SEO.
We hear this word CONSTANTLY in the word of web development and digital marketing.
But WTF is it?
What does it mean and how can you use it's magical powers?
Ok. so imagine you wrote a really awesome cook book and you want the people who would benefit from reading this book to find it.
BUT...
There are billions of books. HOW DO PEOPLE FIND YOURS?
What can you do so the people looking for a book just like yours, can find it in the endless sea of books?
"How do I rank high in Google?"
I'm about to tell you. SEO BABY! This is the secret sauce but it's not even a secret.
SEO involves a lot of research.
You NEED to know who would benefit from your cook book and what they are typing into Google in order to appear high in Google.
What people are searching in Google (think words and most often phrases) are essentially keywords.
Most people wouldn't type in "cook books".
Most likely they would type in something more specific like "Simple Cheap Meals Cook Books" or "Low Carb Cook Books" or even "How To Cook Meals Cheap".
So SEO is somewhat of a psychological game. User intent is extremely important here.
The main goal of SEO is to attract organic (non-paid) traffic to a website by optimizing (think, tuning it up!) various aspects of the website to align with search engine (Google) algorithms. Simple right? 😳
Now you may be asking - cool story bro, but how do I actually use it and see results?
Here are 3 FREE THINGS you could do TODAY to improve your Google ranking:
MAKE HIGH QUALITY CONTENT
This is so important to Google & your target audience - it cannot be missed.
Using the example above about the cook book, let's say your product is a cook book about cheap homemade meals for under $20.
You could write a blog post sharing a few tips on how you can save $ shopping for certain ingredients or recipes.
You could have a free shopping list for your target audience to download.
You get the idea. Provide your audience value. Otherwise, what is the point of your website?
Your content should include a ton of relevant keywords like we also talked about above.
This takes some research but it's definitely worthwhile.
This will apply to On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO (social media channels).
I like to ask myself these questions when creating high quality content:
Is it helpful and/or valuable to my target audience?
Is it simple and easy to understand?
Is it unique?
OPTIMIZE YOUR META TAGS
Meta tags are in the HTML of your website.
The 2 most important ones are the <title></title> tag and the meta description.
The meta description is like giving your target audience a sneak peek of what your website is about.
The title tag needs to be relevant to your content in order for your target audience to be click on your website and be interested.
Basically, your meta tags help Google understand your website and present it to the audience that searches similar keywords/phrases.
Google is like a keyword match maker ❤️
BUILD TOP NOTCH BACKLINKS
A backlink is when another website puts a link on their website that leads back to yours.
Not any ol' backlink will do - you want these backlinks to be QUALITY, TRUST WORTHY and RELEVANT to your website.
So think about the cook book example. If Jamie Oliver (a cook) maybe noticed a unique blog article you wrote and had a link to that article on his website - that would be PERFECT.
This would give your website relevancy, trustworthiness and audience confidence.
The more quality backlinks you have from trustworthy and relevant sites that more Google will recognize your websites authority and reputation.
In turn this will allow you to appear higher in Google search.
Now that you have some ideas percolating in the ol' SEO suitcase, which SEO tactic do you love the most?
SEO is also not a 1 time optimization. It's on-going. FOREVER.
Seriously, you don't just do SEO today and you're done.
As algorithms change, these tactics can also change.
It's something you'll have to get very familiar with if you have a website and you want people to come to it.
The good news is there are plenty of free things you can do, or you could also hire a SEO specialist to help you. Your choice.
That's all I got for now.
Happy internetin' folks