How to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What Is SEO(Search Engine Optimization)?

Answer to What is SEO? is: SEO stands for (Search Engine Optimization). It is the process of increasing the visibility of a website in search engines.

In simpler terms SEO is all about getting your website on top of a search engine lets say Google search results. It all starts with a keyword search on Google and results for the keyword search are shown in Google SERP(Search Engine Results Page).

So if you want to grow your website traffic SEO should be included in your Digital marketing plan.

How Do Search Engines work?

Search Engines lets take an example of Google have 2 major jobs: Crawling and building an Index. This way they provide the search user with a ranked list of websites they think is the most relevant to the user search.

Search engines use a complex set of algorithms to determine the popularity of a website while you search terms on them. Google search engine is taken into account the relevance and popularity of a web page while ranking it on their SERP. These are called ranking factors.

How to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

To do search engine optimization (SEO) you need to follow below steps:

1. Keyword Research
2. Competition Analysis
3. On-Page Optimization
4. Off-Page Search Engine Optimization
5. Updating already published content and monitor your search engine rankings
6. Publish New content consistently

In this search engine optimization tutorial I will walk you through each of these steps in detail below:

Steps of doing Search Engine Optimization

Step 1: Keyword Research

SEO typically starts with keyword research. This is the process of identifying the most important keywords which people can search to reach our website. I will explain it in simpler terms.

Suppose you have a website which sells “Mobile Phones”. What keywords do you think people might search to reach your website? Well to answer this you can do a simple Google search on the terms “Best mobile phones”, “Best budget smartphones” and see what comes up on Google search results.

You will see a lot of websites coming up on search results with some ads coming on the search results. If your website is very new you can’t rank on these keywords which have heavy competition on Google. You can use the best keyword research tool in the market which is Google Ads: Keyword Planner which helps you in getting the right keyword to target on your website. I will suggest using keywords that show low competition to target your website.

Keep in mind these points while doing a keyword research

• Start with a long tail and low competition keywords
• Use Google related search to check what people are searching on Google related to your search keywords
• There are paid tools like Semrush which can help you do keyword research.

Check out Semrush Now

My bonus SEO tip for keyword research for you is to use a Keyword Monitoring tool like Accuranker. You can check my Accuranker Review to know about this tool. The Accuranker free trial helps you to try this tool for free for 14 days. This will help you automatically know your current ranking and you can improve them as well.

You can also use long-tail keyword research tools like LongTailPro. You can read my Long Tail Pro Review to know more about this tool. What it will do is help you build content around a long-tail variation of your seed keyword which will help you achieve better rankings with lower competition.

Step 2: Competition Analysis

This is an important part of any good SEO process. In this process, we identify who our competitors are and what they are doing to rank high on Google and other search engines.

This process involves checking backlink profiles, top ranking keywords, domain authority, etc to determine competition we have with a similar business like ours. There are paid tools like Semrush which can help you do keyword research.

Step 3: On-Page Search Engine Optimization

On-Page Optimization is the process of optimizing elements on a website(as opposed to links from other websites mostly used in “Off-site-SEO”) to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from search engines.

On-Page search engine optimization tips and factors

• Content should be “In-depth” means that content should be original and useful to stand a chance of higher search engine ranking
• No Keyword stuffing means keywords should not be stuffed in your content just to rank higher. Instead, use synonyms and related keywords to your topic to rank higher on search engines
• The website should have a fast loading speed
• The website should be mobile-friendly – You can check this on Google Search Console
• Site structure, URL structure must be good
• The website should have updated content regularly

Step 4: Off-Page Search Engine Optimization and link building

Off-Page search engine optimization is the process of improving the position of a website on the search engine results page (SERPs). The steps of Off-Page search engine optimization are:

Link Building: Involves building links from relevant and authority websites. Link building is like earning votes for your websites from other relevant websites. Earning high-quality links from other websites requires time and effort but the result is fruitful in the long run.

Social Media Marketing: An increase in engagement on your social media posts also has a positive effect on your search engine rankings. So sharing content on social media channels like Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Quora, etc does have an impact on your search rankings. This is due to the increased visibility of your content.

Step 5: Updating already published content and monitor your search engine rankings

SEO is not a one-time job to do. If you think that once you publish your content and share it on social media channels you are done then you are wrong. You can check my post on Search Engine Optimization Tips to get useful tips on doing SEO for your website.

We need to regularly update existing content on our website as search engines provide more ranking benefits to web pages where content is updated regularly.

Step 6: Publish New content consistently

You need to publish content related to your niche consistently. This is you can follow a posting schedule like 1 blog per week on Friday or 4 blogs per month each one on Wednesday.

This way you give a signal to search engines that you are consistent in your blogging are you post regular content. If you can’t publish too much content. Try to update existing content with new information which keeps them fresh.

Conclusion

SEO is complex and required continuous hard work to understand. Due to the ever-changing search algorithms with search engines use it is extremely difficult to determine what works for your website.

We need to continuously be active and keep updating our knowledge so that we can rank on top of search engine results.

One thing you must keep in mind is that if your content has good quality, uniqueness and freshness then it is extremely easy to rank high on search engines with a little more effort.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Like and share to spread the word.

I am listing some more resources below for you to learn digital marketing and blogging:

If you need help to start a WordPress blog. You can check my article on ‘How to start a blog and make money. Also, if you are looking to create a News/Magazine blog I recommend you to use Newspaper WordPress Theme.

You can check the Newspaper WordPress theme review to know more about this theme. For other WordPress themes, you can check my article on the best WordPress themes for blogs. You can also check Articoolo Review to know how to automatically create content for your blog.

To create content that has correct grammar you can check this post on punctuation checker tools. You can read catchy headlines to create catchy headlines for your blog. This post on Amateur blogger mistakes will help you to avoid mistakes that amateur bloggers make.

If you want to learn about the best tool for SEO keyword research and monitoring check my articles on Long Tail Pro Review and Accuranker Review. To learn how to increase traffic to your website read my article on how to increase traffic to your website.

If you want to create stunning videos for your blog I would recommend trying Camtasia. It is an excellent video editing software. You can read my Camtasia Review to know more about this software.

For Affiliate Marketing and to make money online, I recommend using ShareASale. Check my ShareASale Review to learn about ShareASale.