No matter what business you are starting as an entrepreneur, you will benefit from having a compelling website and making it easy for people to find. For the latter, you need Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Nobody truly understands how the search engine algorithms work their magic, but there are several smart folks that know a lot. SEO experts are plentiful and it’s a billion dollar industry. Good experts are hard to find, and great experts are harder. They are also expensive, which can be a limiting factor for an entrepreneur.
Luckily, there is also a plethora of information about SEO techniques out there. It takes a while to wade through the sometimes conflicting information while also figuring out what is outdated or just plain wrong. But if you put in the effort, you will soon learn the trends in the SEO industry and what works.
There are three basic things you need to know when learning SEO. For more detail, you can download my “Hands on SEO” presentation from Slideshare.
1) Keyword research. Before you do anything else, even before you create a website, you should research keywords that people will search on to find your site. There are a few types of keywords that represent the different types of searches people will do – Information, Shopping, and Purchasing keywords. You should include different types of keywords on your website.
2) On page SEO. You will need to optimize many things on your website to make it appealing for search engines to index your pages. Meta title and description, alt text for images, heading tags, etc.
3) Off page SEO (Linkbuilding). Once you have completed steps one and two, and only once you have completed steps one and two, you need to start building links to your website. These links are often referred to as backlinks. Every one of these links should use anchor text of a keyword that you want to get good rankings for in the search engines.
If you are not in a highly competitive industry, you may be able to rank well for some of your top keywords in a matter of 3-4 months. If you are in a competitive industry, it could take many more months.
All of this you can do yourself with a little education and elbow grease. Some of it you may want to outsource to one of a few cost effective offshore SEO resources.
The best thing about learning SEO is a sense of accomplishment when you are able to move the needle and bring more traffic to the site through your own efforts. Additionally, when it is time to bring in that SEO expert, you will be able to interview and hire them confidently, with the knowledge to at least call bullshit on something they tell you. That’s important, because you can spend thousands of dollars with the wrong SEO “expert” and not get good results. You don’t want to waste your time and money like that.
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