How to Get Your SEO Started in 5 Easy Steps
New to SEO? Search engine optimization (SEO) can be overwhelming because there’s a lot of information about it.
Do a Google search and you’ll find courses, books, guides and endless blog posts about SEO.
Keywords, backlinks, title tags, sitemaps, image optimization, link structures. Who has the time to learn it and actually get it done?
Ready to dedicate hours, energy, and money to get your SEO perfect? Or hire an SEO pro? Go for it! But, if you’ve got a limited budget and have better things to do we’re going to look at a few simple things to start your website SEO out right.
You can do basic SEO get results, too. Email subscribers. Interested folks. Potential clients.
Minimal SEO won’t bring in lots of traffic, but it will help people find you when they’re actively looking. And that’s important.
SEO Beginner Basics
SEO is a process of optimizing a website in order to make it easy to find via search engines like Google. It helps search engines understand and present content to searchers.
“How long does it take for SEO to work?” usually translates to “How long until my website is on page one of Google?”.
No, there aren’t any secrets that'll automatically rank your site #1 on Google (sorry!). Generally speaking, you will see a noticeable improvement in your ranking after 3 to 6 months of ongoing organic SEO work.
SEO takes so long, can’t I just use PPC (pay-per-click)?
Nobody wants to wait in a long line to buy groceries, then drive home, unload the car, prep, cook, plate it up, and finally sit down and eat your meal. You could just order take out, but that’s unhealthy and expensive.
It’s the same when waiting for SEO results. You don’t want to wait, but if you fork out money for the ‘fast food’ option and get PPC, eventually you’re going to run out of funds and your website won’t be any healthier.
PPC advertising gives you immediate results, but the minute you stop paying for adverts, your inquiries dry up. Also, lots of people tend to scroll right past the top advertised search results (or is that just me?).
An example of the top PPC Ad in Google when searching “website design near me”.
Start with these simple steps to build your website correctly and develop an organic stream of traffic that will support your business much longer than PPC.
1. Target people looking for you
You want to show up at the top search results for people who are searching for you, your services, or products. Maybe you met them in-person or on a virtual networking event and they want to look you up.
People want to connect, get more information, and buy. Make it easy for people to find you!
When you Google your name or business what comes up? The top results should be your website url, Google My Business page, or social profiles. Your name, company, products and services are unique keywords. Make sure to include them in your website content.
Ok, but how do I target with keywords?
2. Do some simple keyword research
Remember, the goal is to help people find you.
When it comes to keyword optimization, keep it simple. Think of up to five keywords or keyword phrases for your website and optimize for those.
Is there a term or phrase you think people might type into Google to look for you or your services? Type it in Google and see what comes up.
For example, terms like “website design agency” are generic, popular, and competitive. You’ll see listings with those keywords in the title and they’ve probably put some serious effort into getting on the first page of results.
It’s much easier to rank for phrases with less competition. These terms are usually much more specific and targeted like, “Design Powers website design for small business”. Because less people use these words, chances are you have to make a few tweaks to your site to rank for those terms.
SEO specialists use powerful tools to help them analyze and choose keywords. Do some basic keyword searching with Ubersuggest — a free tool that analyzes your website, tells you how competitive the keywords are, your chances for ranking, and will give you ideas for similar keywords you can use.
Above are some keyword suggestions in Ubersuggest when I typed in ‘website design’. You can tell from the far right column that the SEO difficulty is rather high for this term.
3. Consider your domain name
Your domain name can affect your SEO. It won’t necessarily increase your ranking but Google and other search engines will bold keywords appearing in domain names.
Here’s an example of how Google bolds keywords in the meta description.
But, your brand name may not always have a keyword in it and that’s ok. Always choose your brand over keywords.
Consider adding a keyword to your domain because it adds relevancy. Do not stuff your URL with keywords. Keep your URL short and aim for 1–3 words.
If adding a keyword is not an option add a clear tagline after states your company name to your your Google My Business page. This should help your SEO, especially when people are searching for places of business in Google maps.
4. Optimize your title tags and meta description
Title tags are exactly what they sound like — they are the title of the page. They are incredibly important for SEO.
The title tags on your website tells Google what the content on your page is about. These tags should be 70 characters or less, include your company name, and one or two keywords that relate to that page.
The meta description gives search engines a bit more information about what the page is about. Write these descriptions with the page’s keywords and with the benefit to the person so they click for more.
For example, for our homepage we have “Design Powers – Design Powers specializes in branding and website design and development for service-based small businesses”. We may not get a lot of traffic from those keywords, but there’s a good chance at showing up for people searching for those terms.
You may notice we use our brand name and keywords in both the title and meta description because it helps you stand out when a searcher is searching those terms.
5. Optimize your page content
Incorporate the following into your page content for further optimization.
Add and update content: Regularly update your your website with content like blog posts, articles, tutorials, videos and podcasts. When you add quality content, Google is more likely to ‘crawl’ (index) your website more frequently and encourages your visitors to return to your site to consume the new content you’ve added. Content marketing is a huge investment but it’s worth it. Search engines love it and if people love your content they will share it on social media, leading to more visits.
Use HTML header tags: Heading tags break up your content into digestible sections and tell search engines what each section is about. Try and use only one H1 per page. There can be multiple H2 and H3 tags for subheadings.
Optimize file names: Search engines look at your title tags, meta description, HTML header tags and the names of your files: images, graphics, and pdf uploads. Name your files with keywords that describe the content. Keep filenames short and always use lowercase. Don’t use spaces and underscores; use a hyphen to separate words.
Internal links: Link building internally helps search engines learn more about the content on your website. Link to other pages on your website within your content using descriptive text. For example, you can learn more about organic SEO in this blog post.
External links: Also known as inbound or backlinks, are websites that link to your website. A large volume of links to your website will generally help you achieve SEO success quicker. But, this isn’t just about the number of links you have, it’s also about quality. Having a large number of low-quality, spammy links on your website will harm not help your site. Avoid this! Try and get high-quality links from well recognized websites or news outlets. Keep in mind, an abrupt increase in the number of links you obtain will tell Google that you’ve attempted to manipulate your ranking. So, acquire your links steadily over time and not all at once.
A few simple steps can increase your search engine ranking
Follow the suggestions in this post to get your website search engine optimized and hopefully you will start reaping the benefits of getting more online leads.
There’s so many variables to take into account with SEO. We just scratched the surface. If you need a seriously in-depth guide on SEO pop on your reading glasses, grab some coffee, and read Google’s SEO best practices.
Here at Design Powers, we create custom websites with the right SEO-friendly foundations in place to help our clients start strong on search results for their niche. Sound good? Get in touch.
Did this post help you with your small business website’s SEO? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
