3 Easy Ways to Make SEO Less Terrifying
Aahhh, SEO, that big mysterious thing that everyone needs to understand in order to show up on the internet.
Are you overwhelmed every time you hear it?
Do you sorta-kinda get it but not really?
When you hear the word “keywords” do you freeze up?
It’s okay. I’ve been there. I got you. We’ll be going over how to optimize your website for success step by step today.
Now, how about this...are you ready to:
Finally feel like you know what you’re doing?
Save time and money?
Stop obsessing over how your instagram ads are doing?
Bring more customers to you?
Let’s get started!
Don’t know what SEO is? Click here to check out my blog explaining what it is and how it can boost your biz!
1. Think About Your Goal and Who You Serve
Before you do anything else, stop and think about this:
What’s the goal of your business?
Why did you start it?
Why do people need your product? Or why should they donate to your nonprofit?
What problems does your business solve? If you don’t know why your product or mission is important, no one else will and they won’t buy or donate.
Another way to phrase this is how does your business make people's lives easier?
Maybe your product helps moms cut down on how much they need to spend at CVS. Or you have a team on the ground combating poaching so children can grow up in a world where elephants and leopards still exist. Perhaps you offer an option for families to buy 100% sustainably.
Once you’ve figured that out, it’s time to nail down, based on what your mission is and what problems you solve, exactly who you’re reaching for:
Who is your audience?
Who buys your product or donates to your organization?
This might sound similar to what we just did, but it’s important to dig deeper into who your target audience is (for example: are we talking 30 year old moms or 65 year old moms?) – because everyone searches for things in Google a little differently. What a 20-year-old types into Google is very different from a 45-year-old.
Who are the people that buy from you? Or, if you’re just starting out, who are the people that you want to reach? Write down everything you know about them.
How much money do they make?
Where do they live?
Why do they connect with your business?
What is their daily life like?
Getting a better understanding of your audience will make your life easier, because then you won’t have to guess at what you can help them with, or what answers they’re searching for online. You’ll be able to pinpoint them exactly.
This also will be your guiding light whenever you feel lost. Can’t think of what to write about? Have no idea what keywords to use? Go back to who your audience is. The answer will always be there.
2. Figure Out What Search Results You Want to Show Up In
Now that you know who your audience is, it’s time to figure out how you can reach them. Enter: keywords! These are the words that are typed into the Google search bar every minute of every day.
These are also the words that cause people the most stress when it comes to optimizing their website. Most of the time, this becomes overwhelming because people ask: How do I pick?! There are millions of words to choose from!
It’s a lot, but take a deep breath with me. There is a strategy to this.
Not all keywords are created equal. Keywords that are very general, like “copywriter” are going to come up with millions of results. You’ll get thousands of copywriters of different backgrounds and that work in different fields.
Now, if you search for “conservation copywriter”, you’re going to get a more specific set of results – copywriters who specifically work in conservation. You can go even further with “conservation copywriter NYC” to find exactly who you’re looking for: a conservation writer who lives or works in the New York City area.
Getting more specific helps narrow down the results so you can find exactly what you’re looking for.
These phrases are known as long-tail keywords. They’re the more specific searches that help you cut through all the noise and show up for exactly who you want to show up for.
Copywriter Allie Linn puts it well in her blog post, 5 Ways to Boost Your SEO and Why it Matters to Your Business. She writes about how long-tail keywords are the key to your SEO strategy. They help you get seen more easily for popular topics that people are already searching for.1
So let’s do this together.
Write down topics that you want to come up in search results for. This could be anything from “sustainable jewelry” to “cat conservation”.
Now write down the different ways your audience might search for that. For example, it’s true someone may type in “sustainable jewelry” but they might also search for “ethically sourced jewelry”. Same thing with “cat conservation”, what about “big cat sanctuary” or “best cat conservation organizations”?
More often than not, there are multiple ways to get to the same result. Often what our audience types into Google is different than what we might think.
Based on what you’ve come up with so far, now brainstorm about what questions your audience might have that you can answer. What could you write about to help inform them? What problems are you solving that they’re looking for the answer?
This will help you figure out what you can do for your long-form content, which we’ll talk about in our next step.
3. Implement Keywords Into Your Website and Content
Look over your list. Some of these keywords can be grouped together to put in a blog post. Others can probably be used on your website’s homepage. Pick only a handful for each.
Once you’ve figured out your keywords, it's time to use them! After all, they won’t do anything for you in a list sitting on your computer. So what do we do with these search terms that we think people will google and that we want to show up for? We need to implement them into our website and long-form content.
How?
You can slip keywords into your:
Website’s headings
Paragraphs
Blogs
Meta descriptions
The goal is not to just throw keywords around your website randomly. You want them to fit naturally in your sentences, your titles, your headings, etc. And you don’t want to use too many of them. If you use a lot of keywords in a single piece of content, you may be penalized for what is called keyword stuffing.
See where these phrases and questions fit the best. Sometimes questions fit more easily as headings, while other times they work better within a paragraph. Your target keywords should always be in the title of your blogs.
Meta descriptions are the paragraph of text you see below a search result. For example, when you search for “donuts” on Google, you’ll see the name of the website, the title of page, and then underneath it you’ll see a small description of what the page is about. That’s golden space for keywords. It’ll tell people that you’re the resource they want and encourage them to click through to read your article or blog.
Vary your keywords for each page of your website, so you’re not using the same ones over and over and become your own competition.
Blogging is a great way to capture new keywords each time. Since you’ll be writing about different topics in each post, it gives you an opportunity to expand your reach and answer more questions for your readers.
Once you have everything implemented into your website, don’t stop there! Continue to focus on your blog. Google loves websites that are regularly updated and provide helpful information. Blogging regularly and optimizing your website go hand in hand. When you work the two together, you’ll see awesome results.
SEO Is The Long Game
Improvement in your SEO and your website traffic doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not a quick-fix, it’s a slower moving process that gives you huge results in the long run. Just like moving toward a greener future, we take it step-by-step to get there in order to see our return on investment down the line.
These are the simplest ways to get started on optimizing your website and content so you can expand your business, reach more customers, and change the world.
Still feeling overwhelmed? Or is your SEO journey not going according to plan? Email me here to book a coaching call and let’s conquer it together!
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