Some of our most popular posts on the WorkingPoint Blog are the many articles we’ve created that provide Search Engine Optimization tips for small business owners like you. We decided to put these all together into a Search Engine Optimization training which can help you build the understanding you need to start implementing search engine optimization techniques. If you are ready to learn search engine optimization (SEO) this is a great place to start!
The way that this curriculum is set up, each article will build upon the article before. Make sure to click on the hyperlinks and read the recommended reading!
Lesson #1: What is SEO? Learn the basic terms and concepts
The first step to implementing and SEO strategy is understanding how people search.
Excerpt: If you as a consumer have ever used the internet to shop and/or search for a place to shop, then at some point you have probably entered a search term into a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing. Understanding how people search is the first step to understanding SEO.
If you’re like most searchers, when you are looking for something you will enter that term into a search engine. The search engine will then generate a list of results. You will look at the top response (maybe top 2-3 if you’re really savvy comparison shopper) and then you will navigate away from the search page to those websites. What does that mean for your business? If you want your website to work for you, you need to get to the top of that list!
In SEO terms, where your website falls in the list generated by these search engines is called your “rank”. The highest rank is the top of the list. SEO tactics are about how to make yourself rank higher which will make your website easier to find. This sounds like a good thing, right?
Google’s SEO starter guide is “the bible” of SEO. Break it down into easy to understand concepts with this quick, simple guide.
Excerpt: Recently Google released a brand new, 32 page SEO Starter Guide. It’s incredibly detailed, very easy to read and thorough. Incredibly detailed. 32 jam packed pages of information, steps and strategies. And it has a handy page by page glossary footnote because there are about 6 words on each page that you may or may not understand if you are not a webmaster. Let’s just say that maybe you don’t really have time to read a 32 page Google Search Engine Optimization Guide. Or maybe you are not a webmaster. Or maybe you don’t even know what SEO is…. Fear not! It’s really not as hard as it sounds. With the right help, you could be on the way to ranking without costly pay per click campaigns. These steps below will break down SEO in a way that is accessible to those of us not fortunate enough to have a degree in computer science.
Now that you know the basic terms and concepts, start developing a strategy which will work for your business.
Excerpt: Everyone is wondering how to get a website to “rank”, to be one of the top results when someone enters a term in a search engine. Most small businesses need a web presence of some kind. A healthy web presence is essential so that your customers or potential customers can find you. The higher you rank, the easier you are to find (people really just don’t scroll down past the top results!). SEO can be complicated, but understanding these essential truths about SEO will go a long way to helping you to maximize your website for search.
This case study looks at a real website an identifies good strategies and room for improvement.
Excerpt: Be genuine, but use those keywords in a genuine way to optimize your website for search. Put them on your front page. Put them in your blog posts. Put them in the titles of your videos. Put them in the title in your <head> tag. This is not devious, it’s just helping the people who want and need to find you to do just that. Maybe the library has the best book ever on how to make banana bread, but you’re not going to find it if it ends up in the home improvement section.
Now that you’ve implemented a strategy, make sure it’s showing up where you want it to with this awesome tool! This article teaches you how to use it.
Excerpt: Sadly, effective SEO doesn’t end with on page optimization. As much as engineers and web designers would love it to be true, the on page factors are important but only a small part of what determines your search rank. Effective SEO strategy tends to permeate every element of your web presence. Once you have the keywords in all those important places in your web design, you still need to seek out inbound links which point to those keywords. It also helps to produce content, like blog posts and video, which contain the keywords in the title and body of the content.
After completing
Some of our most popular posts on the WorkingPoint Blog are the many articles we’ve created that provide Search Engine Optimization tips for small business owners like you. We decided to put these all together into a Search Engine Optimization training which can help you build the understanding you need to start implementing search engine optimization techniques. If you are ready to learn search engine optimization (SEO) this is a great place to start!