Image by Miguel Angel
SEO is always known as the key to getting great Google rankings for a website.
However many still have this perception that it’s very hard and that we need to hire people to do SEO for us instead of doing them ourselves.
It’s actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it because the steps are simple and you’ll be doing it regularly as it isn’t a one-off thing.
Before we get to the more detailed steps, let’s just be sure everyone knows about…
What is SEO all about?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it means things that you can do to make your website more visible in search engines.
Because 75% of internet users today uses Google, SEO now focuses mainly on how to make your website better adapted to Google’s updates because remember – Google is always updating its systems.
It not wrong to have Google updating itself but often times, the systems are changed and that often affects how SEO works.
As of 2014, here’s how you can take action on your site…
How to do SEO for your own website
Finally, we’ve reached the part you’ve all been waiting for – how to do SEO yourself!
There are only 2 steps of SEO that you should concern yourself with and those are:
- On-page optimization.
This is the part where you keep your keyword density at 2-4% out of all content, setting up the appropriate Meta tags (not that important these days as it was before) and page tittles.
On page SEO is all about creating high value, keyword rich content on your actual website.
When Google sends it spiders (programs that read websites) they will index your website as being very rich in a few keywords.
Or they might slap you if you overstuff your website with the keyword you’re targeting.
That is why it is really important to always write for people, not for the spider robot army of Google.
High value content always trumps poor search engine optimization attempts. This will help you boost your ranking in Google over time.
- Off-page optimization
When you are fine with on-page SEO it’s time to get on off-page optimization (The more tedious and boring part of SEO).
When starting off-page SEO optimization, it’s important to remember about the quality of backlinks you generate.
Ten quality backlinks to your site worth A LOT more than a hundred of low-quality backlinks.
So how do we define if the backlink is a quality one or not?
Well that’s simple!
Quality links are those from very high and respectable websites such as The Huff Post or The New Straits time (You get the idea).
On the first stage you want to focus on building quality backlinks, this will boost your website rankings well. If you start off with crappy links back, Google will treat your website the same way.
Just, be sure not to link your site to a Porn site though.
Sure the site is established and has millions of visitors if not billions but you wouldn’t want your own visitors to know that would you?
Learn about Google’s updates and how to get the upper hand!
As Google keeps changing certain things here and there, some people panic because they don’t know how to face the upcoming updates.
When that happens, what would you do to save your site and retain your high Google rankings?
By joining an online business community of course!
One of the very best communities that you could join for free today is Wealthy Affiliate as there are close to 30,000 members today and you could learn lessons there without paying anything.
I’m personally a member there too and I’ve learned quite a lot of tricks there that I use on my website today.
The senior members who have been in the industry long are very kind too as they provide free training from time to time and you could always ask them questions regarding your website and SEO.
But what I really love about it is the fact that lessons are always updated and new trainings will be provided whenever Google has a new update.
Conclusion
SEO may sound complicated but when you look at the steps that you need to take, it isn’t hard at all as even a person with no experience could do it manually.
So don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and try out SEO because once you did you’ll learn how fun and rewarding it can be!
For more information on doing SEO for your website, check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate here.
Also if you have any questions at all, do comment them below as I’ll be more than happy to reply.
Hey, Riaz
I agree with you that SEO really is that simple, that even a teenager could do it. I would much prefer to invest small amounts of money and my own hard work instead of paying somebody a ton of money to implement SEO practices for me.
Besides, it’s more fun and you get to learn as you go along 🙂
HAHA! I also agree that off page SEO can be a tad boring. On page is much more fun and interesting!
Neil
Right you are Neil! it really fun trying out SEO but it can be a bit scary if you don’t know what it’s all about at first though. And yeah, some parts ARE a bit boring but nothing’s perfect 😛