032: BREAKING DOWN SEO: HOW TO GET YOUR WEBSITE ON PAGE 1 OF GOOGLE
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Today’s talking point:
What are the best online practices? With a blog, is it worth it to consider really learning SEO?
Today we’re talking about sexy SEO, and some actionable steps to get you on the first page of a Google search (because who looks past that?).
SEO is important to every business out there, though it continues to be a foreign language for a lot of us. What we cover:
What SEO actually is
How to utilise it in your business
How to rank on the first page of Google
P.S. Be sure to download your FREE Boss Traffic Flow Checklist to grow your niche and generate more readers and subscribers organically!
What Is SEO? (And How Do You Get Started?)
SEO is getting your site found organically on google → organic = completely free.
To put it simply: search engine optimisation is all about making your site easily reachable. The common thought is to just rely on a bucket load of content, using all the words people could be using to find a site. With that method, there is a lot of guessing, no research, or testing.
How can you make the content you do have SEO-friendly, valuable and attract the right people? The first step is knowing what you want to be found for.
Keywords
It's really thinking: what would people need to search in Google to find me? For the longest time I did this by simply logging onto Google and Pinterest and thinking: what are people searching for right now in my niche and are those things I have content on, and have the resources for?
How do you identify something narrow that's going to point people to you, but not so obscure that someone has to type in this random exact phrase to even find you?
There are a lot of free keyword tools out there. Ubersuggest, is one & it's free. All you do is type in the keyword you think you want to be known for and it gives you a plethora of keywords that can be used.
How does it work?
People aren’t always searching for your product exactly, and sometimes things have multiple names. For example, for a therapist or grief counsellor, someone might search: “what to do if you lose a parent?” You want to have those key phrases in your site as well. You can create content around it, but that's how people are searching now: very, very specifically.
They're not necessarily searching for the solution but they're typing in their problem... now it's about how do you know what all the problems are related to you being the solution. Another free tool is answerthepublic.com:
You put in a keyword and then all the questions that people are putting into Google come up.
SEO STRATEGY
For a lot of people their main goal is to get right up there on that first page, because think about it - how often do you look at the third page of Google? Stats have shown that 75% of people do not go past the first page of Google.
How long can you expect to be on the first page of Google? What does it really take for your business to land that spot?
Keywords
Keyword variations, keyword difficulty.
Get on Google Search Console
It can match your site with that query within the algorithm.
Google Search Results
How do you get your site over to page one?
You can use your keywords in the URL of your blog post title
Use them in your content.
Pro tip: You don't want to have keywords in your content that don't make sense with the content (AKA keyword stuffing), and Google recognises it and penalises your website..
Name your images when you're uploading
Also a Pinterest hack!
Keep in mind, you have different search behaviours for different platforms. What you put into Pinterest is completely different than Google or Youtube. You can also take a look at your Google Analytics and see what people are searching for to get to your website. Are they finding it? Are they leaving your site because they're not finding what they're looking for? That's a great chance for you to utilise those search terms on your site.
What About Money?
How can I increase purchases? So let's take Amazon for example. Now, it's not the prettiest website in the world but, it’s about creating that in store experience online. So this is where SEO can help you sell your product. I see a lot of the time with product entrepreneurs that their title is simply “t-shirt”, they don't say
Women's, v-neck
Cotton t-shirt
Customers have limited time, they have a limited attention span. You want to make the process as easy as possible, and provide them with the information you can and that's where SEO can come into play.
Creating Content to be Seen
Google loves fresh content. Having a blog or video content can push you up 50 times more in Google's rankings. You want to make sure you're embedding youtube videos on your site because videos are higher in the rankings.
When you pull up a search engine results page, you might see a paid ad, then a video, maybe a map, and then underneath all of that is the organic search. So there's a very low amount of real estate for organic search and video ranks higher.
Website Quality
No one loves a slow website. You really have to test your site speed, and see if your images are bogging down your site. So just a little website knowledge: don’t put everything in the header (like social media links). The website has to load everything in the header prior to loading your site content. I would say 98% of the things you're putting in your head or can technically be in your footer and still operate.
Check for broken links on your website. There's a free tool called a dead link checker. It will show you any broken links for you to fix.
RECAP
To round things off, I have a four step framework with some action steps that you can take to get started with SEO:
#1 | Check Your Site
Google your site, your business. Are you even coming up? You've got to see if you’re ranking for your name. And if not, then is your name all over your site? Is it your URL? You're probably not ranking for your entire name because it's nowhere on your site. So that's the first thing.
#2 | Use Keywords
Do all the research, use variations and long tail keywords.
#3 | Get On Google
Submit your site to Google Search Console. Again, completely free. Then you can submit pages, posts and so on.
#4 | Work On Your SEO Strategy
Make sure your website is quality, and create engaging content (that Google wants to see).
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
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