When I was creating my website, I gravitated to the fun stuff–designing my color palette, finding cool photos, and writing the copy. Even though I knew how important SEO was, I kept putting it off because it sounded too overwhelming to handle independently, and I didn’t have the resources (i.e., money) to pay someone to do it for me.
That didn’t stop me from teaching myself the basics, and I wanted to share some of those insights with others in my position. Because when you get right down to it, SEO isn’t scary or some magical art. SEO is, simply put, making sure the right words are on your website to help your customers or audience find you.
Let me show you how to accomplish this for your website without spending a dime.
SEO Fundamentals
First things first–SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engines are the internet’s library, and website pages are the books on the shelves. When a customer is looking for information about a subject, they type the words that best describe their inquiry into their search engine and get a list of results that best match those words. Easy enough, right?
So, to ensure that these search engines would find my website, I had to provide the words my customers would search for that were featured in my copy, photo captions, page titles, and social media posts. Since Google has cornered the market on search engines, I used their free Keyword Planner tool to see which words about my business are the most searched for, and I made sure I was using them naturally as much as possible. (Yes, the bots can tell if you’re cheating, so don’t try to cram them where they don’t belong. You want to offer your visitors helpful content, not alphabet soup.)
Free SEO Resources
Next, I looked up several free SEO online courses and was amazed to see the many available resources. Whether you’re a newbie like me or have some experience doing SEO already, there are tons of great teachers out there who can walk you through what you need in just a few hours. If you feel ambitious, you can take more thorough technical courses and get certified. Whether you want to learn keyword research or advanced link building, there’s something available for every skill set.
Invest in Great Books
It’s easy for me to open too many tabs and lose my place, so I found a terrific list of SEO books. It was great to have something right next to me to consult when I got lost, and now I can have them as an easy reference for when I need to update my site (because you should do that regularly).
SEO Can Be Easy
Learning SEO takes time, but when you trust the process and start slowly, you can master your SEO like the boss you are becoming.
