SEO for Beginners

Here, I'm gonna show you exactly how to rank on the first page of Google, step by step. or how to how to do SEO for a blog.

To rank on the first page of Google we search for competitive keywords, like link building tools, backlinks, and SEO checklists.

some basic tips everyone will tell you to do are:

"Create great content."

Here is: How to write a Blog Post

"Add keywords to your page."
"Make sure that your site loads fast."

Yeah, that stuff can help a little. But it's not gonna rocket your site to the top of Google's first page.

Now it's time for me to reveal the process that you can use to rank on the first page of Google, step by step. So let's kick things off with step number one.

Step-01

Find three keywords

Tip no -1

So your first step is to find three keywords. They are keywords that you'll create content around in the next step. And here's exactly how to find great, low competition keywords. First, head over to AnswerThePublic. This free tool finds questions that people ask on forums, blogs, and social media and it turns those questions into awesome keywords. The best part? The keywords that you get from AnswerThePublic are usually long-tail keywords.

In case you haven't heard of them before, long-tail keywords are just keywords that are long and very specific. For example, a keyword like a good diet is a short tail keyword. But good diet breakfast recipes is a long-tail keyword.

Even though not a lot of people tend to search for long-tail keywords, they're also not super competitive. Which makes them perfect keywords to go after if you're just starting out.

Tip no -2

Another great way to find keywords is to believe or not, Reddit. Just head over to a subreddit where your target audience hangs out and take a look at the topics that people are talking about. You can even pop these topics into AnswerThePublic to find long-tail versions of these topics.

Tip no -3

Finally, head over to explodingtopics.com This is another free tool that bubbles up trending topics in industries like tech, health, fashion, marketing, and more. And because these topics are relatively new, the keywords that people use to find information on them aren't usually that competitive.

So once you have at least three keywords ready to go, it's time for step number two, create epic content.

Step-02

Epic Content

There are a few things you can do to increase the odds that people will share and more importantly, link to your content.

First, you wanna publish content that's long and in-depth. Because research says, that longer content gets more links than short content. Specifically, long-form content gets an average of 77% more backlinks than short content. Does this mean that publishing longer content will automatically bring in thousands of links? Of course not. But publishing in-depth content that does cover an entire topic in-depth can increase the odds that people link to you.

Next, you wanna add a hook to your content. A hook is something that would make a blogger or journalist wanna a link to your content. Your hook can be a stat, a case study example, a unique strategy, a rare interview, a tool or widget, or even a visualization. Basically, anything that makes someone else say wow, I need to link to this can work. Now that your epic content is ready to go, it's time for step number three.

Step-03

keyword-optimize your content

On-page SEO has changed a lot over the last few years. Back in the day, keyword optimization was all about stuffing your page with keywords. But that doesn't really work anymore. Instead, the goal of on-page SEO today is to give Google context about what your page is all about.

Yes, you still wanna use keywords on your page. But you also need to help Google understand your pages' overall topic.

Here's how to do it :

Your first step is to include your target keyword in a few important places on your page. That way Google can understand that your page is about that specific term. Specifically, you wanna add your keyword to these areas of your page. Next, it's time to give Google more context about your page. And the best way to do that, LSI keywords.

LSI keywords are words and phrases that are closely related to your target keyword. Put another way, they are terms that tend to show up next to your keyword around the web. For example, if your target keyword was fresh prince, LSI keywords would be terms like this. And when Google sees these LSI keywords on your page, it makes them say we're confident that this page is actually about that topic. You can find these LSI keywords by searching for your keyword and then scrolling to the bottom of the search results. The bold suggested keywords here usually make great LSI keywords. Then sprinkle in a few of these LSI keywords on your page and you're good to go With that. let's dive right into step number four,

Step-04

optimize your content for users

Back in the day, Google would rank pages based almost 100% on who had the most backlinks. Yes, backlinks are still important. And I'll show you exactly how to build backlinks in the next step. But to rank in Google today, backlinks aren't enough. Your content also needs to be optimized for users. That's because Google pays very close attention to how people interact with your site in the search results. And if they notice that people are clicking on your site and then quickly heading back to Google, they'll downrank you. Boring, next! But if they see users sticking on your page, that's a sign that you're giving Google searchers what they want. This is awesome! And you'll usually get rankings to boost With that. here's exactly how to optimize your content for users so they stay on your page.

First Tip

Structure your content so people start getting actionable info ASAP. In other words, you don't wanna start your post off with a long explanation about why the topic is important, that's only gonna make people bounce. Instead, use a short intro, then get right into the steps, tips, recipes, workout plans, or whatever you're gonna cover in your post.

For example, in this post from my blog, I don't get into a long backstory about why SEO is important. Instead, I have a brief, little intro, then it's time for the first strategy.

Next, make sure that your content's design is on point. Studies show that people largely judge your site based on a design first and content second. Now that doesn't mean that your site needs to win any design awards. Or look fancy. In fact, in my experience, a simple design tends to work best.

For example, if you look at this post, there's nothing remotely fancy about it. But it does have a clean design that makes it easy to read and skim.

Step-05

Build backlinks

Are backlinks still important for SEO? Yeah. In fact, Perficient Digital has been tracking the importance of backlinks over the last four years. And they found that links are basically just as important today as they were since they first started tracking them. And if you follow the steps so far by creating epic content, optimizing it for users, and adding hooks, you already have a strong foundation for building backlinks. It's just a matter of getting your content out there to actually build those links. And the best way to do that? Broken link building.

Here's how it works:

First, find a broken link on a page that you wanna get a link from.

Next, you wanna find a post on your site that will make a good replacement for the dead link.

Finally, reach out to the person that runs that site and ask them to swap out the dead link for a link to your content. Now, for this process, you can definitely work with an email script as you send these out. But I definitely don't recommend sending out the same generic email to 100 different people. In fact, an outreach study that I recently did with Pitchbox found that personalized emails got 32% more replies than emails that used the same exact pitch for everybody.

Now before we close out these SEO tips, I wanna show you a quick bonus step.

Use unique images

Can using stock photos on your site hurt your Google rankings? As it turns out, they might. The folks at Reboot Online recently ran an interesting experiment. They created 10 brand new websites, all optimized around a keyword that they made up. For the experiments, on five of the sites, they used five stock photos that were already used on a bunch of other websites. And for the other five, they actually took their own images, that way they were 100% unique. So what did they find? They discovered that the five websites that had unique images outranked the sites that didn't use unique images.

So, what's the bottom line? Whenever you can, try to use unique images in your content. These can be pictures that you take with your phone. Or illustrations that you make in Photoshop. Or screenshots that you take yourself. As this study showed, unique images seem to have a direct impact on rankings.

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