Search Engine Optimization: The Basics
Google has developed automatic algorithms that rank your site. They send out what are called “spiders” to “crawl” your site and check it for over 100 indicators that determine whether your site is valuable or useless. These indicators include things like backlinks, domain age, traffic, fresh content, etc.
SEO is the art of making sure those spiders are happy with what they find. It is an extremely complex field that is constantly changing but in all that chaos there are a few constants that have remained true since the beginning. I’ll talk about those here.
1. You need your own domain and hosting
It is essential to have your own domain and hosting setup right from the beginning.
The first thing that beginners need to know is that you need your own domain and hosting. Free blog set ups do not do any favors for your SEO efforts.
Why is that?
Well many people speculate that if you were really serious about your website you would get your own name and host it yourself. And Google only wants to point to websites that are considered serious and trustworthy.
Dynasty Marketing Group believes it is important to blog 2-4 times per month. We then use our tools to share the blog to all your social media platforms to gain the most exposure and traction.
2. Solve problems with original content
You have to remember that Google’s whole purpose is to provide their customers with relevant and useful search results. Everything they do is built around the premise.
And, to be realistic, the most important thing you can do for your SEO is create massively useful content that solves people’s problems. If you are solving problems that people are searching for then it is likely that you are going to get shared on social media and ranked in Google.
The phrase “original content” means so much more than just blog posts nowadays. You should start expanding into: Photography, Videos, Podcasts, Tools and plugins.
The idea is to build a relationship with your readers by helping them out. This will mean more sharing and faster results on the SERPS (search engine rankings positions).
3. Build relevant backlinks in a natural way
If you are just getting started with SEO you might know a little about backlinks. A backlink is when another website links back to your site from their site.
Not all backlinks are created equal though. Some things to know:
Never buy them
I once heard about a guy who was the head SEO guy for an investment company. He bought some cheap backlinks on a domain name with millions of dollars and got the thing banned from Google. Never buy backlinks. Google is on to them.
The source matters
The blog that is giving you the backlinks makes a huge difference. If it is an old domain name with excellent rankings itself then the backlink counts for more. One good link from an authority domain name (.edu and .gov ones are amazing) and your rankings change more than hundreds of little ones.
The anchor text matters
The anchor text is the words that are used as the link. For example, just then I used “anchor text” as the anchor text. You want this to be relevant to your targeted keywords.
As mentioned, the best way to build quality backlinks is to write amazing quality content and then guest post on the best blogs in your niche. Here’s a blogging strategy that has worked well for me.
Remember, backlinks to your OWN content is also really important. See how many links I have to my own articles about the problems of male impotence and how to solve them in this blog post? Those count too!
4.Make sure your theme is SO optimized
This is the topic of a whole series of posts so I’ll keep it brief.
Think of SEO as having two components: the off-site stuff like social media and backlinks and the on-site stuff like optimizing your theme.
Optimizing your theme is important because it helps give Google indicators that you are a trustworthy site. It also helps Google find your content. Some of the things you can do include:
Mobile responsive
If your blog is not mobile responsive you will be losing a lot of visitors as Google prioritizes mobile sites for people searching on smartphones.
Cleanly coded
Make sure your theme is coded to ensure it’s easily read by those Google spiders that are looking to see whether you have all the elements of a good website included.
Fast loading
A fast loading site is good for user experience and thus good for Google. Make sure your theme is pulling its weight and loading quickly. You can check out its speed here. You can use cache plugins to help speed things up.
Original
Some people disagree but I still reckon that my original themes do better than themes that thousands of other people are using. A newly developed and original site also comes with dozens of other benefits.
No broken bits
Make sure you clean up any broken links and make sure your navigation all works smoothly.
Having a well designed theme is also important for your brand. Separating yourself from the competition is a very important thing to do.