You may have heard the term “search engine optimization” (often simply called “SEO”) before. And if you’re like a lot of people, then you put your hands up because you can’t really figure out how to do it.
But let’s make this simple.
WHAT IS SEO?
It is the process of tweaking your web pages and websites so that they appear at the top of search engine rankings, personified here by Google.
So if you had a website on how to train English Sheepdogs, you’d want your site to be one of the best search results on Google when someone types in “train English Sheepdogs.”
CAN I REALLY DO IT?
It is really not that difficult. If you do the things that I recommend, you will be quite optimized. So how high you rank depends on how competitive the phrase you’re trying to rank under is.
As a hobbyist, I was able to get to the first page of Google for most of the phrases that I tried right away. But it was things like lawyers in Cleveland, Ohio, not “weight loss,” which is really competitive.
THEN WHAT DO I DO?
1. Try to get a domain name with the keywords in the title. So here, you would try to get trainingenglishsheepdogs.com or something similar.
2. Consider turning your site into a blog. The blog software is free. I use WordPress. Search engines love blogs because they are packed with information and updated frequently.
3. Place your keywords in the title of the page., in the headlines (using
4. Get other sites to link to you, using your keywords as anchor text. When you see “CLICK HERE” and “CLICK HERE” is a link to another site, “CLICK HERE” is the anchor text. You want other sites to link to you using (in our example) “English Sheepdog training” as the anchor text.
If you do those four things, and your keyword isn’t very competitive, you can be on page 1 of Google in no time!