A couple weeks back I made a very detailed post about what is working for me in the search engines. I have received a lot of good feedback but there was also some concerns.
I’ll be the first to admit that the post that I wrote was on the “advance SEO” side of things.
So today, I want to start off with my “Newbies Guide To SEO”. There will be many steps in this guide so I will be doing them in parts.
With that said lets get into it…
When I first got started online I started doing nothing but Paid Advertising with Google Adwords and other PPC Networks.
Just like everyone else I had the impression that SEO was a no mans land. I thought that in order to be successful at SEO you had to be some kind of wiz kid. 
Being a lazy 18 year high school graduate at the time with no degree, I was more focused on taking the easier route to making this online thing work.
Thanks to all the crap the so-called guru’s feed you I have to admit, I was very afraid of SEO at first.
They make it seem as though SEO is so hard, and it’s not worth it because of all the algorithm updates (changes in the search engines) and what not.
I am going to let you know first hand from experience.
SEO IS NOT HARD AT ALL!!!
And it does not take years to see results!
I have had brand new sites rank (having a site appear in a search engine) in the top ten search results of google within less than a month that generate decent traffic.
The key to SEO is having the right strategies. That’s basically it.
Now, of course SEO is not for everyone but it should be a part of your overall marketing strategy. And you literally will save thousands of dollars if you learn SEO and do it your self instead of hiring some huge firm to do it for you.
Once you have your system down good enough, you can simply put it on autopilot by outsourcing everything. (more on that some other time)
Sure, there are many SEO firms who promise Top Rankings, but if you are just getting started with your site and have little money, I am pretty sure you cannot afford these services.
Some people charge as much as $1,200-$8,000+ per month. Can you say HOUSE NOTE?
Don’t get me wrong, you do have to put in the work just like anything else but I can assure you that if you do it correctly, SEO is worth it!
Before we get into the first step I would like to say this…
When doing SEO it is not only to drive traffic (website visitors) to your sites, you want to make sure you are giving your visitors related information that they want.
For example:
If your site is about skin care and beauty products, you want to make sure that you create content around this topic to drive “Targeted” traffic from related SEO keywords.
What is a SEO Keyword?
A keyword for SEO is basically what a web user would type into a search engine like Google to find a related site based on what they search for.
For Example:
It’s Christmas time, and I waited until the last minute to get all my shopping done. I’ve been busy with work and I want to avoid going out to all the crowded stores just to find gifts to purchase.
What do I do? I decide to do all of my shopping online.
My first gift will be an apple Ipad, so I go to google and type in “Cheap Ipads”. And the search results will typically show you 10 listings on the first page of google.
In this case, the SEO keyword would be “Cheap Ipads”.
This is the type of keyword you will be using to drive targeted web site visitors to your sites from the search engines.
So…
The Very First Step In SEO Is “Keyword” Research
Keyword Research is hands down the most IMPORTANT factor of ranking your site in the top 10 search results of the search engines.
Without keyword research it is extremely hard to rank in the search engines and on top of that, you are pretty much flying blind.
There is also good and bad keyword research. You don’t really want to target 100+ “BAD” keywords that you think will bring in traffic and sales.
Most of the time a lot of keywords will bring in a bunch of traffic with little to no sales. Or those keywords can bring in no traffic at all.
At the end of the day, we are trying to rank in the search engines to generate targeted traffic that helps you get more exposure and make more money from your sites.
Your main goal here is to focus on “GOOD” Keywords.
A lot of the time you can have as little as 2 to 3 good keywords out of 100′s of keywords that bring you in 90% of your traffic/sales.
Just imagine if you wasted all of your time and resources doing keyword research for 100+ keywords that did not generate sales and traffic.
As a general rule at first, I try to focus on 5-10 Good keywords that bring in decent traffic and keywords I feel are related to the site I am trying to have show up in the search engines.
What’s the difference between Good And Bad Keywords?
Good Keywords - These are the type of keywords that you want to rank for in the search engines. These are keywords that are easier to rank for, will drive traffic and sales to your site.
Bad keywords - With these type of keywords they typically will not bring you in any traffic or sales. It is either because they are too hard to rank for, have no traffic or do not generate any sales at all.
An example of a GOOD keyword would be:
- buy weight loss products
In this example say we have a weight loss site that we are using to sell diet pills. The keyword would be good because we are targeting a user that has an intention to come on our site and make a purchase from us.
This is what we call “Targeted Traffic”. The second reason why this is a good keyword is because “buy weight loss products” is what we call a ”Long Tail Keyword” phrase.
When you are first starting out in SEO it is recommended that you go for keywords that have three or more keyword phrases.
These types of keywords are the easiest to rank for and they are very targeted.
An example of a BAD keyword would be:
- Weight Loss
In this example “Weight Loss” is a bad keyword for a couple of reasons. You may think that just because this keyword is really really popular and receives a lot of traffic…
That it automatically qualifies as a good keyword to target.
Well, the truth is that it is going to be very very hard to rank in the search engines for “Weight loss” because it is a very competitive keyword. This is most likely the case for a lot of one to two word phrase “Short Tail Keywords”.
(Remember we want to rank for three to four word “Long Tail Keyword” Phrases)
What I mean by competetive is that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people competing to rank in the top 10 SERPS (search engine result pages) for that given prhase.
So when starting out it is highly recommended that you choose long tail keywords that are easy to rank for (less competition), targeted and that have decent traffic.
When you do this, you will save a lot time because you will be focusing on keywords that you actually have a chance to rank for.
When you have more experience with SEO, there would be no issue targetting more competetive keywords. But to start out, you want to make it as easy as possible.
So that about raps up the first part of this guide.
In part two we will be discussing keyword research in more detail with a lot of examples for keywords and the tools that you can use to help you find good SEO Keywords.
Hope you enjoyed, be on the look out for part two!
Be sure to leave your comments if you have any question or feedback.
Regards,
Joe - Like us on FaceBook! - Follow us on Google Plus! - Follow us on Twitter!
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