If you are serious about marketing your business online effectively, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) should definitely be a marketing strategy that you should think about employing. As I’m sure you can appreciate, Search Engine Optimization is a very in-depth, broad subject. There are whole books, seminars, and courses that are purely focused on this tactic, so it’s not something that can be fully covered in just one blog post. There are so many tactics, methods, and strategies when it comes to SEO that it can initially seem quite daunting, especially if you are new to Internet Marketing.
But don’t let this overwhelm you.
In essence, there are only three key things that you need to do in order to get your page ranking on Google and the search engines. And this can be broken down even further to essentially ONE basic thing that you need to do in order to get the search engines to recognize you and rank your page above your competition.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is simply “the things you look for in the pages of your website that are found by Google and to ensure they are shown in the top ten results when people search for something related to your business.”
So let’s say you are a mechanic in London and whenever someone types in a particular key phrase into Google (or other search engines), e.g., “Mechanic in west London,” your goal is to ensure that your business webpage ranks in the top ten search results (i.e., the first page) whenever someone performs that particular key phrase search.
So, how does SEO work?
How do we get our web page to rank in the top ten search results when a particular key phrase is searched for? As we touched upon earlier, there are hundreds of theories and strategies (if not more) as to how exactly to go about doing this, many of which are fantastic and indeed work extremely well. On the flip side, a lot of it is hogwash and if applied can actually serve to harm your marketing efforts and have the opposite effect.
First things first, let’s clear up a few misconceptions… Google is here to HELP us! Google is our friend! They have provided us with an AMAZING platform for emerging and promoting our business to the world or indeed locally! What’s more, they are giving us the fantastic privilege for FREE! The main goal of Google (and indeed every other search engine) is to provide a continuously improving and increasingly effective service for its users (searchers and advertisers). What Google wants for their searchers is that they have a good experience and get the answers to their queries whenever they conduct a search. Simply put, if you scratch their back, they’ll scratch yours. If you help Google and the search engines achieve this, then they will reward you by giving your web page greater weight on the search results.
There are various ways they measure whether you are doing this for them (which is another blog post altogether), e.g., the bounce rate of your site. What’s important to understand is that Google is continuously fine-tuning by what means a page qualifies to make it to the first page. Hence why if you are always purely trying to manipulate Google without offering high-quality content and valuable information in return, you’ll be forever playing catch-up.
So this leads us to our third question…
How can I get my website to rank on the search engines?
Let’s say there are three boxes that you will need to tick in order to maximize your chances of being given the green light by Google. The more competitive the key phrase you are targeting, the greater extent to which you will need to ensure you are meeting the following criteria.
Note the following three points down:
1. On-page optimization
Your site ought to load quickly, be easy to navigate, look good, and be logically laid out so that people can find your content in the easiest and simplest way possible. Every single page on your website should be related to your website’s overall theme (e.g., beauty-related if you are selling beauty products). Furthermore, you must ensure that every single page is optimized for just ONE key phrase. REMEMBER: While Google and the search engines place a certain emphasis on the authority of a particular site, they ONLY rank web PAGES. Each page (i.e., each post) has its own unique value to Google and the search engines.
2. Off-page optimization
This is basically where you get your site linking back to as many high-quality, AUTHORITY sites as possible. The more authority links you can get back to your website, from high authority trusted websites, the greater the chance that Google and the search engines are going to view your content as something they can offer to their customers. Authority websites are sites that Google feel are trustworthy in your niche/content topic.
Things are not as black and white as they used to be, and gone are the days of being able to purely manipulate the search engines by simply keyword stuffing your website and getting software that blasts thousands of backlinks to your website. That game is long gone, and thankfully so! If you intend to play this game, it will only last so long until Google finally catches on, releases a new updated algorithm, and before you know it, your site gets completely wiped out, along with the income stream and business it was generating for you. As I mentioned earlier, this can be broken down into one single aspect that essentially ties EVERYTHING together.
3. QUALITY and VALUE
Quality, Quality, Quality. Value, Value, Value! Above EVERYTHING else, this really is the most important aspect of your SEO game plan. Make sure that the content you are producing is not only of extremely high quality and value, but make sure you are doing it consistently also. It might sound cliché, but this really is the single most important thing you can do to make sure your web pages’ rank remains prominent on the search engines for the long run. Ensure you are producing high-quality content on a consistent basis and you are scratching Google’s back as well as giving tremendous value to the marketplace.
Thanks for visiting.
I appreciate you stopping by.
Kind regards,
~ Nomadic Danny
Podcast: NomadicDannyPodcast.com