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What exactly is SEO?Should I work on my SEO?Sounds good, how do I improve my SEO?How does Google determine what to rank higher for a search?Ok, now give me some concrete steps to improve my SEO!ConclusionThe no fluff guide to SEO for beginners. A 7 minute read with actionable steps to increase website traffic.
Who should read this? People who have little to no understanding of what SEO is and want a quick and "to the point" summary of the topic.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) put simply is the process of getting your website to rank higher on Google. The higher your website and it’s pages rank on Google search, the more people will click on your links, and thus the more organic traffic your site receives.
While everyone can benefit from more organic traffic, here are the top 2 criteria for whether or not to invest your time/money into SEO:
TLDR:
More specifically, there are two categories of SEO to improve:
Google follows two general rules, which correspond to the two areas of SEO - on-site and off-site improvements:
Note: Google does not reveal the specific criteria on their ranking algorithm, and they change it from time to time.
The following steps are listed in order of importance and difficulty:
I will walk you through the process with our example business: CTC Inc - a family owned semi-truck and trailer repair service in Oklahoma City.
Friendly FYI: an SEO tool like Seona or Semrush can save you lots of time in the process.
The first step to writing good content is figuring out what to write about. This is where researching keywords comes in. Keywords are basically words or phrases people commonly search for, such as “men’s sunglasses” or “marketing strategies.”
Here is the keyword research done for CTC Inc, with an example set of 10 keywords. Data is provided by Seona.
The final list of keywords to target are: transmission repair, truck road service, truck oil change, truck engine service, and truck maintenance.
Now that you have the keywords you want to rank for, it’s time to write content around them and publish them to your site. Consistency is key to maintaining your online presence and SEO.
A common way to consistently pump out content is through a blog. Here are a few example blog post formats to get you started:
Typically, a good way to structure your content is to write an extensive pillar page for each target keyword, and then branch off and link to shorter blog posts focusing on sub-topics around that target keyword. This is called topic clustering.
Easy tip for brainstorming what to write about? Search up the keyword you’re targeting on Google, and see what other high ranking pages are writing about!
A good rule of thumb is one well written pillar post per month and one blog post per week posted to your site.
Here are the blog topics that CTC Inc wrote about, targeting one of the keywords that they picked out: “transmission repair.”
The top 3 most important factors for technical SEO are:
What's the easiest way to measure your website page’s technical SEO score? Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights! The tool will scan your site and rate you on factors like speed performance and accessibility.
Tip: The easiest way to increase page speed is converting the images/videos on your website to the Webp format (developed by Google themselves!)
CTC Inc put their website www.ctc-inc.net into PageSpeed Insights to check their technical SEO. They found that their weakest area was their slow page speed! To fix this, they converted their main homepage image to Webp.
Now it’s time to tackle off-site SEO! The easiest way to drive quality links to your site is by creating accounts for your business on relevant online platforms - bonus points if you’re active and posting on them.
Here’s a list of example platforms you may want your business on:
Because these platforms are reputable, having links from their website pointing to yours drives your sites authority as well. Plus, creating an account usually only takes a few minutes.
CTC Inc made a Google My Business account and a Bing Places account for their business (and it took them less than 10 minutes). After publishing their accounts live, their listing now drives traffic to their website and improves the trustworthiness of the business.
What is a backlink? A backlink is simply a link that points from another site to yours.
As stated earlier, one of the main ways Google chooses to rank is how many OTHER quality sites point to yours, like a voting system. Thus, the final way to increase your page rank is by reaching out to high authority sites for a backlink to your site.
This is a more scalable and definitive way of boosting your site’s SEO, but it comes at a price: The average cost of a quality backlink is $195, and can go up $2500 depending on the quality and niche.
Here is a step by step guide for reaching out for backlinks:
CTC Inc looked for a high authority site in the truck repair industry and found: mitchell1.com.
Mitchell 1 had a resources page (mitchell1.com/resources) which included a lot of guides on repair information. CTC Inc thought this could be an appropriate page to link their own guide on “How Regular Maintenance Can Extend the Life of Your Semi-Truck.”
Here is a sample email drafted to mitchell1.com for a backlink:
Dear Mitchell 1 Team,
I hope this email finds you well. My name is ________, and I am the head of marketing at CTC Inc, a family owned semi-truck and trailer repair service in Oklahoma City.
I was wondering if Mitchell 1 would be open to featuring a backlink to our website, www.ctc-inc.net, on your website. Our site offers comprehensive guides on truck repairs, which we think could pair well with your informational repair guides.
An example backlink placement would be showcasing our blog post “How Regular Maintenance Can Extend the Life of Your Semi-Truck” on your resources page at mitchell1.com/resources.
Thank you for considering this request. I look forward to collaborating and would be happy to discuss further details or answer any questions you may have.
Regards,
Head of Marketing | CTC Inc
The SEO industry is often confusing for many business owners, because it's difficult to measure the impact on your website traffic your SEO efforts are making. Hopefully this guide taught you what SEO is, and how you can actually improve it to gain some organic traffic for your business.
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