They're Lying: SEO Is Not Hard

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a misunderstood term. While it may not be child’s play, it certainly isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. All you need to do is understand it thoroughly. It is not worth hiring someone else to do it unless you are a large company. This step-by-step tutorial will guide you on how to go about getting your website ranked at the top.

Google’s main purpose is to find the most popular web page for the words you key into the search bar. What does this imply? That you have to make it clear to Google what your page is about, and then make your site popular.

Keyword Generation

The algorithms written by Google are top of the line. They shut down spammy sites every day so instead of trying to game the system, it is better to do things the right way. Do not buy into the idea that you need to use software and spun content to generate traffic. It will end up costing your website more in the long run.

Start by making it clear to Google what your page is about. Focus on your home or landing page on ranking for one keyword. This keyword should not be your brand name. When you get that ranking, you can then venture out to other keywords. But first things first. You have to settle on a keyword. The difficulty level of this keyword search depends on how long your site has been in existence, and the amount of traffic to the site.

You should understand a concept known as "long tail". These long tails are less popular keywords. They are the ones you should aim for because they reduce the competition. Use a couple of free tools to find the long tail. The process goes like this:

  • Use Keyshitter, Ubersuggest, plus a little bit of brainstorming to generate some key words.

  • Export the words to Google Keyword Planner to gauge the level of traffic.

  • Install  SEOQuake chrome extension to search for these words and to check for keyword difficulty.

Get a list of 5-10 words and plug them into Ubersuggest. It will give you a list of keywords - just click on ‘view as text,’ and copy paste all the words into a text editor. Keep going and you’ll end up with a long list.

Traffic estimation

You now have a substantial list of keywords. The next step will be to check if they have enough search volume. Open an Ad words account to be able to use Google Keyword Planner - this gives you an estimate of traffic levels, which are not necessarily accurate but will point you in the right direction.

Create your Ad Words account, and login.  Select “get volume data and trends.” Copy and paste your list of keywords, and click “get search volume.”  It will bring up a lot of data and graphs. Since the Google Planner interface is difficult to work with, export the list to an excel sheet.

The traffic is determined by the age of your site. Sort this data by level of difficulty. The volume that Google gives us as an exact match is not exact, and you’ll only see the word if used as a synonym, but not in a phrase. Knowing that, you can sort out the traffic from the highest to the lowest. Now pick the best five keywords.

Download the SEOQuake Chrome Extension and do a Google search. The SEO data of every site is revealed below each search result. SEOQuake adds a ranking number and the following details:

  • The Google Index

  • Page Links

  • URL links

This is the data that will determine what you need to do to overtake these sites in traffic. A new site will take a month or two before it starts to generate a significant amount of traffic

On and off page SEO

Once you have your keyword, let Google know what your page contains. How do you do this? By making sure all the keywords are in the right places. Off page SEO or backlinks basically, means links.

To Google, every single link on the web is a weighted vote, and every time you get linked to something, Google understands you are a site worth looking at. The term ‘link juice’ refers to when you have an authoritative site like Wikipedia link to yours. Google penalizes spammy sites, and some unscrupulous competitors may use this to their advantage. They might link these to your site and have you penalized, which is known as negative SEO. To avoid this, you may choose to ‘disavow’ links in the search console, which sends a message to Google to disregard that particular link. It is possible to have a link with a ‘nofollow’ property. This means you may want to follow someone, but do not necessarily want to be linked to them or give them link juice. The other reason could be to keep off scammers. If you need to change your  URL, and you don’t want the link juice to disappear, a 310 redirect will pass on a lot of the link juice.  There are several tools you can use to check how many links point to a certain site, and what the authority of those pages are. You can crawl particular pages to discover which link to your site.  Navigate to your site; go to the left-hand side, select ‘search traffic’ and ‘links to your site.’ To have a look at all your links, on ‘who links to you the most,’ click on ‘more’.

Becoming an Authority

Becoming an authority takes time. Your site has to build traffic slowly. Monitor all alerts of a particular topic across different platforms on the internet. Software called BuzzBundle will help you do this. It helps you to leave positive comments on your product, and allows you to create different accounts. Create two or three, and use them to give opinions. BuzzBundle will ask for a keyword, which you already have. Key it in and hit “Go.”

It will load different contexts, and all you need to do is go through them and find something you can comment on. The essence of these multiple accounts is to make the conversations authentic and computer-generated. You can follow someone you have an interest in on social media like Twitter. When they start following you, you are well on your way to building a team.

Using links with ATM parameters will help you track traffic to particular blogs or sites. You can also focus on those that are driving more traffic - Disqus is a comment system you may find useful. It bans you for using the same link in every post, and it is wise to use different accounts or rotating IPs. The other alternative is to use a proxy after every two days, and use your site URL as the displaying name.

This step by step tutorial will help you save money and avoid consultants who tell you it is impossible to implement SEO on your own. SEO is simpler than people make it out to be, unless it’s for a huge company. Consultants will tell you it is harder than it is so they can make money off you. Unless you understand how Google works, it is difficult to get your site ranked - but all you need to do is follow their rules, choose the right keywords and voila! You’ll get ranked in no time. Some people try to beat Google’s system, but end up being caught and having their sites deleted.

Have something to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Közzétéve 6 szeptember, 2017

EdwardSuez

Sales & Marketing Guru

Edward is the Sales & Marketing Correspondent for Freelancer.com. He is currently based in Sydney, and is a self-confessed ice-cream fan.

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