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A lot of the business owners I talk to know that SEO is important, but they’re not sure what it looks like to actually implement. Since it’s such an important piece of any great marketing strategy and a complicated topic, there's a lot of scams to be on the lookout for. It can be hard to identify the scams as well as the actionable steps to implement a great SEO strategy. I spent a year and half learning and implementing an SEO strategy for one of my web design clients and totally fell in love with the results. Not just because I enjoyed the work, but because I saw it truly impacted her business for the better.
In this blog post, I’m sharing a few of the fundamentals behind developing an SEO strategy, how to look out for the scammers, and I'll share actionable steps to implement on your own website. I’ll be covering:
Developing an SEO Strategy for Beginners
Keyword Research
Outranking Your Competition
Avoiding the Scammers
Actionable Steps for Your Website
If SEO hasn't been a priority in your marketing strategy and you're ready to try something new, keep reading. Or are you here to see what I actually do when it comes to SEO implementation? Cheers to doing the research before throwing money at marketing, I commend that!
Developing an SEO Strategy for Beginners
Understanding who your target audience is and what they are searching for to find a business like yours is the first step. Remember, Google doesn't rank websites, it ranks pages within a website. Of course everyone wants their home page to rank, but if you've just launched a new website it's going to be a bit of a challenge. Brand new websites will take some time to rank, since they haven't built up a solid domain rating yet. (We'll talk about domain rating or 'DR', in the Outranking Your Competition section.) For now, focus on understanding what content your target audience is searching for and start developing content that matches their search intent. Think about the type of questions they would search on google, this will help generate some content ideas. As you type something into Google, it will automatically show you what other people have searched related to your query.
If you really want a plethora of content ideas check out the book Contagious by Jonah Berger. It dives deep into why certain products and ideas actually become popular. If you're really into psychology like I am, it just might fascinate you enough to spend a whole afternoon reading it. Whenever I pick it up, I have to have some paper and a pen handy because it generates so many new ideas for my business and my client's businesses.
Keyword Research
Once you start typing different search queries into Google, you'll find some that you'd want your website to rank for. (When I say 'rank for' I mean when someone types in a specific phrase into a search bar and clicks enter, your website would 'rank' or show up within that page somewhere.) The higher your website ranks on the page for a given keyword or search query, the higher the chance of someone clicking on it. When it comes to researching keywords, in the beginning just focus on finding terms that have high search volume and low difficulty. Check out Google Keywords Planner to find monthly search volumes, competition, as well as how those search terms have changed in the last 3 months and YoY. I've put a few of the keywords that showed up in our Google search, into Google Keywords planner so you can see all the info it provides.
Another great tool to check out is ahrefs Free Keyword Generator. Here you can quickly search keywords to check out their search volume and difficulty levels. Keep in mind their tool is still just an estimation. For some of the lower searched keywords, ahrefs may not show search volume, but Google Keywords Planner may. When working with keywords that aren't as popular it's always good to cross reference them within Google Keyword Planner. Ahrefs is also a great place to dive deeper if you're really wanting to learn more about SEO. I've thoroughly enjoyed ahref's academy and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to get better at SEO.
Bonus Tip: When looking for keywords, make sure to note whether they are commercial intention keywords or not. A commercial intention keyword means the searcher isn't just browsing the web, they're looking for a solution. Once you start looking for them, they become fairly obvious. If I typed in 'Web Designer Portfolio' I could be looking for inspiration from another web designer, but if I typed in 'Web Designer for Hire' that means I'm actively looking to find someone. Getting your website to rank for high volume keywords that have commercial intention is the most ideal scenario, but it will take time! Out of this search query, it's obvious which ones are the highest commercial intention keywords:
Keep in mind that website's also don't rank for just one keyword, they rank for hundreds, even thousands of keywords. Putting the same keyword all over your website will just make Google think your spam. Identify the main keyword you want to rank for, find relevant content to continue adding, and this will make it a lot easier for Google to understand the type of content your website should be ranking for.
Outranking Your Competition
We've talked a lot about sticking with lower competition keywords, but this can feel limiting for sure. To use those highly searched and highly difficult keywords, you'll need to get a large amount of quality backlinks to the pages you want to rank. What's a backlink? It's when someone links a page on your site, within their website with a follow link back to you. Getting backlinks to your home page or a product pages are usually more difficult than getting links to helpful content. Let's say you sell greenhouses. Getting a link to your product page within someone else's website mostly only benefits your business. However, if you start creating content that's helpful and interesting to others you may start getting backlinks without even asking for them.
Content Ideas with Backlink Potential
Pinterest is a great place to get content ideas! When I searched 'greenhouse' into Pinterest and hit enter so many ideas come up. Of course the sponsored shop links come up first, but if I'm not ready to seal the deal yet, I may just want to browse and 'window shop'. The first pin about boosting potential yields within a small greenhouse sounds really helpful. Not to mention the '30 Amazing Greenhouse Designs to Transform Your Backyard'. This is the type of content I would enjoy browsing through, then sending to my friend who also loves plants. Unless I know someone looking to buy a greenhouse, I'm not sending the product links, I'm sending the helpful content because it's about more than just the sale!
Domain Ranking
Every new website's domain ranking starts at a score of 0 out of 100. There are a number of things that impact your domain's rating like: backlinks, user experience, content quality, technical SEO, domain age, and more. One of the biggest factors in terms of ranking above your competition in search results will be the number of backlinks that page has. This is why utilizing low competition keywords in the beginning is your best bet. If your website's domain ranking is at a 0 and you don't have any backlinks yet, you'll never rank above other website's that have a higher domain ranking and hundreds of backlinks.
Understanding Keyword Difficulty
I'm referencing ahref's academy again because they do such a great job explaining such a complicated topic. If you type a keyword into the ahref's Free Keyword Generator it lists the difficulty level of each: easy, medium, hard, super hard. Below is their difficulty scale that gives you an estimate of how many backlinks or 'referring domains' that page will need to even have a chance of ranking up their with the other big websites! (KD stands for Keyword Difficulty)
Avoiding the Scammers
Now that you know the importance of backlinks the scammers will be easier to recognize too. I call them scammers, but really they're just sending the same spam email to thousands of people asking to get a link back to their site. This approach rarely works because it's impersonal and always comes from someone you've never talked to before. I don't know about you, but when someone I've never met or even had a conversation with reaches out to me for a favor, I'm hesitant to say the least. Although, not everyone who reaches out to you asking for a link back to their website will be a spammer. Check out ahrefs Link Building Tactics No One is Talking About over on Youtube to hear great examples of appropriate ways to reach out for links. Even if you're not ready to start building backlinks to your site, watching this video will make it very clear what's an appropriate way to reach out and what isn't.
Actionable Steps for Your Website
Learning is great, but implementing what you learned is the only way to start seeing success. Start by identifying who your target audience is, then start researching some of the key phrases they're using to find a business like yours, find at least one main low competition keyword for each of the pages on your website you want to rank, and then start thinking about more relevant keywords that you can develop more content around. Add more content to your current pages or start coming up with new page ideas or blog posts ideas that would have the ability to rank and start generating backlinks.
Identify your specific target audience
Determine what they're searching to find a business like yours
Identify one low competition keyword for each page you want to rank
Plan out additional content you could include or add to your site
Start developing strategic content that could generate backlinks
If you enjoy strategy, SEO may be something you also start to enjoy! If strategy isn't your thing, it may be something you'll want to hire out. I've always loved to at least try to DIY something before I hire it out. This always shows me if continuing to DIY is going to be a smart use of my time or not. As an entrepreneur, it's vitally important to recognize the value of our time. I love the quote "You're not paid by the hour, you're paid by the value you bring to the hour". Whether you work for yourself or someone else, think about the value that comes out of each hour you spend on something.
