Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Optimization
Ultimate Guide To SEO
Where do you go when you have a question? Probably Google or another search engine right? That is where most people go nowadays when they need information. They type in a query and BAM instant results. Have you ever wondered why you get the results you get? Well Web owners use a practice called search engine optimization to get their content ranked on the search engines. The search engines crawl a website and pick out keywords based on that data and then ranks the content according to over 200 factors.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Commonly referred to as “SEO”, search engine optimization is a series of steps to take to rank your site in the search engines. Using a proven process helps you to optimize you site in such a way that every page/post/article gets seen or crawled by the search engines and then ranked.
The are three types of SEO, On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Local SEO.
What Is On Page SEO?
On Page SEO means optimizing the content of an individual web page for the search engines. This includes your
- Title: The main heading of the page. The H1 tag.
- Meta Description: The description of the page for the search engines. By Default in WordPress the first couple of sentences are chosen if you do not manually add a meta description yourself.
- Internal Links: These are the links that link to other pages on your site.
- URL: The web page address.
- Content on the page and quality of that content
- Images
- Header Tags (H1, H2, H3, etc)
- User Experience And Site Navigation
This is mostly done by using keywords effectively and in the right places.
Related Article: How To Do Keyword Research Using Jaaxy
Why On-Page SEO Is Important.
Remember you want the search meninges to crawl the page and pick up on the overall theme of your page, plus rank the page for relevant keywords. If they can’t figure out the point of the article, they won’t rank the page for relevancy and therefore won’t rank for keywords either.
On-Page SEO Examples
There are examples all over this page. We use keywords or phrases to discuss the topic of SEO in this article. If our content is good enough, and we use good SEO practices, this article will eventually rank on the search engines and we will start to receive organic (free) traffic.
Using the lists above here are some examples directly from this page.
Title:
Internal Links:
URL:
User Experience And Site Navigation: Both of these are factors Google takes in to consideration. Did you, the user, just click and spend a few seconds on the site or did you take the time to read the article?
If you clicked off the site, it shows the search engines that you did not find what you were looking for, or maybe the quality of the content was bad. Too Many clicks like this and a site’s rankings will go down.
If you stayed on the web page then the search engines see that and rank you higher.
What Is Off Page SEO?
Off Page SEO refers to backlinks and external signals. In other words any actions taken off site that can make a difference to your domain authority (Also called domain rank). Off Page SEO is very tricky because there are many things you can’t control like other sites linking to you (unless you guest post), people actually sharing your content (“going viral”)
Backlinks are the most important factor when it comes to off page SEO. Backlinks are hard to get because you either have to wait for sites to link to you naturally or you have to guest post. Guest posts are hard to come by as well but it can be done. You also need to be watch your links carefully because if links come from sites that are considered spam then your websites ranking will be adversely affected.
Other Types Of Off Page SEO Include
Social Media signals: Links and Sharing Content
Influencers linking to you.
General mentions of your brand on the web
Why Off-Page SEO Is Important
Basically Off Page SEO shows that your content is likable and it shows that you are an authority on your subject / niche. When the search engines recognize your authority on your niche your rank is positively affected.
Frequently Asked Questions About Search Engine Optimization
Can I Learn SEO On My Own? How Do You DO Google SEO Yourself?
Yes, you can learn SEO on your own by studying. There is plenty of free SEO information on the web including on this site. We even teach you how in this article!
Will SEO Exist In 5 Years?
More than likely SEO will be around for a long time. Probably much longer than 5 years. While ranking factors may change or the steps get updated the need for SEO will not change. Search Engines still need a way to judge and rank website pages.
Does SEO Require Coding?
No coding is required to learn and execute SEO. While SEO is something you need to learn it is a process of steps versus a coding language.
Knowing how to code is certainly a bonus and you can directly code SEO elements in to a page, but again it is not actually necessary.
How Difficult Is SEO?
Until you memorize the process SEO can seem quite difficult. Once you know the steps involved, On Page SEO becomes a natural part of the writing process. So in that case it is quite easy.
Off Page SEO is harder as there are some things you cannot control. Plus trying to get quality backlinks is incredibly difficult. Yo will get backlinks naturally over time if you have good quality, shareable, linkable, content, but it tales time.
Note: You can’t purchase backlinks as that is not only against search engines policies but it is also considered a “black hat” technique.
Can I Pay Google To Rank Higher?
No, that is not an option. Google says it tries to rank fairly. (They use over 200 factors to determine page rank.)
Google makes its money off ads and it is big business. That being said, ads do come before organic ranking results and that is one way to boost your websites position. Ads do cost quite a bit of money and you can lose your shirt if not careful. So focus on organic results first.
Do I Need To Hire Someone For SEO?
That is completely up to you, but we suggest learning SEO either way. We think once you learn how to do SEO properly you won’t need to hire anyone.
BUT…
If you have been on your affiliate marketing journey for a while and you are still not getting traffic or rankings then do seek help.
Is SEO Important For Small Business? Is SEO Worth IT For Small Business?
We cannot imagine SEO not being worth it for any business as it is important to be found online. No traffic, no business.
So, SEO is important for all websites who want to rank in the search engines because it is important to a website’s overall success.
Conclusion
Using this guide on Search Engine Optimization, you can start putting SEO into practice for your own site. The goal of SEO is to get found on the search engines, but the byproduct of using SEO is higher rankings, therefore, more traffic. More traffic equals more sales and income for you.
Did we leave anything out? Have any SEO questions that we haven’t covered? Leave a comment below.
