SEO, when done right, benefits you by generating “organic” traffic for you without you having to pay a single dime. It is basically free marketing!
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s so important because it basically determines your ranking in Google. SEO has a ton of benefits and has quickly became one of the, if not THE most important, factor in building a great website for your business that draws potential customers. It’s not enough to simply have a great website. In fact, you could have a site with a ton of content on a certain subject but not generate traffic. This is where SEO comes into play.
SEO, when done right benefits you by generating “organic” traffic for you without you having to pay a single dime. It is basically free marketing! There are so many resources out for you to learn SEO in this day-and-age that paying someone for SEO services is not needed. When I say that they are not needed, I am not trying to bash SEO companies like Moz.com. In fact, I use Moz’s software ( https://moz.com/ ) all the time because it is the best SEO service in my opinion . So you can do the SEO for your website yourself. But it does take a lot of time. And if you can’t put in the hours it takes to rank your website, then I highly suggest that you find someone who can because of how valuable a high ranking on Google is.
HOW MUCH SHOULD I EXPECT TO PAY FOR SEO SERVICES?
Obviously different companies charge different prices, but the average cost for SEO services can be anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 PER MONTH if you want quality search rankings. For the best-of-the-best SEO services to benefit your needs, it can be $10,000+ per month. There is no such thing as cheap SEO because you basically pay for the quality. If you cut corners and go for a cheap SEO then they will cut corners on you too. It can be hard for a small business to pay those high prices, which is why if you can’t pay for it, then you have to learn it. SEO can be complex and is not going away anytime soon. You need it for your business. Trust me.
DO I NEED SEO?
The simple answer is… OF COURSE! Studies have shown that 80% of Google AdWord campaigns, which are the paid ads that appear with Google search results, go unnoticed by the consumer. In other words, you can pay a lot of money for a paid ad… and not get much, if any, return on your investment! Most consumers look at the organic search results, which are those not promoted by Google. The days of paying your way to the top of Google are over! At this point, you are probably thinking, “Okay, okay, I get it. But enough talk. Teach me how to do it!”
UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS OF SEO
This is a simple way to learn how to optimize your websites to benefit from SEO. It’s how I learned. (NOTE: I will be filling in the actual terms in parentheses next to the analogy).
I want you to imagine a bus driver (the Google Spider) in Miami (the whole Internet), and each stop is a different person’s house (website). The bus diver needs a way to go to each house with the best path possible (search queries with the most relevant results). In order to help the bus driver take the best possible route you need to give it related keywords and links throughout your website.
CHOOSING YOUR KEYWORDS
Keywords are one of the most important factors of your websites ranking ability. A helpful website I use for finding keywords is Serps.com. (You can also use Google’s keyword planner.)
On SERPS, you type in your keyword and it gives you the volume per month at which people search for the specific keyword but also related keywords people have searched for. You, like most beginners, think you should choose to optimize your site for the keyword with the most volume, i.e. the most searches. But it will actually be almost impossible to actually rank for that keyword with your site. The reason being that with a high volume keyword you are competing with HUGE websites.
For example, if you have a mortgage company and you want the keyword “mortgages,” then you are competing with all the major banks that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for that keyword ranking. The way around this is choosing keywords with small amounts of volume (300 and below). The competition is extremely limited for these keywords, and you are almost guaranteed a rank with the low volume keywords.
Once you have your keyword, you start to integrate it into your site. What I usually do is type my whole blog post up and then go back and add keywords where I see fit.
Extra tip: Choose more than one low volume keyword because it will start to add up, and you will get overall more traffic!
KEYWORDS IN TITLES AND PICTURES
Google looks at titles/headings more than the long paragraphs, so it is especially important to put keywords in your titles. With WordPress.com you can put a caption in your pictures. So instead of the caption just being your file name on your computer, include your keywords for more ranking power. A good thing to note is that Google also looks at keywords in bold, italics, or underlined, but not as heavily as titles. Whenever you are making a blog post you should break it up into segments and add titles like I have done in this post. Your posts should follow the same format.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PICTURES AND VIDEOS
On each page of your website there should be at least two to three pictures and a video (from YouTube) relating to what you are writing about. It’s very important that the video be from YouTube because Google looks at websites that include videos from YouTube as higher-quality sites. I’m not 100% certain about this, but I have a strong hunch because Google owns YouTube. This is where AdToons.com comes into play. We produce high-quality videos that are uploaded to YouTube that will not only help increase your bounce (how long people are on your website) and conversions but will also help your ranking. As we discussed before that could generate a flood of FREE traffic to your website.
You can’t neglect SEO anymore. Sign up for a FREE consultation and generate FREE traffic to your site with AdToons.
Best,
Vince