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SEO Basics - Coggle Diagram
SEO Basics
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If you’re using Google Analytics, you can quickly view your organic traffic by going to:
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- Setting up for SEO success
Getting your website indexed by search engines means you’re in the race, not that you’re likely to win. That’s where SEO comes in. SEO is an ongoing process that, if done well, increases your chances of winning over time.
Get a good domain
Don’t panic if you’ve already registered a domain. It’s probably perfectly fine and won’t hinder your SEO efforts. But if you haven’t chosen one yet, it’s worth keeping these two attributes of a good domain in mind:
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TLD
TLD stands for top-level domain. It’s the part after the name like .com, .org, or .co.uk.
Google’s John Mueller says your TLD makes no difference for SEO. However, for most businesses, .com is usually best if you can get it because it’s the most recognizable and trusted.
If you’re a charity, .org or your country equivalent (e.g., .org.uk) works too.
If you only do business in one country outside the US, your ccTLD (e.g., co.uk) will be fine.
It’s probably best to stay clear of TLDs like .info and .biz that tend to be associated with low-quality websites, but it’s not the end of the world if you have one. You can still build a legitimate website that ranks.
Use a website platform
Most people don’t code their website from the ground up in HTML and CSS. They use a website platform. These are pieces of software that allow folks with little or no coding skills to create a website, manage content with ease, and take care of boring technicalities.
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By this stage, you should have a decent base for SEO success. But this is only the beginning. SEO is an ongoing process that’s broadly divided into four facets:
Keyword research
Keyword research is the process of finding what your customers are searching for, how much traffic those terms can send your way, and how difficult it might be to rank for them. Let’s explore the basics of each of those steps.
Find keywords
Understanding what kinds of things your potential customers are searching for is the first step of the keyword research process. Unless you know this, there’s no way you can even begin to create pages that will rank in search engines and attract valuable traffic.
Check traffic potential
Pretty much every keyword research tool will show estimated monthly search volumes for the keywords it finds
Search volume is usually a reasonable way to estimate the relative traffic potential of keywords. Generally speaking, pages targeting high-volume keywords will usually drive more traffic to your website than pages targeting low-volume keywords.
Check ranking difficulty
Even if a keyword seems relevant to your business and has high traffic potential, it won’t always be easy to rank for.
Many things factor into the ranking difficulty of a keyword, but the number of relevant, prominent websites linking to the top-ranking pages is arguably the most important. Google talks about this in their guide to how search works:
If other prominent websites on the subject link to the page, that’s a good sign that the information is of high quality.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO involves creating the kind of content searchers are looking for, and ‘optimizing’ it to help search engines better understand what it’s about. Most people think this is all about keyword placement. Although that’s part of it, it’s far from the most important aspect.
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Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of helping search engines like Google to find, understand, and index your pages. It can get quite complicated but as we already covered the basics when setting up a site for SEO success, we won’t go any deeper here.
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