How to do SEO for a website step by step

 If you’re starting to learn about SEO, you may wonder how to do SEO for a website step by step. Yeah, that’s an awkward sentence, but it’s got the keyword in it, and sometimes, that’s what it takes. 🤣 SEO is a pretty simple process, a few steps that we do on a website page, blog post, or even podcast episode to make it easier for the search engine to understand our content. Doing SEO allows our content to be seen by more potential readers who could become customers. 

How do you do SEO for a website step-by-step?

First you want to choose the page or blog post you're going to do SEO on. It's easier to work one page at a time than to try to do little bits of SEO work on a bunch of pages at once. If you've never done SEO before, I recommend you start with the most important pages on your website. Start with your homepage, About page, and any important products or services pages so you can work on getting more traffic to those pages ASAP. 

You can make a list of the pages you want to update, but work on one at a time. When one is done, go ahead and work on the next. This will help you ensure that you don't skip any steps in the process.

Next, brainstorm SEO keywords for your page

You’re going to want to brainstorm some keyword ideas and think about what type of content you could create for your audience. If you’re not sure what keywords are, this blog post will help. What I did there, that’s called an internal link. I’m linking from this blog post to another post on my blog. I did this because it provides you with value, but it’s also part of SEO. It’s a more advanced tactic and not something you have to understand fully right now, but when you’re writing, if it makes sense to link to something else, do that, and it will help both the reader and the search engine.

Next,  you need to choose an SEO keyword for the page you're going to do SEO on

 You need to review your keyword ideas and use an SEO tool like the Google Keyword Planner to check the keyword search volume. Choose the best option from your brainstorm list. What you're looking for here is a keyword with some search volume and low enough competition that your website has a good chance of ranking at the top of Google's search results. 

If you're using the Google Keyword Planner, the competition information it shows is for paid search, but it will be similar for SEO. You want to look for something with low to medium competition. 

You can also use a tool like Ubersuggest. Many of my students use this one and like it because it's easy and user-friendly. Ubersuggest will give you a red, yellow, or green highlight and a score of 1-100 in the search difficulty column. In this tool, SD is the same as competition. What you'll want to do is choose a green or yellow keyword. Green is ideal for small sites or newer websites, but sometimes, yellow can work, too. 

Check out the competition before you start doing SEO on your website 

Go to Google and type in the keyword you’re considering using for your website SEO and see what type of websites are on page one. Are the sites you’re familiar with and would you consider them to be one of your competitors, or are the websites you recognize because they’re at the mall (or the equivalent for your industry)? If they’re brands at the mall, you need to choose another keyword because you’re probably not going to rank.

You need to choose a keyword where the websites currently ranking on page 1 are similar to yours if you want to have a good chance of ranking there, too. Don't waste your time doing SEO on your website or blog and using a keyword that's too competitive for you because you won't get traffic, and you'll waste your time. 

Now it's time to do SEO on your website step-by-step

You'll use your keyword in your SEO elements—title tags, meta descriptions, SEO copy, and even image file names on the page you're doing SEO on. These are your SEO elements and they're where Google looks for clues as to what your content is about. 

Most of these elements are seen by both the searcher and Google, so you want to format them correctly for Google but write them for your potential website visitor.

If you're not sure what any of the SEO elements are or how to add them to your website, request a copy of my Beginner's Step-by-Step Guide to SEO today, and it will walk you through everything you need to understand to get started. 

What else matters for SEO?

Your website's overall SEO is impacted by a few things: your content (the words on your pages), the links coming from other websites, and how people engage with your website. To rank higher in Google's search results, all three of these need to be focused on. Choose SEO keywords you can rank for and use them in the SEO elements where Google will search for clues about your website's content. Create a great user experience for people who visit your website. Be sure your site loads quickly and is easy to read no matter what screen they're on - desktop, tablet, or mobile. Watch your engagement information in Google Analytics to be sure people are engaging with your content and website. It's super important to your rankings. Google wants to be sure the sites they're sending people to are good and provide value. If people don't engage with your website content, they'll stop sending them to you, and your SEO program won't work. 

If you're ready to learn how to do this on your website in the easiest way possible, join me in Simple SEO Content, and I'll walk you through SEO on your website step-by-step.