Blogging
Blogging lets, you reach massive audiences. So you could create a post with helpful and practical value. When you’re thinking of these ideas, put yourself in the searcher’s shoes. What would they be looking for, and what would help them solve the query? When you’re picking topics, try and stick with ones that provide value to your business.
As a photographer, you would almost always want to showcase your work because your portfolio would judge you.
For a software company, showcase how your tools can help people’s SEO process because people will buy your tools if they see how it benefits them.
And as a coffee roastery, you might show them how to make the perfect coffee or an article on how to roast beans.
Conclusion
I cannot emphasize enough how much a blog can help you boost your SEO efforts. It’s a great way to get ahead of your competitors who have been in the game for longer than you, but they’ve been targeting only these ‘obvious’ keywords. You can just rinse and repeat the keyword research process, the on-page optimization tips, and continually build links to your content and articles and start climbing the Google search rankings.
We have a ton of beneficial videos where we expand on these topics. Stay tuned for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment, and I would be happy to jump in and help out. Lysha from Lychee’s Digital, signing out.