Here at .CO, we’re all about SEO — which is why we’ve decided to run a series of blog posts to help educate our .COmmunity on the basics of SEO so that you can apply the most basic of principles to your site.
Over the course of the next month, we’ll be giving you handy dandy tips that you can use apply to your site. We’ve broken them down by days of the week, so be sure to check back every week for new tips!
Search Engine Optimization (“SEO” for short) is the art and science of driving the most qualified visitors to your website by attaining high search engine results.
Whether you’ve only heard the term thrown around, or have attempted to start diving in, the in’s and out’s of SEO can be pretty darn overwhelming.
Between the technical components, on-site elements, content, social media aspects, links back to your site and how many never-ending changes search engines are constantly making, it can be pretty intimidating, especially if you don’t have a large team of folks to help you out.
Where does one start?
Well, just like many other things in life, it helps to break things down into bite-sized chunks. To help you with this, we’ll be writing a new post every Monday with a step-by-step guide to get you started on SEO.
The idea is to make them fit in a week for you: set Monday aside for one component, Tuesday for another, and so forth and so on. Before you know it, you’ll have all the basics covered! Since SEO is a never-ending process, our posts will also serve as a little reminder for you.
Before we dive into the good stuff, let’s begin by going over the most very basic components of SEO:
- Monday: Building a search engine friendly website
This includes best practices on how to ensure your site is designed in the best possible fashion so that search engines can optimally access your site. This also includes the technical elements of SEO. SEO design & technical best practices are also good for your site visitors.
- Tuesday: Links back to your site
Think of links back to your website as “votes” of confidence. Having links from strong websites is important to build your overall site authority.
- Wednesday: On-site SEO elements
On-site SEO—also called on-page SEO—pertains to elements including the page titles, meta-descriptions and URLs.
- Thursday: Keyword research and content
Highly important, keyword research describes the process of finding the best keywords to use in your content, links, and on-site elements. By using a variety of tools and turning to the search engines themselves, you can gain insight into how to best reach your target audience.
- Friday: Social media
The same was as general links back to your website count as “votes”, so do social media mentions. You can use social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and others to get the word out about your site.
We’ll also be devoting a post to how best to go about tracking your success so that you can keep an eye on everything, check out who’s visiting your site and where they’re coming from, and capitalize on all that helpful info.
So, be sure to stop by the .CO blog every Monday for the latest SEO installment. Before you know it, you’ll be fluent in SEO-speak!
We also want to remind you that when you join our membership program, you’ll enjoy all kinds of great perks — one of which being a personalized SEO consultation with yours truly! Being a .CO member gets you all kind of great perks, and it’s 100% free to join!
Happy optimizing!
