In the world of getting found online, SEO ranks high (sorry for the pun) on the list of things you want to know about.
But for most of us it’s a topic we assume we’ll never master, don’t have time to learn, never mind apply, and secretly hope isn’t as important as “they” say.
Let’s start with why, not the Simon Senek kind.
Why should you want to know even a wee bit about SEO?
In the words of one of the world’s experts — no exaggeration and she’s a hoot of a teacher — Kate Toon, “You need SEO if you want to Google to fall in love with you.”
Ah Google, the arbiter of all things ranked, found, or broken.
If you think about search engines, they have two jobs: To understand what customers are looking for, and to give it to them fast. Keywords are the breadcrumbs you leave the Google and the others to lead them back to your site or landing pages.
By now you know I’m a fan of Neil Patel, and his article “SEO Made Simple, A step-by-step guide” really is simple and step-by-step if you are just getting started.
If you have been trying to ignore this not-so-complex after all critical element of getting found, peek-a-boo, I see you; read the article already.
It’s packed with cool data too, like “the first five results on Google get 67% of all clicks.” According to Kate it’s less, but let’s ignore that and get back to the bottom line, SEO matters. And this article — since I said I’d keep this simple I’m keeping it to one article this week — also walks you through other ways to boost your sites probably of getting ranked higher.
The other reason I’m only linking one article is that this thing is a beast — in a lovely Beauty and the Beast kind of way. It’s big, it’s something you want to sit down with and listen to intently.
It covers long and short form content, long tail keywords, mistakes people make when searching for the best keywords, and a couple of keyword research sites. One of my favorites — and I hope you’ll agree — isn’t designed to compare keyword rankings. It isn’t about keywords at all.
AnswerthePublic.com invites you to type in your keyword or words and it generates the kinds of questions people are searching for with those words. Why is this important? Knowing what people type into a search engine give you a peek into your avatars head. You might find keywords you hadn’t thought of.
I’m telling you, this stuff can be fun and I was the one who used to think of a keyword as a description of what I did vs what people are looking for.
As much as I want to keep this simple, for those of you who are already doing SEO or are ready to take it on, here’s another article from Moz.com, a Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Research. Go forth, get found, and prosper!