Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of increasing the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results. You want your website or web page to rank on the first page of Google’s results because 95% of web traffic goes to sites on the first page of results. Your goal after that may be to get to the number one spot. If you can get to the top spot on the first page you can get about 33% of all of search traffic for a particular search term. SEO involves three things: keyword research, optimization and building authority.

Keywords

What are keywords? These are the words or phrases that people type into the search bar of search engines such as Google. What are your potential customers searching for? There are tools out there that give you this type of information. Keyword research is used by SEO professionals to find and research alternative search terms that people enter into search engines while looking for a similar subject.

For blog posts, you will usually aim for a long tail keyword (containing multiple words – 4 or 5 perhpas). Long tail keywords are keywords or key phrases that are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly searched for keywords. Long tail keywords get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific

Optimization

Make sure what Google understands what keywords you are targeting or products or services you are selling and where you are selling them. If you are using WordPress and you have installed the Yoast plugin you can use this to add a focus keyword (for example).

Building Authority

You need to prove to Google that you have the best content for their users. Create compelling content that results in people sharing your content in social networks and linking to your content from around the Internet. This is really about building links.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a browser addon that will get you FREE search volume, CPC & competition data for almost all the keyword research tools out there! You can install it for Chrome or Firefox. It shows you useful google keyword search volume, cost per click and competition data of keywords on multiple websites. We have a more detailed post on this called Keywords Everywhere.

What is a backlink? It is a link to your website from another place. Google will rank your website higher the more backlinks you have. You could create a backlink by writing articles on other websites and include your website as a link. Be careful of sites that offer to give you backlinks for free or for a small fee. Google can actually penalize your website for using these types of services. It’s called Google Penguin.

Local (Physical Location) SEO Strategies

Businesses with a physical location don’t use backlinks very much. You content won’t change very much over time. A better strategy is to use reviews.

WordPress SEO Article

For more information on setting up SEO for WordPress site havve a look at the article called Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners (Step by Step)