If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ve heard me talk about the importance of doing SEO on your website and blog. But maybe you’ve found yourself wondering how do I do SEO on my website? It’s not hard once someone explains it to you. So let’s get started.
Whether you’re building a new website, or you already have one, you can do SEO (search engine optimization) now, and you should. SEO is your opportunity to tell Google what your site is about and who to show it to. It’s very beneficial for you.
If you’ve tried to do SEO before and it didn’t work. Don’t worry. You can learn what to do now and make changes to make it start to work.
You should start by choosing the page you’re going to optimize (that’s the O in SEO—Search Engine Optimization). We should optimize every website page or blog post that we want Google to show to potential customers. SEO is the connection point between your website and potential visitors. We need to help Google understand the information on your website so they know who to show it to, and you can get more organic traffic.
You want to choose a keyword that your Ideal Customer would use when searching for information related to the page you will optimize. Use a keyword research tool such as the Google Keyword Planner, Small SEO Tools, Moz, Ubersuggest, etc. It doesn’t matter which one you use, use the one you like the best. They all do the same thing.
You want to choose a keyword that has search volume and lower competition. Most tools will tell you if the competition is low, medium, or high. Use this as a guide. You want to choose the term with the highest traffic and the lowest competition.
I teach my full SEO keyword research and ranking opportunity verification process in SimpleSEO; if you want to learn a fail-safe way to verify you’ve chosen the right keyword, check out the class.
Your final step in keyword research is to go to Google, put in the keyword you’re considering using for your page, and see what websites show up on page 1 in the search results. You want to see sites similar to yours, not big, national brands. If you find big brands, choose a different keyword because this one likely won’t work.
Write the copy for your page, and be sure you’re providing value for your reader. Focus more on providing value and information and answering their questions than using your keyword. You’ll naturally use the keyword you chose because that’s what your page is about. Go back and re-read your copy once you’ve written the first draft. Make sure your keyword is in the first paragraph. If you’ve used it too many times, you’ll hear it because it will sound weird, and if you haven’t used it enough, you’ll see where you can use it.
Your final step when you’re doing SEO is to optimize the new page for Google. You need to create a Title Tag that uses your keyword, write a Meta Description that uses your keyword, rename your image file name and include your keyword (use – to separate the words), and add header tags to separate your main points on your website page (they show up in a bigger font). Choose an H2 tag for your sections and an H3 tag for sub-sections.
Get a copy of my free Beginner's Guide to SEO here; it walks you through exactly how to do it and includes the Best Practices for Google SEO.
That’s all you have to do to do SEO on your website. You’ll follow the same process on each blog post if you have a blog.