1. Intro
The search engine optimization (SEO) industry is like the world’s largest tea bag. You never know what you are going to get when you open it, but it does seem to be a tasty one.
If you want to understand how SEO works, read this little white paper by Lee Boon-ho (which I co-authored). If you want to know more about SEO, read this book by Matt Cutts or this book by Ben Sargent.
2. What is SEO?
If you’ve ever written a blog post, you’ll know how important it is to keep the search engines happy. In fact, search engine optimization is probably the single most important part of your content marketing strategy. But what does it actually mean? And how does it work?
If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few resources to get you off and running:
• Search Engine Land has a comprehensive guide on SEO basics
• Search Engine Watch has great discussions on both keyword research and link building (both of which are central to SEO)
• SEOmoz has an excellent discussion on why SEO is so important (though they don’t offer tutorials themselves)
• Google’s Webmaster Central provides some very useful information on things like link building and advanced search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques.
These resources give great insight into what is going on behind the scenes when it comes to optimising for search engines but not much else. There are also quite a few books out there: here are a few that we recommend especially if you want to learn more about Google AdWords: • Search Engine Optimization Principles by Russell Brunson • 5 Minute Guide To Google AdWords by David Meerman Scott • Copyblogger provides an excellent overview of copywriting fundamentals with content such as The 8 Steps To Creating Strong Content & Copywriting Success For Your Business • Content Marketing For Dummies & Copyblogger has excellent guides for both content writing and copywriting. If the above books aren’t enough, check out this list of other titles in our library: • Link Building & SEO by Peter Meyers • Copyblogger Keyword Research & Podcasting by Dr Steve Kambic • 10 Steps To Great Content Marketing by Dan Kennedy • The Lean Startup by Eric Ries ____________________________________________ We would love to hear your feedback! Feel free to drop us an email at [email protected] or click this button
3. What is Keyword research?
The vast majority of businesses don’t do keyword research, except to check Google. A small minority do.
Keyword research is a process where you search for the keywords you want to be found for, and see which ones come up first.
You should always start out by thinking about how Google classifies things and what that means. If your product is a camera app, it will likely appear in both the “Phones/Mobile” and “Tablets/Mobile” results. It will also likely appear in “Compact Cameras”, but not so prominently as in the “Digital Cameras” category; while it may show up in the “Smartphones” category, it is unlikely to show up at all (if at all) in the “Tablets/Mobile” category (and vice versa).
It is important to understand how Google works with its different categories — how they are structured — because knowing this knowledge can make life much easier when launching and building on those categories (especially since many of those categories are slowly being phased out anyway).
A lot has been written about Google using various data sources to determine what kind of results you should expect from each search query. For example, you should expect your query that says “fitness tracker” to get you better results than your query that says “fitness wristband”. But there are many more factors involved than just Google ranking a particular search result page number higher or lower on page 1 versus page 20 or 25 (though these have been helpful).
For example:
• In terms of expectations: This is important because if you get too narrow in your search, then it can be easy to believe that what appears on the first page isn't always what appears on the last page — especially if an ad appeared before it did on the first page. This can lead to poor buy-in for your product right off the bat, particularly if one has just launched and hasn't had time yet to build an audience (which could happen) or if one hasn't built any organic traffic yet (which might happen due to the relative novelty of such a product). In contrast, getting too broad can be harmful as well; doing business with someone who only wants to look at pages 10 through 20 would likely be less valuable than doing business with someone who searches for pages 20 through 15 and subsequently buys from them based on trust alone rather than from any
4. Off-page SEO factors: backlinks, social media, citations, guest blogging
SEO is a pretty simple thing: get lots of links pointing to your site.
Indeed, there are relatively simple methods to achieve that. A few lines of code to the <title> tag will get you tons of links.
But the real power of SEO is that it makes it seem like you’re succeeding at something useful and useful things are often hard for people to do, so if you can convince them that you’re doing something useful, then they will want to be linked to.
Some things, like Amazon reviews and Wikipedia citations, are so interesting that people want to do them for free (or at least for free-ish).
But other things are much more difficult — like writing quality articles on relevant topics in related fields — so unless you have a fantastic reputation in those areas, there’s no way your link profile is going to be enough (unless you have some sort of special relationship with someone or something). You need great content. That means:
• Optimise external links (e.g., through Wikipedia) and internal links (e.g., through guest blogging)
• Create high quality content
• Make sure it looks good (this should also include social media)
So let’s go over your off-page SEO factors: backlinks, citations, guest blogging and social media. What works? What doesn’t work? If a certain keyword isn’t working for you because Google won’t rank it well or there are too many competing keywords out there… then this isn't the place for you… This includes but is not limited to: Your business name or brand name; Your site's domain name; The combination of keywords and domain name; The combination of keywords and subdomain names (i.e., subdomains); Links between your site and others' sites; External links pointing back to your site at all times; evergreen content; Content about your business's products/services (this should actually be part of your product's value proposition). It isn't just about search engines — it's about how users find/use information from somewhere else. Sure, we can talk about how people use Google Analytics or Amazon Web Services but those tend not to drive real decisions around product-market fit… Right now I'm making decisions based on what I want my users do based on what
5. On-page SEO factors: Headline, URL, meta title and description tags
Not all sites are created equal. They may be very similar in appearance and functionality, but they may have different page load times, different search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, different technical and legal liability (such as malware or privacy concerns), different pricing arrangements and so on.
In other words, a single site may be very similar in appearance to another but still have slightly different requirements for the same goals:
• Some sites need to have an easy-on-the-eyes UI while others need a deep content management system
• Some sites must have an innovative payment model while others must use traditional payment methods
• Some sites need a free plan while others require that users pay up front to get started.
With this in mind, there are a few common factors that can help you determine which site is the right one for you:
• Competitor analysis: Aside from the obvious search engine optimization (SEO) factors like terms and phrases and algorithms, there are a number of less obvious factors that can impact your ranking such as: Image size; internal link structure; domain authority; SEO tools used; and so on
• Reviews from successful competitors: If you do business with other companies, it can help to understand their histories of success. If you know about other companies’ successes against your competitors’ domains, you can make the case that yours is better than theirs. Even if your competitors’ success is not directly relevant to you, it can be useful to consider how they did it — what was good or bad about their approach? Are there any lessons here? (Note: It's also worth asking yourself whether or not your competitors are credible.)
• Audit websites with relevant keywords in mind: Without question some of the most successful businesses run keyword audits on their own sites before launching them into production. These audits should be conducted prior to launch because they tell you where potential customers already come from — i.e., where they come from before they even start browsing your website. For example, if someone searches for “search engine optimization tool” on Google with keywords like “sEO tool” or “seo services” then you should probably launch an audit of your own site first to see whether or not those words themselves will drive traffic to yours. The same holds true for most terms related to your product/service — if someone searches for something related to your
6. Conclusion
It is not easy to write a post about SEO, but it is important for anyone looking to improve their online presence. The topic is one of the most complex in the marketing world, and at the same time, it has enough commonalities that it’s not as diverse as other topics.
When we talk about SEO, we usually mean web optimization (which refers to how websites are optimised for search engines), but there are a number of other related topics that shape our definition. For example:
• Auditing – Search engine results can be found by many different people. For example, someone who wants to find out if his link has been seen by his competitors will have to seek out such sources of information as Google Analytics and Moz’s Page Rank Report . In our opinion, these tools aren’t bad at all; in fact, they are very good and should be used much more often than you think.
• Keyword research – One way of getting better rankings is through research on your keywords which can help explain why your product/service doesn’t rank as well as you would like. There are several tools out there that make this easier than ever before. One such tool is Google Keyword Planner which lets you see the top 100-200 queries that appear frequently relative to your keywords and see how they rank (or not). Another great tool is Moz’s Keyword Tool , which is a similar tool but only focuses on specific channels (search engines and blogs) which means it gives you more accurate information than Google Keyword Planner . We highly recommend using both these tools if they exist in your niche.
• Off-page seo - Many small businesses don’t have the budget or expertise required to conduct a full audit of their website itself - this may be because they don’t want to invest in it or because their customers are unwilling to pay for a full audit. Off-page seo means everything from optimising image assets and meta data across all domains involved to working with third party agencies like Optimizely or Jiscripse (who do deep keyword optimization work for clients) instead of listing search results directly on your site . These agencies allow you to focus on what matters most: increasing traffic from relevant keywords (not necessarily getting yourself ranked) while maintaining control over your website's overall look & feel.
We hope this post helps you get started with SEO - keep us posted with any
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