What is SEO? A Guide on SEO for Beginners
Are you a small business owner looking for a marketing strategy that's easy, sustainable, and doesn't require all of your time? SEO might be the strategy you've been searching for!
Introduction to SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a powerful tool to getting your content found organically by your ideal clients.
What is SEO?
SEO determines how your content ranks on search engines, such as Google. SEO is a strategy for improving and increasing the amount of traffic Google sends directly to your website. It's considered a long-term marketing strategy, meaning that while you may not see results instantly, SEO efforts compound and may drive traffic to your website for months and years.
Is SEO worth it?
The unfortunate truth is, SEO intimidates many business owners. They either view it as being too technical and complicated or too time consuming—yet, they'll spend hours on social media without even seeing any results.
According to a study conducted by Neil Patel, social media is where the majority of business owners spend their time marketing their businesses. However, when analyzing the ROI (return on investment) of those marketing channels, social media was at the very bottom. People are spending the MOST time on social media, and yet social media gives them the lowest ROI.
On the other hand, SEO was one of the marketing strategies business owners prioritized the least. And yet, it provides one of the highest ROI, just behind paid ads. Imagine what could happen if business owners put more time into learning and implementing SEO, which is proven to provide an ROI? Let's dive into how you can make that a reality.
Simple SEO Tips
SEO can be complicated, but it doesn't have to be. Here are some simple SEO tips for you to implement onto your website today to start seeing results.
Connect to Google Analytics
If you don't know where your traffic is coming from, you can't optimize, double down, and improve on what's working. So, the first step to SEO is connecting your website to Google Analytics.
Here's a post that walks you step-by-step how to connect to Google Analytics. You'll need to create a Google Analytics account, then link it to your website. Once this is complete, you'll begin tracking page views, user activity, search terms, landing pages, and so much more!
Be sure to reference and analyze your website data frequently. Personally, I track my metrics at least once a month.
Conduct Keyword Research
Keywords are the secret to SEO success. With the right keywords, you could get hundreds or even thousands of additional users to your website each month. Keywords also provide valuable data on what your audience is looking for and what they want to learn.
There are countless keyword research tools out there, but the free one I use is Google Keyword Planner. You''ll need to create a Google Ads account in order to use this tool, but you don't need to run any paid ads.
Consider what topics your ideal client is searching for. For me, I could use "marketing" or "social media marketing" as keywords—but those are too broad. Instead, I want to expand that to a long-tail keyword that's more specific.
Using Google Keyword Planner, I can find lots of options, like "social media marketing for real estate agents", "best social media platforms for marketing", "content strategy for social media marketing", etc.
I typically like to look for keywords in the "Low" competition category and with an average monthly search of 100-1K. That's my personal preference because then I have a better chance of ranking higher on Google and could drive significant traffic to my posts.
Write Meta Title and Descriptions
Now that you have your keywords, it's time to write your meta title and descriptions! These are those blurbs you see on Google after you search for something. You typically see a hyperlinked meta title, and the paragraph underneath is the description.
When writing your meta title and descriptions, be sure to use your keywords that you researched. But, ultimately you're writing for a human—so make it clear, concise, and enticing.
Optimize Each Webpage
While I believe the best way to utilize these simple SEO tips is through blog posts, don't forget that you CAN optimize each page on your website!
Conduct keyword research for every page on your site like your homepage, about, services, etc. If your location is relevant to your business, include that in your keyword research. Then, you can go into the backend of your site and update the meta titles and descriptions on each page and add keywords throughout.
Consistently Create Original Content
Blogging truly is the best way to see results from SEO. When you're consistently creating original content for your website, you're telling Google that you're relevant, knowledgable, and active.
Your content also helps Google identify what your website is about—for example, by now Google knows that I discuss email marketing, social media, and other marketing strategies on my website. Therefore, the algorithm knows I should be ranking for those things.
More optimized content, such as blog posts, means you have a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google for multiple things! See how your efforts can compound over time?
SEO Course for Beginners
While this post was a general guide on SEO to expose you to its importance, this is only scratching the surface of what's possible for you.
If you're new to and intrigued by this concept, taking an SEO course for beginners will truly uplevel your game and skyrocket your results. The SEO course I have taken, loved, and HIGHLY recommend is RANK Method by Hilltop Help! Click here to learn more about the course, and get 20% off using code "KARLEY"!
RANK Method teaches Maggie's sustainable approach to SEO that's step-by-step and easy to implement. I love this SEO course for beginners specifically because Maggie is an exceptional teacher who shares a system that she uses inside of her SEO and web design business. She also teaches SEO in the most approachable way that I've ever learned it, and since taking the course, I've increased my traffic from Google and have been blogging weekly.
You can sign up for RANK Method here and use code "KARLEY" for 20% off your enrollment!
Conclusion
Unlike an Instagram post that lives and dies within 24 hours, SEO has the ability to drive traffic to your website for months or even years to come. Putting even just a few hours towards your SEO a month will make a difference.
