SEO Education for Beginners
If you already know SEO this may not be for, but it is not bad to always refresh your knowledge. This is the basic to just get started and get some knowledge on what is SEO. You have or are interested in having a website and you are wanting to be found on the internet. You have to optimize your website and/or blog to get noticed on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
SEO is a process and it takes time and effort. I will be giving you a step by step process so you can have a better understanding of how this all works.
What is your purpose?
You need to figure out what your website is going to be all about. What are you hoping to accomplish with your site. Are you hoping to build it for a charity, provide input to a hobby, educate others, or try to make money?
You then have to decide what your target market is going to be. The best way to do this is put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Is there an age group or social status you are hoping to reach? Are there certain magazines or hobbies your audience would read? In the end you want your website to be useful to them.
Website Checklist
Here is a very basic checklist that can help you start on how to put a website together.
- Market research/business plan
- Secure a domain name
- Make sure you have a business license if you plan on making money
- Get a business bank account
- Pick a host provider
- Decide what your budget is for website design, recommended to hire some one if you don’t know what you are doing.
- Have the website designed and developed
Research, Research, Research!
The best way to save some money is to research your market yourself. If you are wanting to pay some one to do it that is fine too, but be prepared for the time to be included in your fees. Research is a large chunk of time for marketing companies. So what should you research? Well how about the market you are wanting to get into. It will be also good to think of the “keywords” you are wanting to use that would relate to your product or service. Is your product or service in high demand?
Make sure you research your competition if you have any. You will want to know what your profit potential is too. The more and more you research and have prepared the more you will save money and time.
The Jist of SEO
So What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the long way to say it, you can see why they shorten it.
So what does one need SEO for? Well search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing send out little crawlers to check out your website and make sure it has any relevance to what people are searching for.
Make sure you get indexed in search engines by having good content on your website and make sure your content has keywords that will describe what your website is about. You will want to make sure you content is not the same as a competitor but will make you stand out from that competitor.
There are several factors to SEO that affect your page rank. Any company that promises you they can get your to be number one on Google is not legit. There are no promises with SEO. I can say I would try my best to get you to the top, but there are no promises. Some factors that decide your rank are: Target market, keyword research, backlinking, tracking results, and having a good competitive analysis.
Warning do not try to trick search engines as they are getting smarter and smarter. If you just list your keywords on your website, some search engines are penalizing you and will lower your ranks. Make sure your content makes sense!
Welcome to SERPS
SERPS stands for search engine results pages. In order to have success on the internet you will need to make sure your site is indexed with the the proper search engines. It is very important to have good content on your website and that your content contains the keywords that describe that particular page or website.
Note: Your rank on Google and your rank on Bing or Yahoo may all be different.
What Affects your Page Rank?
So how can you improve your page rankings?
A big one is the title of your website and the description of your website. The title is displayed at the top of the websites. As you can see my title says “Blog of Wahha Design.” The description of your website does not matter as much and shows up on the search engine site as what your website is about and gives a brief description. 
If you have links to other company or organizations links, this will help your page rank. It also matters how popular those companies are too. Another factor is even how long you have your domain registered for. Search Engines will take you more serious if you are registered for five years instead of two years. You should also make sure your website flows and is easy to navigate when people go to it. These are are just some of many factors that factor your page rank.
What are key elements to have on your site?
If you are planning on making money on your website either by providing a product or service, make sure you have these factors included:
- Make sure you have a personal business phone number for customers to call.
- It is good to list a physical address to look professional.
- Find a way for customers to contact you whenever they can either through an e-mail or phone, etc.
- Think about joining the Better Business Bureau and participating.
- If you are taking payments online, make sure your website is secure!
Social Networks are Important!
Social Networking sites are so important to today’s market. Websites like Facebook and Twitter have just been all over. Most of these social networks you can promote your business for free.
Why Hire a Professional?
So why would you hire a professional to work on your website and do your SEO for you. Well, SEO takes a lot of time itself as you can see in this blog post and how many factors are gone into it. SEO has become so popular that there are specialists just for SEO. Majority of your web designers and developers should be capable of helping you out though.
