What Is SEO?

S.E.O. stands for Search Engine Optimization and is basically everything you do to rank higher in search results, ultimately leading to more traffic, customers, sales etc. If you think about it, most of the things we already do to market our business could fall under the SEO banner. SEO really does cover a large number of marketing activities, whether your business is offline or online. Whether you market through video, blog, social media, or even offline, learning the basics of SEO is vital in today’s digital world to grow your business.

Lets start at the very beginning by understanding how search engines work. Watch these 📺 to learn more.

First Things First: Keyword Research

Keyword Research is by far the most important phase in SEO. If you don’t do this step correctly, the rest of your SEO efforts will be wasted. In other words, you MUST get this step right! Keywords are the words or phrases you enter into the search bar to find whatever it is your looking for. This being said, it is a logical pre-requisite to really know your ideal customer. You need to know how they think, what they desire, and where they hang out online. There is more to your ideal customer than age, race & gender. Most marketers do all their research in Google’s Keyword Planner, which is a big mistake. Much more research needs to be done to really drive traffic to your business. Watch this 📺 as Brian Dean, better known as Backlinko, gives some great tips and tricks on conducting keyword research.

I have compiled a massive ✍ list of tools to get you started.

START HERE⬇Keyword Research Tools

SEMRush
Sistrex
KeywordTool
Ahrefs
Search Metrics
Market Samurai
Google Keyword Planner
Knime
Market Muse
Seed Keywords
Keyword Keg
Infinite Suggest
Search Console
KW Finder
Answer The Public
Uber Suggest
Google Trends
SEO Cockpit
Longtail Pro
Ryte
Buzz Sumo
Buzz Stream
Term Explorer
SERP Woo
Quora
MozBar
Soovle
WordTracker
Bright Edge
SpyFu
LSI Graph
Web CEO
Clear Scope
Scrape Box
Moz Explorer
SERP Stat
Ninja Outreach
Bing Ads Intelligence
Keyword Hero
Authoritas
Keywords Everywhere
Keyword Shitter…no I’m not kidding, this is it’s actual name
SEO Monitor
Deep Crawl
Keyword Eye
Wordstat

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO covers various optimization techniques you can use on your web page or blog post. Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself when analyzing your site. Is your website content linkable? In other words, can it be shared. Is your content relevant and in demand? Is the page aesthetically pleasing and easy to read? Will a visitor be able to easily find the information they are seeking? In cases of long-form article or sales page, have you used proper structure and proper title tags to section off the content? UX (user experience) is very important. There is a lot more to On-Page SEO & Copywriting than these few points I’ve mentioned, but this short guide is just to get you started.

Now lets look at Brian Dean’s 📺 On-Page SEO techniques that actually work.

The Technical Side of Things

🙀 Oh the dreaded tech! Certainly not my favorite aspect of SEO but still a vital part to the overall success of any website. Although, not everyone will have to deal with this directly. But if you own your domain you will need to master this aspect as well.

It all begins with Google Search Console. Here you will connect your domain to GSC, verify your domain by pasting a little code into your header, & connecting your Google Analytics account to your GSC account. Once this is done your site can be indexed🎊 and you are on the road to being found in search. I almost forgot, if your website is large enough you may have to create a sitemap. This guide will go into more detail, including viewing stats, running reports & fixing errors. 📺 Check out Google webmaster tools training by SEO Tool Hunter.