SEO STRICTLY FOR NEWBIES

In this blog post, we will cover what SEO is and how you can use it to increase traffic to your blog.

This will be the first in our SEO series where we will cover everything about SEO, but for this segment we will just cover the fundamental basics on what SEO actually is.

INTRODUCTION 101

If you have researched how to increase traffic to your site, you must have heard everyone say to improve your SEO on your site. But what does that mean?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or just how easy it is for Google to find your website.

Now there are several different search engines out there, you have things like Bing, Yahoo, Yandex. But 90% of searches are done on Google, so that’s usually what we’re talking about when we say search engines.

And basically, search engines go out and scout the web to find the pages and index them and their catalog. It’s very similar to when you have a book and at the end of the book, you have an index that tells you where everything was talked about and their location. That’s pretty much Google and their indexing system as well on the web or in the cloud.

So let’s take an example, now this is a typical search page with results, you can see that these at the beginning are ads.

This is what is known as a knowledge graph and what this is doing is that it is pulling out a result that might be further down on the page but since Google thinks that it's answering the query well, it’ll get shown up here as well as down further on the page.

And below that, you have organic search. Typically there are about 10 organic search results on one page and organic listing simply means that these results aren’t paid ads.

They show up on Google because they’ve done a good job of telling Google that this page is about this particular query.

Then you have a people also ask area ad this simply shows the related searches that people will do in his topic.

No fewer than 10% of people click on the next page, if they don’t find what they’re looking for on the 1st page, they’ll simply adjust their search criteria.

And that’s why Google added this person also asked area.

And here is the biggest reason why SEO is so important for your website. The top 3 organic results, they get over 70% of all the clicks.

This 1st position usually gets the bulk of the clicks, between 35 and 40, the second will get between 15 and 20 and the 3rd position will get around 10%.

So that’s why it’s important to make sure that your website is 1st on Google.

But how does Google even determine what should go on the first page?

The biggest factor is;

RELEVANCY

You want to make sure that your website is exactly what the searcher is looking for when they’re searching Google. Now Google uses over 200 factors to determine what is relevant in their algorithm and there is no way we are going to be able to cover all of those.

But if we can concentrate on a few, then we have a fighting chance to get seen on the search results.

In addition to relevancy, you w3ill also want to make sure your site is;

USEFUL

All that means is that if a user clicks on your site, the information they are looking for is easily found.

Think about the last time you searched, if you went to a page that you thought had the answer but you had a hard time finding it on the page, DID YOU STICK AROUND?

Most people will click back and go for a different answer. So make sure that your site is also useful. And that you have arranged the answers or topic in a meaningful way, it's easier for readers to find what they are looking for.

So there are two main ways that you can work on SEO on your website and they are called;

• On-site SEO

• Off-site SEO

On-site SEO

This is simply telling Google and the reader that you have everything that they are looking for. That you have all the indicators that they’re looking for, and this just means that you have the right keywords on your site.

Now On-page SEO is easier to deal with because most of the changes needed are within your control. For instance; If your is about Sushi, then you will want to make sure that your site has the right keywords in the title, in the body, in the image descriptions.

It also means that you have supporting keywords in it like;

• Sushi recipes

• Types of Sushi

• Sushi Ingredients

• Best Sushi outlets

and everything else that is related to that topic.

Throughout this blog series, we will cover all the ways that you can do on-page SEOs so you can get started soon, and the cool thing is, if you already have a website with some articles on it, then you may be just a few tweaks away from seeing massive results with your traffic without writing any new content.

So if you want to see about that make sure you subscribe to our newsletter, so that you will be immediately notified when they are released.

With Off-page SEO

that simply means that you are making sure that other websites are linking back to you. These are called BACKLINKS.

Off-page SEO is a little bit more out of your control because you are relying on other people to believe that your site is worthy of a link. But if you are writing great content and networking (communicating) with your industry (niche) then it shouldn’t be a problem.

Now I just want to let you know that as we go through this SEO process, just realize that search engine optimization does take time (a lot of time, a hell of a lot of time), and sometimes it can be a little frustrating when you are not seeing the results fast.

But if done properly, the results from your SEO efforts can last months or even years depending o the topic you’re in.

So now that you know the basic groundwork of what SEO is and how you can improve the traffic on your site, in the next post in the series, we will go in a little deeper into On-page SEO and we will cover keyword research and how to do it properly for your website.

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