SEO Basics: How to Reach an Audience Through Google
SEO is a long-term game, but it’s worthwhile to get started now so your business keeps growing for many years and decades to come.
Is SEO relevant to your goals?
Do you want people to discover your business when they search Google?
If the answer is no, then this article is really not important. But if yes, proceed!
What is SEO?
Any time you Google “how to make breakfast tacos” Google’s algorithm decides what’s relevant to show you. Google doesn’t tell people how their algorithm works, but they’ve hinted at what elements matter and we talk about those further below. As a whole, their algorithm ranks content highly that past site visitors have enjoyed, as indicated by time spent on pages, and content that was shared via links and social media.
People say content is king because content helps your blog rank in Google. People who rank in spot #1 on Google get the bulk of the clicks and therefore visitors.
What’s a keyword?
The ultimate goal in SEO is to rank for keywords that are valuable to your business. I recently consulted with a company that hosts meetups for ambitious women in Chicago. Some of the important keywords for them were: “women in tech in Chicago” or “networking event for women in Chicago.”
You can use blogging as a strategy for ranking for these keywords and attracting new customers.
How to rank for a keyword
Use the word or phrase on your site in a blog title, section header, and link text. Aka write valuable content about it.
Get backlinks to your site using that keyword as link text. So for example, if I want to rank for “Seo for Authors” I would write a guest blog about it and include that phrase with a link back to me.
Keyword Research volume
I recommend Uber Suggest. Let’s say you want to write a blog post about how to write a book. You can type in “how to write a book” and Uber Suggest will show you recommended keywords and their search volume.
Monthly search volume tells you how many people search for “how to write a book” every month.
Uber Suggest will also tell you if it’s a difficult keyword to rank for.
What metrics matter according to Google?
Domain authority
DA is a number from 0 to 100 that shows how much authority your site has on the internet. Google is 100. It’s a scale to show how long you’ve been in business, how much content you’re posting, whether other people on the internet link to you, and if people are staying on the page to read your content or bouncing (aka leaving the page).
Site visitors
The number of people who visit your site. The more visitors you get, the more Google views you as credible.
Average time on page
The average amount of time a person spends on a given page of your website. The longer they spend on any given page, Google views this as high credibility because people are staying to engage and learn. This is where video content can be valuable, people stay on the page to watch a video.
Typically 2-3 minutes on a page is great.
Bounce rate
It represents the % of visitors who enter your site and then leave rather than continuing to view other pages.
As a rule of thumb, 41-55% is roughly average. 56-70% is worse than average, but may not be cause for alarm depending on the website.
Backlinks
A backlink is simply a link from someone’s website to yours.
Backlinks indicate authority because they mean other people are referencing you and showing your valuable content to their readers, too.
This is where having a guest blog strategy can be really powerful. You can pitch to various blogs and offer to write content for them and in the article you link back to your site.
Follow links versus no follow links:
Certain websites will block your backlink by making it a “no follow” link. This tells Google not to follow or count your link. This isn’t really anything to worry about, but something to be aware of.
How to track SEO metrics
Blogging and videos will help these metrics improve over time. The best way to improve metrics is publishing super high-quality content. That’s it!
I recommend creating a Google Sheet (mine is below) and tracking these metrics on the 1st of every month.
Recommended SEO tools
Google Analytics - very powerful tool for seeing site visitors and their behavior, especially how their behavior performs when it comes to your “goals” such as getting an email subscriber or someone to purchase from you.
Google Search Console - important for tracking the organic health of your website.
Ahrefs - this tool is free & gives you a quick look at your domain authority and backlinks.
Google My Business
When you search for a local coffee shop and you see their hours and phone number, that’s through Google My Business. Even if your website is e-commerce and not a physical location, you’ll still want to set up a Google My Business profile. If people search your business name looking for information, they’ll easily find you. Plus, customers can leave reviews.
HTML structure
The way you structure your content is important. You may notice in blogs you read online that they often have the following structure (below). I’m going to show the HTML so you learn how it reads on the backend, which is what Google reads.
<h1>SEO for Authors: How to Write Content That Ranks</h1>
<p>Paragraph text</p>
<h2>What is SEO?<h2>
<p>Paragraph text</p>
<h2>How do I conduct keyword research?</h2>
<p>Paragraph text</p>
Next Steps
SEO is one branch of digital marketing. It helps bring people to your business organically. This is worth your time because a well-set-up SEO strategy will bring thousands of new people to your site every month — for free.
Set up Google My Business.
Set up Google Analytics.
Set up Google Search Console.
Go back to blogs you’ve published and update titles and headers with improved keyword research.
Complete keyword research for future blog posts & create a content calendar.
Create a reminder to track your desired metrics on the first of the month, or any regular interval that works for you.
Create content & publish.
Promote your content on Medium, social media, your newsletter, etc. to get more eyeballs on it.
Want to hire someone to create your SEO strategy for you and who can write content, as well? I’d love to help. Reach out here.
