Tired of Digital Buzzwords? Here are Easy SEO Tips.

Mar 08, 2023

Do you want to boost your business with easy Search Engine Optimization (SE0) tips and tricks, get your business found faster and don`t know where to start? Are you struggling to have an overview and don't know where to focus first? Then this blog post is for you.

At the end of this blog post, you will have felt more comfortable with your basic SEO knowledge and can take your first few simple actions to increase traffic to your online shop, small business, or blog. Stay tuned until the end to find out about my 5 tips for beginners.

This blog post covers the following over-simplified basics:

What is SEO?
Why is improving your website SEO so important?
On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
My 5 tips for beginners

So let's dive in.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

You probably googled and learned that you need to improve your SEO on your site, but what does that really mean? What are tangible examples you can start implementing?

SEO is a marketing tactic that helps websites rank higher in search engine results pages. It is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization.

Why is improving your website SEO so important?

So, let us take a look at this question with an example.

Let's say you have an online shop that sells eco-friendly bags. When you search google, this is a specific page you will see with results. If we clustered these to simplify, you see mainly 3 sections:

You have Google Ads showing up on the page
You have Google organic results showing websites, pictures, videos, and locations on Google maps
Then you have a "people also ask" area which shows the related searches that people will do on this topic

Do you know what percentage of people go to the following pages? It is around *%25 according to an article by Hubspot on this resource. When people need help finding what they are looking for on the first page, they search Google again. That is one of the reasons why we see the “People Also Ask” area on the first Google page. This part provides valuable data for you to improve your SEO.

How does Google determine what should go on the first page?

Google uses hundreds of factors to determine which websites make it to the 1st pages with high SEO scores. We will only cover some of these in this blog post. We will focus on those with high potential and easy to start with.

Some of the biggest factors are relevancy, high-quality content and usefulness. Your content needs to provide valuable information and needs to be helpful.

OK. Now, let us go into more detail. There are 2 ways to work on the SEO of your website.

1st WAY: The first way is called On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is about optimizing the content and code on a website to rank higher in search engine results pages.

Here are 5 things that you can start doing now to optimize your site for search engines

1. Create quality content that is relevant to your audience.

2. Optimize your website for mobile devices.

3. Use keywords in your page titles and meta descriptions. I will publish a separate blog post about this.

Here are 3 tools which can help:

Google Ads Keyword Planner
Ahrefs.com
semrush.com

For example, let us say you have a coaching business. Here is a 5 - Step simple formula which can improve your SEO:

As a first step, check these 3 platforms or other keyword platforms you prefer.
The second step would be to find other relevant keywords that are being searched for.
Third step is to add them to your website texts, headlines on your website, and metatags, and use them in the file name of the picture or video you publish. For example, leadership coach, what is a leadership coach, and so on.
Then, make sure you have a sitemap with all of your pages listed.
Finally, add videos, pictures, testimonials, and infographics to your website.

TIP: One point I see people often underestimate is adding testimonials which will also increase the trust element for your potential visitors and customers.

2nd WAY: 2nd way is called Off Page SEO

Off-page SEO includes link building, social media marketing, and other techniques that are not directly related to your main website's content. Instead, these are links you get to your website from other websites.

The most common off-page SEO techniques are link-building and content marketing. Link building includes guest blogging, article marketing, social media marketing, forum posting, blog commenting, and more. Content marketing includes blogging, video creation, distribution (YouTube), and podcasts.

Using backlinks will basically tell search engines that content is valuable, credible, and useful. It is one of the most essential elements for Google. For example, Why posts, What posts, and infographics tend to get linked often.

TIP: Think of content you can create for other platforms and social media with Why, How To and What headlines, which are relevant to your business area.

Here are my 5 tips about starting to improve the SEO of your website:

Start with keyword research. Don`t overengineer. Start with finding 10 or 20 keywords based on data from the keyword tools I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post and add them as phase 1. Try to use long-tail keywords. (Keyword groups with 3-5 words.) In phase 2, improve on what you have already started.
Develop long-form and evergreen content that will be relevant for the long term. Some examples are FAQs, How-tos, glossary of terms and resources, and a testimonials page.
Test the speed of your website and optimize elements that make your website slower. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to check this.
Use a sitemap. This is one of the quick wins you can quickly implement.
- Here is an example of a Sitemap from my own website.
- Once you have your sitemap, the next step is to submit it to Google Search Console, so that Google knows your sitemap exists. Here is a resource on how to do it: How to Submit Your Website to Search Engines (ahrefs.com).
- When submitting, Google will ask you for the link of your sitemap, if you don`t know it, here is one tip: try with www. (yourwebsiteaddresshere.com or .ch)/sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml. A tangible example I used for my website is www.coachdigital.ch/sitemap.xml
Create content that your readers want, not what YOU want. Check Google Trends and your website analytics to learn what your potential customers are interested in. Use data to create insights for your next steps.