SEO: Where to Start?
Introduction
SEO can be a daunting task. There are a lot of factors to consider, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But don’t stress! We’re here to help you build an effective SEO strategy that will grow your business. Here are the steps we recommend taking:
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO.
It’s what helps you identify what people are searching for online, and it can tell you if there’s an opportunity to rank higher in search results by writing content that includes those keywords.
Keywords are words or phrases that people search for online to find information or buy products and services. For example: When someone searches Google for “how to cook spaghetti squash,” they’re using a keyword (spaghetti squash) to find information about how to prepare this vegetable.
As new content on your site is published, Google will crawl it and analyze the text within each page against its database of all indexed pages across the web. When Google finds matching text on your pages—for example, spaghetti squash—it considers this a match between one of its own indexes (i.e., what you have written) and one from another source (i.e., their index).
Optimize for On-Page SEO
Optimize for On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing a website’s content and structure to achieve the best possible rankings in search results. On-page optimization includes tasks like keyword research (the process of finding relevant keywords), creating title tags and meta descriptions, writing useful content with keyword-rich text, and making sure that your site loads quickly. These are just a few of the areas where you can improve your on-page SEO.
Structure Data
Structured data is information that can be used by search engines to understand what your page is about so they know how to categorize it in their index. Structured data helps Google understand what type of resource you’re providing (such as an article or an event) so it can display that information more prominently in search results.
Optimize for Off-Page SEO
There are several ways you can optimize for off-page SEO. Backlinks, social media, influencer marketing and local citations are all great strategies to consider.
Links: Links are one of the most important factors in determining your search ranking. The more links you have pointing back to your site, the better your chances of appearing higher in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). There is no one right way to get links; rather it’s about creating a cohesive strategy that works best for you and your business goals. Good link building includes:
Guest blogging – Get on other people’s blogs by writing guest posts that include strategic keywords related to your business
Link wheeling – Creating a network of interrelated sites that point back at each other, aka link wheeling
Social media – By sharing useful content with others through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn etc., you build trust with influencers who might be interested in promoting what you have to offer
Practice SEO-friendly Content Creation
If you want to be successful with SEO, it’s important to start by creating content that is friendly for search engines. This means creating a website where it’s easy for people to read and find what they’re looking for – not just from a human perspective, but from an algorithmic one as well. There are several ways you can go about this:
Use keywords in your article titles and subheadings. Keywords are important in the title of your post because they’ll show up in Google searches when people look for things related to those terms – so if someone searches “how do I build muscle”, then reads your blog post titled “How To Build Muscle At Home” (which has been optimized using these steps), they’re more likely than not going to click through into your page!
Optimize each piece of content so that it contains relevant keywords within the first 100 words or so of each paragraph—but don’t overdo it; stuffing too many keywords into one piece can come off as spammy and will actually hurt rather than help with SEO rankings!
Use SEO Tools to Evaluate Your Site’s Performance
As a marketer or business owner, you want to make sure that your site is performing well. This is where SEO tools can help. They let you evaluate your site performance and determine how to improve it by identifying opportunities for improvement. They also identify areas of your site that are performing well and areas that could use some work.
One of the first things I check when I start working with a new client is their Google Analytics account. It gives me an overview of what’s happening on the website from an overall perspective, including key metrics like bounce rate, average time on page, conversion rates and more.
It doesn’t have to be overwhelming to build an SEO strategy.
You don’t have to have a fully formed strategy before you start. In fact, it’s possible to do your research and put together a plan as you go.
You’ll want to start with some goals and then build out the rest of the strategy around them. What kind of results are you looking for? What kind of traffic would be considered successful for those goals? Do these things matter more than others? How does this relate to what’s happening in your industry and where it’s headed in the future? These questions will help give you direction when building an SEO strategy from scratch or making tweaks to an existing one that needs some fine-tuning.
If there aren’t any tools available yet (or if they’re not user-friendly enough), take care of this on your own by using Google search operators like “site:” or “link:” combined with keywords related to what type of content is being created on different pages.”
Conclusion
If you’re new to SEO, it can be a little overwhelming. But, we hope this article has given you some useful tips and resources to get started. Don’t forget: the most important thing is to keep learning!
