SEO For Beginners

So you’re working on getting better search engine rankings, but you’re new to this and you’re not quite sure where to start, but don’t worry.  It’s not as hard as it sounds. Below you’ll find the key to unlocking success in the realm of SEO for beginners!

So Why is SEO Even Important?

The abbreviation of search engine optimization has a way of striking fear into the hearts of even the most haggard social media marketer.  There are many nuances that have made SEO a great deal more complicated than it needs to be, so a novice is going to start out intimidated, whether they want to be, or not.

First of all, calm down.  This is not a big deal.  Okay, it is a big deal, but it’s been made a lot more difficult than it needs to be, as most things related to social media usually are.  There are certain tips to SEO for Beginners that you should be sticking to when working on SEO for your business or even your personal blogs.

Second, as long as you follow basic advice, you can’t do this wrong.  Focus on what you want to get out of your SEO efforts and tailor them to your needs accordingly.  Be patient with yourself as well.  You’ll get better as you gain experience and with better SEO the less ad spend you’ll have to use for Pay Per Click marketing efforts to drive traffic to your website.  Follow these simple rules, and you’ll do just fine.

Tips and Tricks

1. Keywords – If you’re writing a blog -and you should be- you have to include keywords. Keywords are what you think people are going to search for in order to reach your business.  Do you run a small house cleaning business?  Then you’re likely going to want to include the words cleaning, housecleaning, housekeeper, cleaning lady, cleaning service, etc. coupled with your area.  Tagging your blog with these keywords make sure that your blog will appear in searches.
2. Discern Your Audience – As a social media manager, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve asked a potential client about their target audience and been met with dead air. This should be one of your top priorities.  You need to figure out to whom your business or blog is catering.  Are you focusing on female college graduates from 22-40 or are you focusing on male millennials?  It is imperative to your SEO to know who you think is paying attention, or should be.
3. Write For Your Audience – A lot of people are very tempted to write for the Googles of the world, but this is a mistake. You want to write to your audience.  If you end up penning your content only for search, things get overcomplicated and you lose your audience.  If you lose your audience, it won’t matter much where you rank in searches.  Your search doesn’t make a difference if you don’t have clients.
4. Good Website – Real talk…you have to have a good website. No amount of good blogging in the world is going to make up for a terrible website.  Bad sites prohibit good SEO, that’s just the truth of things.  A former client of mine was writing incredibly engaging blogs every week, but even by searching his name, you couldn’t find his site on Google; that’s how bad his site was.  It was depressing and really hard to explain to his client why his blog was performing elsewhere, but why his SEO wasn’t getting any better.

There is a lot that goes into SEO, yes.  I’m not going to sugarcoat things and tell you that these rules are your end-all and be-all because they’re not.  However, they are enough basic rules to follow for SEO for beginners to keep you going as you learn more.  Don’t sweat all the terms that the internet throws at you, they’ll just confuse you.  Work on figuring out your audience and move from there.  You’ll get the hang of it in no time.  For even more info, and a step by step tutorial, check out the video below!