For many businesses, your website can be your biggest brand asset, so you need to show authority, trust, and expertise.
Optimizing your website to meet customer needs and display these features is the fundamental process of SEO.
However, before we dive into the nitty-gritty of SEO, I always recommend my clients do a deep dive into their customer and consumer relationships.
My company does this in three ways:
Understanding and acting on this data will put you on the first step in running a proper SEO campaign.
So, without further ado, let’s define the SEO process, what strategies to take, and how it can help your online presence.
SEO Fundamentals
Contents
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website to capture as much organic website traffic through search engines as possible and convert that traffic into measurable business results.
Simply put, SEO is the process of trying to direct people to your website every time they type a search query into a search engine.
For example, if you type into Google [what is content marketing], there are about a million websites that have purposefully optimized a piece of content for that keyword phrase so that people click through to their website.
Once you click on that website, you will navigate, become familiar with your brand and subscribe to your newsletter.
Simple enough, but SEO also involves a lot of jargon and nuanced strategies that can be hard to understand at first. To make things easier, I decided to define some terms that I can use in this tutorial.
Defining SEO Terms
Keywords: Keywords are the words that users enter into a search engine whenever they search for information on the web.
Organic Traffic – Organic traffic is any traffic that comes to your site through a search on a search engine, excluding those that click on PPC links.
SERP: search engine results page.
PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising is an advertising strategy to rank products or landing pages above the normal SERP results from Google. These links will say “ad” next to them.
User Intent: The intent of the keyword search (for example, if the user asks a question or is looking to buy a product).
Meta tags: Pieces of text designed to describe a web page to a search engine. For example, the page title is contained in an HTML title tag attribute.
Ranking Factors: Any algorithmic factor designed to influence a page’s ranking in a search engine for a particular keyword search.
Crawl: The ability of search engines to find web pages on your site.
Indexing: The ability of search engines to include your web pages in their web index.
Technical SEO: The back-end details of a website, including the speed of a web page and mobile rendering, which affects its search rankings.
On-Page SEO – A list of ranking factors, including meta tags and heading tags, designed to help a page rank higher in search results.
Off-Page SEO – A list of ranking factors, including link building and acquisition, designed to improve your website’s visibility and authority.
Link Building – The manual process of creating backlinks or hyperlinks to a website, which is a vital ranking factor for most search engines.
Algorithm Updates: Any update to Google’s core algorithm (eg Penguin, Panda) that influences a wide range of search rankings.
Core Web Vitals: Technical SEO factors that Google considers important in determining the potential user experience of a page.
E-A-T: Experience, Authority, Trust. A set of guidelines that Google suggests marketers use to assess whether their content meets these criteria.
The Importance Of SEO
So the question is, why is SEO so important?
I’ve come across many developers, advertisers, and even high-level executives who either didn’t understand SEO or didn’t think it was necessary. This is crazy.
Done right, SEO is the gift that keeps on giving. I tell clients to think of it like compound interest on investments.
With these benefits in mind, the key to SEO now is understanding all its little intricacies and learning how to do it the right way.
7 Steps To Master SEO Once And For All
1. Build A Solid Technical Foundation
Unfortunately, everything I’m about to talk about is completely useless if your website has a substantial technical error that prevents it from ranking highly.
I’ve seen countless companies create great pieces of long-form content only to be hampered by page speed or indexing issues.
Google values technical SEO because technical SEO is a huge influence on user experience. For example, if your web page loads slowly and users tend to bounce, then Google will adjust based on this information.
To reinforce this, Google introduced its Core Web Vitals project in 2020. Without going into too much detail, Core Web Vitals measures a website:
Core Web Vitals provides developers with benchmarks to reach and create a strong user experience.
The Chrome UX report (for Chrome users only) allows you to test your website for these basic vitals to see if any changes are required.
In addition, I recommend you focus on the following factors to position your website as well as possible to rank in the SERPs.
Write down a list of the issues you’re having with your website and work with a developer to resolve them before you start posting content or searching for keywords.
For a more detailed breakdown of technical SEO factors, read Advanced Technical SEO: A Comprehensive Guide.
2. Learn How To Properly Research Keywords
Once you have your foolproof technical foundation, it’s time to get into the more granular aspects of SEO: discovering keywords.
We typically segment keywords into two categories that we can use to build top-level navigation:
Your top-level navigation will include seed keywords related to a wide range of topics, services, or product lines. For example, the top-level navigation of the Search Engine Journal website follows this format:
Screenshot from Search Engine Journal, November 2022
On the other hand, long-tail keywords will be used for informative evergreen blog posts or various forms of content that directly appeal to user intent.
In general, many small businesses like to focus on long-tail keywords for more niche services because they have less competition.
You may also consider creating separate pillar pages around seed keywords on your website to help them rank higher in search engines. For example, having a page on a broad topic related to mobile SEO will not rank as highly as a perennial post that discusses mobile SEO.
Once again, Search Engine Journal provides another great example of a pillar page using a seed keyword and supporting pages that discuss subtopics taken from long tail keywords.
Screenshot from Search Engine Journal, November 2022
Next, we need to filter our keyword search based on user intent.
In general, there are two broad categories of user intent that we can separate keywords into:
To develop business keywords for top-level service/product pages and individual product pages, I recommend using the free Google Ads Keyword Planner.
To get started, type in a seed keyword related to your business.
Screenshot of Google Keyword Planner, November 2022
Google Keyword Planner even provides additional ideas for long-tail searches at the top, and you can separate keywords by competition and other factors.
I like to filter keywords by “top of page bid (high range)” to see which keywords advertisers have made the highest bid on. This filter is also useful if you want to separate keywords by intent, with the highest bids being commercial and the lowest bids being informational.
Select a list of seed keywords, preferably with lower volumes, and export them to a CSV.
Next, we are going to search for long-tail keywords with question phrases. Question phrases allow us to answer user questions directly, have lower search competition, and can be used to create support pages for our pillars.
You can filter your keyword searches in Keyword Planner by incorporating “what”, “why”, “when” and “how” into your search, or use a tool like Semrush that does the work for you.
Semrush screenshot, November 2022
I highly recommend a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs, which allows you to build keyword lists and topic ideas using related long-tail keywords. You can even filter keywords by difficulty, volume, and intent.
Also, tools like AnswerthePublic are great for finding additional question phrases.
Screenshot from Answer the Public, November 2022
Google Trends, Semrush, and Ahrefs also offer tools that allow you to view trending topics and keywords in your industry to gain new insights.
Semrush screenshot, November 2022
Finally, look at what your competitors are doing if you’re looking for a list of keywords or topics and don’t know where to start.
Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs show you who your biggest competitors are online and let you explore which keywords and pages drive the most traffic to a competitor’s domain.
Semrush screenshot, November 2022
Steal these keywords and content ideas to optimize your website based on the forms of content that rank best for your competitors.
Once you compile a keyword list in a spreadsheet, match your seed keywords to your top navigation URLs and use your long-tail keywords to create themes for your content calendar.
3. Create Content That Ranks And Converts
Developing a content marketing strategy from your keyword research will allow you to build authority around topics and fulfill user intent in your sales funnel.
Creating high-level content also helps you or your business become thought leaders in your respective fields.
For example, Neil Patel, Brian Dean, and several others have used content to promote their personal and professional brands to the top of our industry.
First, let’s look at the factors that influence content ranking, such as:
In general, I like to create pillar posts using evergreen tutorials (like this one!) and then use long-tail keywords to create subtopics.
So, for example, each step in this tutorial could represent a subtopic, and my strategy could become more granular from there.
Next, we need to look at writing content for each stage of your sales funnel. While informative content and blog posts are great for driving traffic, you need to create strategies to convert web traffic into sales or signups once they land on your website.
The typical sales funnel consists of at least three broad stages:
You’ll often find sales funnels in a much more complex customer relationship management (CRM) platform than this, but this should give you a basic overview of how you should approach your inbound marketing strategy using content marketing.
4. Optimize Your Web Pages For Search Engines
Once you start generating content and building your service pages, you need to make sure that your content is properly optimized for search engines.
I know we’ve discussed various ranking factors and technical SEO, but now it’s time to dive into SERP and on-page optimization factors.
Perhaps one of Google’s most important off-page SEO strategies and ranking factors remains link building, outlined below.
5. Build Links To Your Website
According to research, inbound links are still a powerful ranking factor, even though the quality of links outweighs their quantity.
There are literally dozens of link building strategies to use, from HARO to guest blogging.
To start link building, you need to create a great piece of content. Then, once your link magnet is built, you’ll need to have eyeballs in front of it so people can start linking to it.
Fortunately, tools like Semrush have greatly simplified the manual communication process, allowing you to collect contact information for target websites and manage your manual email communication.
You can even plug specific keywords or competitors to discover sites for link building opportunities.
Author’s screenshot, November 2022
If you don’t have a backlink tool, you can still manually reach out to people using the site operators.
For example, you can find competitor links by using the following search: site:www.competitor.com -competitor.com
Screenshot of search for [site search: searchenginejournal.com], November 2022
If there’s a site you want a specific link to, you can also do a search for “site:” and type in a topic to see if they have content written on that topic.
To find general trending topics to link to, do a search for “intitle.”
Screenshot of search for [intitle: “link building”], November 2022
Site operators can also be used to find resource pages or guest posting opportunities to communicate with.
To summarize, I’ve written a list of essential link building practices below:
Editor’s Note: As a free alternative to tools like Semrush, you can pull data from Google Search Console. For more information on how to do this, we recommend this resource.
While I’ve discussed some strategies to help your content rank high and acquire some backlinks manually, sometimes those strategies aren’t enough.
Unfortunately, SEO is notoriously competitive.
Instead, we should also focus on various outreach strategies designed to attract attention to our website.
Below are some strategies I outlined to help drive immediate traffic to your content and help you rank higher.
There are a dozen more strategies to help you promote content, especially if you’re trying to rank on specific outlets like TikTok, Substack, Twitter, or others.
7. Consult The Analytics
Finally, SEO is not complete without consulting our analysis.
The most important analytics tools I recommend for any business are Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and a competitive research tool like Semrush.
Semrush screenshot, November 2022
First, I love using a tool like Semrush to see what content ranks for that amazing distance (position 11-20) in Google to repurpose that existing content or create new content around that keyword and link back and forth between the two pages.
Their analytics will also tell you which pages get the most traffic and which ones need more promotion.
However, for more granularity, we need to look at Google Analytics to examine how people interact with our content.
I recommend setting up conversion goals or paths to track how many people are completing the desired actions on your websites.
I also like to use Google Analytics Behavior Flow to show me which path users take when they land on my website.
Screenshot of Google Analytics, November 2022
Use the key performance indicators (KPIs) provided by GA to make changes to your website when necessary.
For me, the most important KPIs to keep in mind are:
In addition, Google Search Console is also a useful tool that allows us to see how many impressions our pages generate and how many people click on our links.
Setting up KPIs and checking your analytics on a monthly basis to find improvements can help you understand which strategies are working for your website and which ones should be discarded.
Put Your Skills Into Action
Now that you understand the basics of SEO, you’ll learn more as you troubleshoot during a campaign.
Fortunately, many mistakes you make along the way won’t cost you as much money as an ad, and any failed campaigns can always be repurposed later for greater success.
Featured image: Vadym Pastukh/Shutterstock
What are the 3 types of search?
Types of searches: transactional, navigational, informative.
How many searches are there? There are at least 8.5 billion searches on Google every day. Wondering how many Google searches are performed every second? Google runs about 99,000 search queries per second, which adds up to a whopping 8.5 billion searches per day on Google.
What type of searches are there?
Types of Search Queries Search queries are the keywords or phrases that people enter into a search engine to find information. There are three types of search queries: navigational, informational, and transactional.
What are the 3 common types of search intent?
4 types of search intent
- Informative intention. Let’s start with the informational intent. …
- Navigation intention. The second type of search intent is called navigation intent. …
- Transactional intent. The third type of search intent is transactional intent. …
- Commercial investigation.
What are the 4 types of searches?
It turns out that 99% of all search terms fall into 4 different intent categories: informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. And you can usually figure out the search intent based on the keyword itself. For example, a keyword like “buy a laptop stand” is obviously business.
What kind of searches are there?
It is commonly accepted that there are three different types of search queries: Navigation search queries. Informative search queries. Transactional search queries.
What are the 3 common types of search intent?
4 types of search intent
- Informative intention. Let’s start with the informational intent. …
- Navigation intention. The second type of search intent is called navigation intent. …
- Transactional intent. The third type of search intent is transactional intent. …
- Commercial investigation.
What are the 3 Cs of search intent?
The 3 Cs of Search Intent SERP features don’t show up for all keywords, but you can always find out the search intent through the 3 Cs, i.e. content type, content format, and search intent. content angle.
What are the main pillars of SEO?
The three pillars of SEO: authority, relevance and experience.
What are the main areas of SEO? The four pillars of SEO Technical SEO: how well your content can be crawled and indexed. content: Having the best and most relevant answers to a prospect’s question. On-site SEO: Optimizing your content and HTML. Off-site SEO: Authority building to ensure Google stacks the deck in your favor.
What are the 4 important stages in SEO?
Phases of our SEO campaigns
- Phase 1: onboarding, site assessment, strategy development.
- Phase 2 â On-site optimization.
- Phase 3 – Off-site optimization, citation submission, and cleanup.
- Phase 4 – Continuous and advanced SEO: link building, tracking, updates.
How many stages are there of SEO?
The 6 stages of an SEO-Content strategy.
What are 3 main areas of SEO?
The three types of SEO are: On-page SEO â Anything on your web pages â Blogs, product copy, web copy. Off-Page SEO – Anything that happens outside of your website that helps with your SEO strategy – backlinks. Technical SEO â Anything technical done to improve search rankings â Site indexing to help crawl bots.
Will SEO exist in 5 years?
SEO will not be phased out in the next five years because social media and search engines are likely to merge. Facebook has already started doing this: They average more than 1.5 billion searches every day. Twitter has done the same; joined in partnership with Google.
Does SEO have a future? SEO will only grow rapidly in the future. Just be sure to follow SEO best practices like creating useful content, having a faster website, and following Google’s guidelines for better rankings.
Will SEO be obsolete?
And if you listen to the rumors, this time it’s all about search engine optimization. Rest in peace, SEO: 1997-2022. Just a little problem. SEO is still alive and kicking.
Is SEO still relevant in 2022?
If you’re wondering if SEO is still relevant in 2022, our answer is that it definitely is, and there are good reasons for that.
Is SEO going to end?
No. SEO is not dead in 2022. SEO is still a very powerful digital marketing strategy. SEO will continue to change as Google updates its algorithm, but that is to be expected.
Will SEO exist in 10 years?
Speculations abound, but they don’t always provide a reliable forecast of what’s to come. However, one thing is for sure: SEO will be around for a long time. As long as search engines exist and Internet users continue to use keywords and phrases to find what they are looking for, the search engine business will continue.
Is SEO a long term investment?
Investing in SEO for your business is a long-term strategy that can help you rank higher in Google SERPS and generate more business for years to come.
Will SEO exist in 10 years?
However, one thing is for sure: SEO will be around for a long time. As long as search engines exist and Internet users continue to use keywords and phrases to find what they are looking for, the search engine business will continue.
Is SEO a long term strategy?
SEO is a long-term investment The process of SEO (search engine optimization) is a long-term investment because, like any worthwhile investment, it takes time to grow. If your business is investing in traditional marketing campaigns, it is vital to invest similarly in SEO and digital campaigns.
Is SEO a good investment?
It is crucial for businesses to invest in SEO because it is a discipline that is uniquely designed to optimize the technical aspects of a website for search engines so that real humans searching can find you when looking for great products and solutions.
How long will SEO last?
Most professionals expect to see results in as little as 2 months, but SEO can take up to 12 months to work. While every company’s SEO strategy is different, most companies can expect to see significant results in 6-12 months.
Is SEO dead in 2022?
No. SEO is not dead in 2022. SEO is still a very powerful digital marketing strategy. SEO will continue to change as Google updates its algorithm, but that is to be expected.
Is SEO worth it in 2022?
Yes, SEO pays off: in 2022, in the future, in the past, and forever. As long as websites and search engines exist, SEO is necessary. SEO 10 years from now will likely be very different to SEO today, but you always need to make sure your website is sending search engines the right signals so they can find you.
Will SEO exist in 10 years?
Speculations abound, but they don’t always provide a reliable forecast of what’s to come. However, one thing is for sure: SEO will be around for a long time. As long as search engines exist and Internet users continue to use keywords and phrases to find what they are looking for, the search engine business will continue.
What are the 5 important concepts of SEO?
SEO involves five main steps:
- Keyword research. Find what people are looking for.
- Content creation. Create content for search engines.
- SEO on the page. Make your content as clear as possible.
- Link building. Build trust and authority from other websites.
- Technical SEO.
What is the most important part of SEO? #1 Google Ranking Factor At WebTek, we say that the most important parts of SEO and the most important Google ranking factors are web page titles and header tags. Headlines represent the main real estate element of any website – they are your best opportunity to tell Google exactly what your website or web page is about.
How long does it take to learn SEO?
If you can learn SEO for a couple of hours every day, you can master the basics of SEO in 4-8 weeks and land your first SEO job in 3-6 months. If you can learn SEO full time, you can master the basics even within 1-2 weeks.
Is it difficult to learn SEO? SEO is not necessarily difficult to learn, but it does require time, effort, and persistence. If you’re just starting out and don’t know anything about search engines and how they work, you can expect to feel a bit overwhelmed at first, especially if you’re trying to learn SEO on your own. However, it is important to keep trying.
Can I learn SEO in 3 months?
Experts say it usually takes one to three months to learn the basics of SEO and a year or more to fully master the practice. The time it takes to learn the basics of SEO depends on several factors.
Can I learn SEO in month?
While it’s a career-long journey, you can learn SEO in about a month, enough to make a huge impact on your website, and therefore your business as a whole.
Can I learn SEO in 2 months?
It takes 1-3 months to learn SEO at a basic level and 6-18 months to learn SEO at an advanced level. The amount of time it takes to learn SEO depends on the number of hours per day that you can study search engine optimization.
Can I learn SEO in month?
While it’s a career-long journey, you can learn SEO in about a month, enough to make a huge impact on your website, and therefore your business as a whole.
Can SEO be self taught?
It is a fact of learning that all education is self-education. Although others can facilitate learning, no one can teach you anything; they can only inspire you to teach yourself. That means if you want to learn search engine optimization (SEO), you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands.
Can I learn SEO in a month?
While it’s a career-long journey, you can learn SEO in about a month, enough to make a huge impact on your website, and therefore your business as a whole.