It’s 2020 but instead of jetpacks, flying cars or decent cable TV programming, we have the internet. A huge part of the business side of the internet is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the practice of getting your website, video or image to the top of search engine results, usually google but not always. Theoretically, you can SEO for any search engine but business usually wants to SEO for google because that is by far the largest portion of the market. Let’s talk about optimizing your website for google!
The Right Keywords
Keywords are one of the building blocks of SEO. You would think you want to use the keywords that have the most traffic. In October 2019 one of the highest search terms was “Brooke Nevils” so we will use that as an example. The first rule, don’t use keywords that are not relevant to your site. If you have a gaming centered website don’t use the keyword, Brooke Nevils, because if you lie the internet has a way of punishing you afterward. If you do run an entertainment website it still might not be the best idea to use that keyword because it will be so contested. What you want to do is find a keyword that is less contested and dominate that market. Example – green milk is a keyword almost no one is optimizing for. If you purposefully optimize for green milk you can dominate that keyword and gain traffic from anyone searching green milk.
Keep Your Website Updated
Google tends to not show dead websites on the first or even second page unless you search specifically for them. This means you need to keep your website updated in order to stay on top, even if you have all your keywords optimized if you leave your website for an extended period of time you will drop in search rankings and that will likely hurt your audience numbers
Use Similar Websites to Your Advantage
It might seem like you are feeding the competition but in fact, it’s a win-win situation, if you are able to backlink to other websites your search rankings will actually increase – as long as that site is also optimizing for the search engine. The reason this works is that the longer you spend on the internet, using google or whatever another search engine, the more ads they can show to you and then the more money the company makes from a user. Linking to a similar website will help your overall audience reach as well because it gets your viewers to interact with the webpage, a crucial statistic when looking at growth and overall use on a month to month basis.
Encourage Sharing
This is probably the hardest step of them all. Encouraging sharing can be as simple as putting a twitter link at the bottom of your blog post, it can also take the form of a call to action at some point on the page. This video is an excellent explanation of CTA’s. Having users share themselves is a lot harder, however. This will grow steadily with time, but starting out don’t forget to tell your friends and family to share your website, it is the only way you will be able to reach some.
Other Research
This is only the starting point google optimization is a fine art, there are hundreds of books, magazines, and websites that take a deep dive into SEO. My favorite book on the subject is Zero to One Million Followers it is an insanely cheap investment that will put you on the perfect track for google optimization. If you want a more library-style resource on SEO.
Ahrefs is a company that is helping you get your web presence up to snuff and they have a ton of free and paid resources for you to dive into.