Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of designing, building, and improving the rankings of your website or webpage on search engines. The ultimate purpose is to establish an online presence, drive relevant traffic, and convert that traffic to readers or customers.
For beginners, the primary purpose is to make your blog or website more visible and easy to find when people are searching for that particular topic or product you have on your site.
For example, if your site is about “forex trading tips” people who are searching this term should easily find your site on the first pages of the Google’s search results.
In the example below, you could be rich if that was your own site… 😉
As you can see from the above screenshot, the site forexfans.org should be seen quickly by people searching for tips about forex trading. Since it is on page one (allegedly), the site could be receiving lots of website visitors.
Now when people click that listing and visit that website, you can say that the site received a traffic from Google. In the internet marketing industry, site visitors are technically called as website traffic or traffic.
When these people buys something from that site or click and followed an ad, they can be called targeted site visitors. Targeted site visitors could be prospective clients or customers who are ready to buy your products or services. That’s how a site owner could make a lot of money from a very high search engine ranking.
How it is Done?
There are so many confusing teachings about SEO on this crazy world called internet marketing. But for us newbies, let’s just focus on the three basic processes in SEO which are:
- keyword research and selection
- ON site optimization and
- link building (OFF site optimization)
Let me explain one by one.
1. Keyword Research and Selection – you need to know what keyword or set of keywords you want to rank for and be on the first pages as soon as possible.
This is important because you’re going to optimize your site using this words. You’ll also these words on your SEO campaigns. The right keywords on your site when matched with the search activities on the web can turn your site up in the top results of major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo).
Keywords have to have direct relevance to your site and the services or products that you provide. For example if your site is all about forex trading tips, the keywords you should be using on your SEO campaign should be related to forex trading tips. You may use keywords like “tips on forex trading“, “forex trading strategies“, “how to trade forex“, and etc.
Now, the secret in making money online is to find profitable keywords that has no or little competition. If you’re just starting avoid going for fiercely competitive keywords such as “make money online“, “internet marketing“, “forex trading“, “weigh loss“, and etc.
Why? Because you’ll be competing with not only thousands of “SEO experts” but also with very big companies that has big budgets for their SEO campaigns.
2. On Site or On-page Optimization – This one entails the following:
- site attributes like title, url slugs, title tag, description tag, H1, breadcrumb, ATL tag, etc are properly set
- the keywords you’re trying to target are present on your site. This tells the search engines what your site all about.
- your website’s coding is search engine friendly (crawable)
- website loading speed
Here’s a quick tip: the on site optimization issues as mentioned above can be easily and quickly addressed when you use WordPress to build your blog/site. In fact, I rarely put much attention about these concerns anymore. Just make sure to use a highly optimize theme and a good SEO plugin.
As for website speed, find a good and reliable webhost. Don’t use so called free webhosts.
3. Link Building – this is the process of obtaining relevant, inbound links to your website. This will help your website achieve higher ranking with the major search engines and drive targeted traffic to your site.
It could be the main core of your search engine optimization battle because links are still one of the most important ranking signals in Google’s algorithm. One or two inbound links or bakclinks to your website can mean a big boost to your search engine rank.
How does a backlink look like?
Oks, I’ll show you. This is a backlink to my homepage: making freaking moolah online. That’s a clickable link which is pointed to my homepage. Go ahead and click it. It will open on another tab.
Search engine optimization is easy, right?
Yes, SEO seems easy but be very careful because wrong SEO application and execution can actually result in your site being barred from showing up in results at all.
Do I need to build links?
You should do link building if your plan of getting traffic is through the search engines and your blog or business website is on a market/niche that has a lot of competition. You want to make sure you’ll rank higher to beat the crap out of them.
On the other hand, if you plan to just share your site and make it viral on Facebook and Twitter then there’s no need to bother yourself with SEO. It will catch up to you anyway especially when your site becomes popular and insanely viral.