Understanding SEO For Beginners | SEO Power

So you’re thinking of creating a website or maybe you already have one. Maybe you have a specific niche, an e-commerce store, a blog, a website, any online business… you’re probably wondering how to get people to your site.

I’m sure by now, you heard you need to have this thing called SEO. You know you need this to get traffic to your site and get business.

Understanding SEO for beginners may seem intimidating and hearing the word SEO seems scary and technical!.

 

Today, I want to tell you how easy it really is to understand SEO. First, everyone wants their online business noticed on the first page of search engines. The problem is when someone searches for your “Best Scuba Dive Spots” post, there are thousands of other blog posts on that, all wanting the same thing. How will your traffic find you?

This is where SEO comes in…

Here are some of the main common terms to help you understand SEO

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1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

• The art of getting traffic to your blog post and pages on your website so that it will show in the top listings on your search engines. You’re going to get more people coming to your site, buy your products and do whatever your call to action is by being in this position.

• Google, Bing, and Yahoo – major search engines.

2. SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

• A variety of different internet marketing techniques to get people to notice you in the search engines. This includes SEO, On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, pretty much the whole ingredients of internet marketing to get your page or blog ranked in search engines.

3. On-Page SEO

• These are the things you do on your site to get your pages and posts ranked like Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, content creation, internal linking from one page to another, image alt text, etc. These are all the things that affect search engine rankings.

4. Off-Page SEO

• The things you do OFF your site to get it ranked in the search engines like social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest). They’re the things to get traffic coming TO your site. Also, commenting on other people’s sites so that you can get links coming back to your site.

5, PPC (Pay Per Click)

Of course, we all want to get traffic naturally for free but there are many reasons to consider PPC:

• A method of advertising on the internet which can greatly benefit you because it’s used to bring traffic to your website. This helps the search engines to put your listing at the top. It’s like a silent auction.
  
• Using Google, Bing, or Yahoo search engines, advertisers bid on keyword phrases meaningful to their target market.

• Every time the ad is clicked by a visitor, the advertiser pays the website owner based on the cost per keyword.

     TIP:  The ad must be well-written.

6. SERP (Search Engine Result Page)

• This is the page(s) that’s displayed in response to when you search for something in your search browser. Say you Google ‘how to grow tomatoes’, you will see a bunch of  listings on that… these listings are the search engine result pages.

7. Meta Title

• This is basically the article title, that is, your post or page title for the search engines.

• This is done in WordPress’s All in One SEO plugin.

• The Meta Title shows up in SERP when you google for something. All the page titles you see there are your meta titles.

8. Meta Description (optional, a lot of power, totally underutilized!!!)

• You don’t really need to put a description. I do this because it’s a description about the page or post for the search engine and it shows up in the SERP… very important!!

• It’s your opportunity to make your first impression in the search engine. I see a lot of SERPs that don’t have a description. I think there should be a unique meta description on every web page and post. It should have your primary keyword in it too. The words should be encouraging to the searcher to click to your page.

• If you don’t enter a meta description, Google will extract data from your page and simply pop it in there whether you like that for a description or not.

9. CTA (Call to Action – SUPER IMPORTANT!)

• It’s important to tell your visitors what you want them to do at the end of your page or post. Example, ‘Click here for your FREE gift’, ‘leave me a comment, I would like to hear from you’, ‘click here to purchase your football snack helmet’, ‘for further information, click here’, ‘enter your email here to get your secret on growing tomatoes’.

• For each and every article you need to have an end result. Writing a great article and not telling your visitors where you want your traffic to go, well… it’s a huge missed opportunity and a waste of your time spent writing. What are they supposed to do next?

10. Internal Links

Search engines rank individual pages, not the entirety of websites in SERPS. All the more reason why internal links are extremely important.

• An Internal Link takes the visitor to another page on the same website. For example, putting a link from your About Page to Page B on the same URL.

• Gives ranking power through the entire website.

• Spreads page authority.

• Helps in website navigation.

• Establishes the architecture and hierarchy of a website.

• You can have good targeting keyword, amazing content, and intelligent marketing but without these internal links, these ‘spiders’ have nothing to link to. No prolonged stays for your visitors… no tight weave network of pages and posts. Google values internal networking.

11. External Linking

• In simple terms, it’s a link that goes away from your page and goes to a page from a different website. Similarly, there can be another website that links to yours, i.e. you link to another page that is off of someone else’s website.
• Example, linking from your site page to Wikipedia.

12. Anchor Text

• These are the clickable and visible texts .You are using words that are used to link to something, say page A to page B on your own site or you’re using words to link to an external link.

• The link can be an internal or an external link.
• Example:  ‘Click here for your FREE gift’, ‘Click here if you want to learn more’, ‘Click here to buy from Amazon’. These words are the anchor texts.

• Search engines use the anchor text to govern what the target page is all about.

13. Conversion

• Conversion is a targeted goal like a lead, a sale, a call… anything that achieves your end result. The end result is what you want your traffic to do after they read your content.

• Related directly to a Call to Action.

14. Conversion Rate

• This is a ratio between the number of people who actually land on your page and perform the actual, desired action. The action can be something like a sign up to something, buy something….
• Example, you have 100 people who visited your site page and 2 people purchased. Your conversion rate is 2%

So, this is it in a nutshell… When I decided to have my very own online business, there was so much I didn’t really understand about SEO and I felt extremely intimidated. I knew I needed to get traffic but how…?  Plus, I didn’t want to get scammed.  I didn’t know where to go and how to get started… until I stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate. Believe it or not, I actually created my niche website in less than 45 seconds using their WordPress Express (ONLY 3 steps) ! Check it out and get your FREE lessons here!!

I hope all the SEO terms I put here for you makes sense! If you have any questions or comments, I really would like to hear from you.