Do you feel that SEO is too hard and not worth the effort?
SEO isn’t that complicated. It’s quite simple—or at least the basics are. But the basics aren’t enough to get you ranked, right?
Wrong.
Here’s the truth:
Most people who run websites have a limited understanding of SEO, so you often only need to get the basics right to succeed.
In this post, you’ll learn the five fundamental steps to SEO success:
- How to figure out what your customers are searching for
- How to optimize your web pages for your target keywords
- How to make sure your website is accessible to both search engines and humans
- How to get other websites to link to your site, and finally:
- How to start measuring your SEO success
- I’ve made every effort to keep this as jargon-free as possible without scrimping on actionability.
Step 1: Learn what your customers are actually searching for
You can’t optimize your website without knowing what your customers are searching for—that much is obvious.
How do you figure this out? The best starting point is to use common sense.
Imagine that you run a hotel in Dublin, Ireland. It doesn’t take an SEO genius to guess that your customers are probably searching for things like:
- ‘hotels in Dublin’
- ‘place to stay in Dublin’
- ‘accommodation in Dublin’
Before you do anything else, think about what your customers might be searching for and jot your ideas down in a notepad. You could even ask them directly.
No need to go overboard here—a handful of ideas will do.
Step 2: Create pages optimized for search
Keyword research is only the first step towards attracting more organic search traffic.
You also need to make sure your pages are structured well and satisfy the person behind the search to rank for the keywords you selected.
Your optimization efforts should start with making sure that your visitors are enjoying the user experience (UX) your website provides. Use design and typography that makes it easy to consume the content, and remove any unnecessary elements such as pop-ups, opt-in boxes, etc. that can annoy your readers.
On‐page optimization is the next step in your SEO strategy.
Even targeting the most profitable keywords with the “best” content won’t help you if your pages are not optimized for search engines.
There are many ways to implement the features I discuss in the following sections, but if you’re using WordPress for your website, I first recommend installing an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO. It’s free and simple to use, and it’s perfect for those who are new to on-page SEO.
Step 3: Make sure your website is accessible to both search engines and humans
When doing SEO, it’s important to remember that you’re working for two separate customers—your human readers, and the bots search engines use to index your website.
While bots are becoming more intelligent and human-like, many differences still exist between the two. Therefore, your goal should be to create a positive experience for both humans and bots.
Understanding how to create pages optimized for bots can be challenging. That’s why, while it’s important to have a strong understanding of the features we discuss in the following paragraphs, I encourage you to delegate them to a professional (preferably a developer).
Still, here are a few tips to get you off on the right foot.
NOTE. I’ll keep this section relatively short and straightforward, as I don’t want to get bogged down with too much technical mumbo-jumbo in this guide.
Step 4: Build backlinks from other websites
Link building is critical for the success of your SEO strategy, so if you’re prepared to spend resources (time, money, etc.) on producing content, you should also be prepared to commit at least as much time to promoting and generating links to your content.
Why? Because there’s clear evidence showing that backlinks are one of the factors with a strong influence on Google’s ranking algorithm.
Even Google admits that backlinks are one of the top 3 ‘ranking factors.’
There are many tactics you can use to get other websites to link back to your web pages. Some are more legitimate than others. However, before you start cherry picking “link building hacks” to try, take the time to review and analyze how your competitors are building links.
It’s important to use your competitors because each niche is different and tactics that work great in one niche might not be so effective in yours.
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