Whether you have a business, write a blog, or own a website, the intention is to guide traffic to your site to make sales, increase views, or get your product known to the community. Have you ever wondered how it’s done? Well, it is all in SEO.
Typically, the first eight steps to learn SEO is all in the research you do. Understanding the basics and tools of SEO is what will increase not only the quantity of traffic to your website but also the quality.
What is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a technique used to increase the rank of your website by utilizing niche terms to attract users who search for related words within your business industry. This assists in redirecting traffic to your site and converting someone into a potential customer.
8 steps to learn SEO
Here are the top-rated steps to learning SEO for free.
- Research SEO
Getting a good handle on what the term SEO means and how it pertains to your particular niche or product is the most important part of learning SEO. Knowing what terms you should use, where they should be placed, how many times, and also what your competition is doing is the meat and potatoes of SEO success.
- Research Google
The object is to research terms that Google would consider the top searched terms for that particular niche or area. For example, if you were a college student on the lookout for a website that would write your essays for you, you would search Google for the words “write my research paper.” Google would then provide results with the highest-ranking SEO termed articles that match those words. Typically the words you searched would be bold to direct you to how that article or website matched what you searched.
- Understand SEO basics
Once you understand what SEO means and research examples on Google, you now need to compute to mind the basics of SEO. Some first-time website creators tend to overuse terms or not use the top searched terms within their articles and not understand why they aren’t seeing sales or increased visitors to their sites. One of the SEO basics is to utilize the Google Search Console; here, you will be provided recommendations on improving and optimizing your website.
- Know your competition
Knowing your competition and what SEO tools they use to direct traffic and sales to their sites is an excellent resource for learning SEO for free. Watch YouTube videos, read SEO blogs, and visit websites similar to your own. Gain as much information as you can from those who have succeeded before you as a stepping stone to even more successful.
- Use SEO tools
Investing in an SEO tool could take hours off the time you would spend relentlessly searching data and keywords to optimize your product or website. The top SEO tools provide the user with information on how they measure up to the competition with reports and performance analysis. You can easily find out what is working for and against you when it comes to how you rank and what opportunities you may be overlooking to increase traffic.
- Practice
In this case, practice does make perfect. Finessing the art of SEO terms is not an easy task. Understanding your target audience and deciphering what they would search for is a very tricky craft. So practice. If you create a jewelry business, spend a couple of hours researching different ways to search jewelry terms and then make a list of the top-ranked words and use them for your articles, blogs, and product descriptions.
- Create a website
Start small. Less is more, especially if your website is new. Creating a website with one page that sufficiently showcases your blog or product is the best path. It will take time for Google to find your website, but if you stay the course and stick to the basics, you will begin to see an increase in visitors to your page, clicks on your links, and most importantly, sales.
- Study your analytics page
Any website owner can link their site to Google’s analytics. Here you will have a breakdown of how many visitors, site clicks, demographics, amount of time people stayed on-site, and what they looked at the most, to name a few. This will help you understand who your target audience is and what content pertains to your site is searched the most.
Conclusion
When creating any business, it is critical to know what best practices will help your growth and optimize its success and longevity. Understanding how SEO works and positively impacts your business, website, or blog is essential to all business owners. It doesn’t have to cost you anything but a bit of time and energy.