Quick SEO Tips for the Novice

By: Mark Perterson at RSS

You’ve heard people talk about SEO. You even know what SEO stands for. That’s right, Search Engine Optimization. But do you know why it matters and how to make it work? In this post, I’ll share some quick SEO tips for the Novice.

Why SEO Matters

SEO only matters if you want to get people to visit your site and buy what your selling. There are a few different paths that people take to get to your site. They include:

  • Direct – they type your web address into a web browser
  • Referral – they click a link on another website or in an email
  • Social – they click a link in one of your social media posts
  • Paid – they click on an ad that you paid for
  • Organic – they click on a non-ad link in a search engine like Google

While traffic and browser behavior related to the first four paths affects SEO, its main purpose is to get more organic visits to your site.

Think of it this way. The first path draws people that know you well already. The other paths need extra work or even money to get people to visit the great site that you built. The organic path is the one you want to encourage and grow, and the work to make it happen is all done upfront when you create a new page or post.

Quick Tips for the SEO Novice

To build increase organic traffic to your site you must manage your SEO. Here are some tips to do that. Note, these tips are specific to WordPress sites, but most can be applied on any website management platform.

  1. Install SmartCrawl Pro or a similar SEO plugin. This plugin will guide you through the tips below and comes bundled with our professional website hosting plans.
  2. Assign a Focus Key Phrase to the post or page. This is what you believe people search for to find the content that you’ve written about.
  3. Use your Focus Key Phrase or a close variation in your introduction, headers, and meta description.
  4. Write a good SEO Title and Meta Description. Without this, search engines will make it up from what they find at the beginning of your text.
  5. Try to include internal and external links. This helps create a web of connections that tells search engines what your content is about.
  6. Make sure your text is readable. Use a tool like Grammarly to write grammatically correct text. Use a tool like the Hemingway App to write content that is easy to read. Yoast will tell you how you did and how to improve.

There are many other SEO tips, but these are the key things you must do to help your help site show up in organic searches and create traffic to your site.