What is SEO and How Does it Work?
If you landed inside this post, I’m guessing you’re wondering what SEO actually is?
For starters, SEO stands for search engine optimization.
In simple terms, SEO is about adjusting certain content and technical pieces of your website and blog to give it the best possible chance of ranking in Google.
Many online business owners think it’s just about adding keywords to your website, but it’s so much more than that.
I’m hoping you’ll gain a much better understanding of what SEO is and how it works after reading this blog post.
Think of it as SEO for beginners as I break down the fundamentals.
Top search engines
If you’re considering using a search engine in your business, there are 3 main ones that you’ll most likely want to choose from.
You might be wondering why Yahoo and Bing aren’t listed on here. That’s because Google is the market leader, and maintains an 87.96% market share as of October 2019 (source).
Fun statistics:
3.5 billion Google searches are made every day
The volume of Google searches grows by roughly 10% every year (source)
YouTube
Then there's YouTube. YouTube is a video search engine, and the world’s second largest search engine.
It’s the second most visited site after Google.
A couple other crazy stats…
400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
More than 1 billion hours of YouTube videos are watched a day, more than both Netflix and Facebook video (source)
Although many people consider Pinterest to be a social media platform, it isn’t.
Pinterest is a visual search engine. You upload images, known as pins, and rank your content with the use of keywords. You can pin blog posts, YouTube videos, podcast episodes, photos and any other kind of content.
Fun facts:
More than 14 million articles are Pinned each day
The average number of monthly searches on Pinterest is 2 billion (source)
The general concept of keyword research applies universally across these platforms, but the difference is that there are different tools and search volume between platforms.
I believe you should be utilizing at least one search engine in your business.
For the rest of this post, I’m going to be addressing SEO in Google.
How Google works
Let’s take a deeper dive into how Google works.
Google is basically a catalog of information - web pages, PDFs, images, videos, etc.
So how does this info go from being published to showing up in the search results?
Here’s how information becomes available online…
Crawling
Google will crawl or scan new and existing content on the internet.
Indexing
It becomes stored and organized in its database.
So when you have a new website that you publish, Google must crawl and index it before it shows up in the search results. That’s why sometimes it takes a week or longer to Google your business name and actually see it appear.
Ranking
Then it’s ranked - so the order of results that appear after you complete a search is determined by how well those pages that appear match the query (the word or words you search).
The most relevant pieces of content are shown at the top of page 1 and least relevant at the bottom (think page 20).
That is the general process of Google being able to read your content, store it and show it to users.
Keep in mind this only applies to organic search, not Google Ads. Ads are what you see first on a search engine results page, then the organic results follow.
Searcher intent
There are 5 different types of searches based on the type of content someone is looking for.
Navigational: searching for a specific website
Example: “New York Times” or “Target”
Transactional: searching to buy something
Example: “best women’s walking shoes”
Commercial investigation - comparing products
Example: “Iphone 11x pro vs android”
Local queries - searching for something close by
Car repair near me
Informational - searching for information
Example: “What platform should I build my website on?”
The information type of search is most relevant to online business owners - like life/mindset coaches, health/fitness coaches, business coaches, designers, virtual assistants, social media managers, etc.
That’s because you’re most likely sharing content on your blog that answers questions that ideal clients are typing into the Google search bar.
Content vs technical SEO
Content SEO.
First, the content side. This pertains to items such as:
using words and phrases that ideal clients are actually using in searches
including keywords in your blog title
including keywords throughout your post and in headings where it looks natural
Technical SEO
Now let’s talk about technical SEO.
This pertains to items such as:
Optimizing URLs
Optimizing images (reducing file size and using keyword specific file name)
Using headings properly
Site structure
Of course there’s much more, but those are the basics.
You need to take into account both the content and technical optimization of your blog posts.
It’s like peanut butter and jelly...can’t have one without the other 😉
On page vs off page SEO
Off page SEO
Off page SEO are the changes that take place on outside properties, like backlinks from publications, other blogs/websites and social media channels.
On page SEO
On page SEO is the changes you make to your own properties, like your blog.
From my experience, if you are service based business owner, you should put your focus on creating amazing content on your website before you start worrying about implementing off page strategies.
Ranking Factors (SEO success factors)
Did you know that Google has more than 200 ranking factors?
Don’t worry, I won’t list all of them here.
But I do want to include the most important ones for coaches, creatives, and other online service-based business owners.
Domain
There’s a couple things to think about when it comes to your domain.
The age of your domain plays a role in it’s authority. That’s why new domains or new websites don’t rank right away - because they haven’t shown Google that they’re an authority on a topic.
Having keywords in your domain can also play a role. For example, I just launched a client website called iwritelandingpages.com. That will give her a boost for someone looking for landing page conversion copywriters.
Will she automatically pop up on page 1? Probably not, but it does help give a little SEO boost. However, it’s not necessary to rank on page 1.
Title tag
Make sure you have keywords included in your title tag. That’s something I walk through in detail here.
Meta Descriptions
This applies to both your website as a whole, each page, and each blog post.
You want to add keywords and a call to action in your meta description (or SEO description in Squarespace). Just note that your meta description affects click through rate and is not directly tied to ranking.
Keywords in your H1, H2, and H3 tags
Heading 1, or H1, tags have the most authority. These are typically the overview of your page or the title of your blog post.
There’s only meant to be one H1 per page for that reason.
However, you can have multiple H2 and H3 tags.
When you’re adding your keywords, you want to make this appear as natural as possible. Click here for an example of an extremely spammy blog post with keyword stuffing in heading tags.
Content
First is content length and quality.
You’ll want to aim for blog posts that are between 1,000 and 3,000 words because Google loves to showcase the best information to its users.
But don’t just copy what you see - make it different than what is already ranking.
Google’s goal is to showcase blog posts for informative searches that are:
Relevant
In-depth
Unique
Timely to the search
Keyword density and prominence
There is some debate on this, but you definitely want to be using keywords as much as you can in your content without it looking spammy or awkward. If you read it out loud, you’ll know.
Some SEO experts have said to aim for 3% keyword density. That means for every 100 words, you mention your keyword 3 times.
Inside your blog posts, mention your keywords in the first sentence or paragraph, and throughout the post itself.
Depth of topic coverage
Are you focusing your content on a bunch of smaller topics that aren’t closely aligned or 1-2 main topics? You’ll want to go with the latter.
Duplicate content
This is a huge no-no, on both your own site and on others. For example, if you get featured in a major publication, don’t copy and paste the article onto your blog. Instead, give a summary that you were featured and what the article is about. Then provide the link to the article.
Same goes for your competitors and people you want to outrank. If you copy their content, it will hurt you (plus that’s illegal soooo). Focus on creating your own unique high quality content that will serve your audience.
Content recency
Are you publishing new content? How often? And are you updating old pieces of content?
Keeping your website and content fresh shows Google you’re still relevant.
Comments
Your comments setting should be turned on. You want readers to be able to leave comments, ask questions, and engage with you.
Not only does this build community, but it also help with SEO because it shows Google people are interested in your content.
Mobile
With the mobile first index (meaning Google is placing higher importance on the mobile version of our websites), you need to ensure that your website looks amazing on a phone ie mobile friendly.
Page loading speed
Your website should load in under 3 seconds or else people won’t reach your website. You can use the Google Page Speed Insights tool to see what improvements you need to make.
Internal and external links
An interlink is a link that leads from one page to another on your own website. All of the links on your website should make sense - adding a link for the sake of it will not help you.
On your website, naturally link out to the other pages you have. Inside your blog posts, you’ll want to include interlinks to other blog posts as much as possible. This helps Google understand how all these pieces of content are interconnected.
For external links, focus on quality over quantity. It’s better to have a few backlinks from high authority sites like New York Times, Huffington Post and Forbes than 30 backlinks from very small blogs.
Broken links
At all costs, you’ll want to avoid broken links. You can check this with the Check My Links Google Chrome extension.
Reading level
Although not talked about a lot, you want to keep your content to a fairly low reading level. It’s recommended to write your content at a 6th grade reading level. This is why simple language over fancy words is important.
Domain authority
This is exactly how it sounds - the authority of your site. You might commonly see this in SEO industry articles as the “DA” of a website.
Sitemap
A sitemap is a list of all your URLs that helps search engines like Google understand the structure of your website.
If you have Squarespace, you don’t need to worry much about this. Squarespace already creates your site map for you, and will automatically update it as you add or remove pages.
You do want to make sure however, that you are submitting your website to Google Search Console to index it or show updates.
Backlinks
There are many important factors to backlinks, which are links pointing from another website to yours.
Here are several backlink factors:
Domain age and authority
Number of linking root domains (meaning just the domain, not all of it’s individual pages from one domain)
Number of linking pages
Anchor text (the text that is inside the link)
Quality of links
Other website factors
I’ve got a great blog post that already dives into these ranking factors on Squarespace
SSL certificate
AMP
Bounce rate and 404 pages
URLs
Site structure
Image optimization Use of images and multimedia
Use of Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Spammy SEO
You cannot trick Google. Keep this in mind as you work on increasing your rank in Google.
If you engage in spammy tactics, like keyword stuffing, you will be penalized.
Here’s what you need to remember…
“While you are packaging your blog posts for Google, you are writing for humans.”
If you are going to put time and energy into blogging, you need to be thinking about your users. You never want to try to engage in something like keyword stuffing to improve your rankings.
I can promise you it will backfire.
If you’re wondering….
How do I do SEO for a website?
I’ve got just the resource - learn all about how to optimize your Squarespace website.
How fast does SEO work?
It depends on so many factors. But I would say that if you’re publishing high quality blog content weekly or biweekly, expect for it to take 3-6 months for an uptick in traffic.
If you have Squarespace, you can set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track this.
How do I reach page 1 of Google?
Good question! Learn how to write killer blog content that positions you at the top of the Google search results.
Wow, that was a lot of information. I hope this provided some more clarity as your grow your business blog. Drop your questions below and I’ll be sure to answer them!
Struggling to drive traffic to your website, grow your leads and convert more dream clients?
After implementing SEO strategies for billion dollar global brands and high profile individuals, I help position my clients at the top of the Google search results so they can get seen by the people that need their services most.
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