SEO is Easy?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is what website builders, marketers, and businesses of all kind need to perform if they want their website’s pages to show up when people use a search engine.

If you’re not familiar with the basics of SEO, read What is SEO? and then come back to this article to learn a whole lot more.

A lot of my clients will tell me they want their website to appear on the front page of Google. They seem to be fixated on this one result, instead of looking at the bigger picture. The bigger picture involves looking at all the elements that contribute to a website’s success – that is a Living Website.

Having a well optimized website takes so much more than some quick SEO hacks or tricks that some website promoters have up their sleeves. There are no tricks. There aren’t ways to trick Google into putting your website above your competitors. Google employs thousands of PhDs whose job it is to make the search engine experience the highest quality ever. The only way to get your website and business in front of the people you want to reach is to use best practices for SEO.

Search Engine Optimization involves Technical SEO, On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and Local SEO.

Doing SEO right means you need to have

  • Technical skills and knowledge
  • High-quality content
  • High-quality back links to and from your web pages
  • Citations – business name, location, phone info throughout your website, social properties, and other website properties
  •  and so. much. more!

Is this starting to sound a little more complicated than you thought? It should, because it is!

Yes, SEO is complicated but it isn’t rocket science. It can be easy to learn if you have the patience to study all of the 200 rankings factors in Google’s algorithm that they use to rank your webpages when someone performs a search.

That’s right! There are 200 factors that search engines use to determine if your website is relevant to searchers’ needs. Some of the factors are widely known, but most of them are shrouded in secrecy so that shady SEO companies can’t “cheat” and make a sub-par, irrelevant website show up in a search results page.

DIY SEO: It Can’t be That Hard, Right?

SEO is not hard, but nobody said it was easy, either.

Doing great SEO means doing an orchestrated set of tasks, which are layered on top of each other to build a firm foundation and tiered endorsement of a web page.

Simply put, SEO takes layers of efforts to build solid results.

If done correctly, SEO can make your business a bunch of money for “free”, if done incorrectly it can mean failure and penalization of your online business.

Search engines will penalize a website for trying to trick them. One example of trying to trick a search engine is being spammy with keywords. Say a plumbing company wants their website to appear when people search “plumbing Edmonton.” They go overboard by using the term  (or “keyword”) “plumbing Edmonton” throughout their website in a way that isn’t natural, here’s an example: “We are your premier source for everything plumbing Edmonton. Plumbing Edmonton is our main focus. Think of us when you need plumbing Edmonton.”
If it doesn’t look or sound natural to you, it won’t look right to search engines either. Search engines have software algorithms to detect spammy tactics like this. There’s no use in trying to use tricks with SEO. You have to focus on quality content, best practices, and technical knowledge.

Ready to start SEO?

If SEO seems like something you want to do yourself, then dive into the world of SEO! Below are dozens and dozens of resources that can help you.

If this sounds like something you’d rather leave to the experts, Nyche Marketing is here to do it for you. We have the knowledge, skills, and marketing professionals to boost your online presence and get your phone ringing!

SEO takes layers of efforts to build solid results #onlinemarketing #yeg #yegbiz

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Want to Learn SEO? Check out these Easy Guides!

I know, the heading above is a bit tongue and cheek, but it’s true. If you’re ready and willing to learn SEO and you have a knack for learning new things, these guides and videos are easy to read or watch… but comprehending them and putting them into practice is the hard part.

That said, these resources will teach you what you need to know to shore up your website and tune it as SEO is the foundation of a Living Website (a website engine that works for your company day and night).

Here is a comprehensive list of guides from gurus around the web broken up into the 7-steps that we follow here at Nyche Marketing:

Overview of Online Marketing – How does SEO fit in? What is SEO?

Foundation of SEO  – Keyword Research

On Page SEO – Optimizing your Website for Success

Off Page SEO – Getting other websites to vouch for yours

Technical SEO – The way to tune your website ‘engine’ for maximum efficiency

Local SEO – when you want to dominate the search engines in your city

Content Marketing is the new ongoing SEO

List of easy SEO guides #easynoteasy #yeg #yegbiz

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The Ever-Changing SEO Trade

SEO has been around for over 20 years according to SEO expert Bruce Clay. You can see the timeline of search engine history and SEO studies here.

Over the years, SEO has developed into a professional trade. According to job site Indeed, the average salary of an SEO and marketing role is more than $70K a year! People intern, study and test Search Engine Optimization best practices. Just like a plumber specializes in plumbing, SEO experts specialize in website optimization.

And just like plumbing or renovating or cabinetry or any other contracting role, SEO takes a lot of education, skill, and experience to master.

What sets the SEO trade apart from most other trades is that SEO is constantly changing. For example, a plumber can fix your toilet one day and it will probably be OK for the next week or month or year. With a website, it can be perfectly optimized one day, but then a week later, the algorithms for search engines change completely and your website will no longer be optimized for it.

Your toilet doesn’t do that. Once it’s fixed, it’s fixed. Search engines, on the other hand, are always changing. What worked yesterday may not work today.

What if you had someone on your side who was continuously learning, improving, and keeping up to date with the changes Google, Bing, and Yahoo make?

Do It Yourself or Ask the Experts?

Could you do SEO yourself?

Yes, you can learn to do SEO yourself. Once you dive into the articles above, subscribe to newsletters for new changes, dedicate time to testing and retesting your efforts, and gain an understanding for SEO, you could do it yourself.

But most business owners simply don’t have the time or drive to master the nuances of the SEO trade. It’s tempting to want to do it yourself, just like it can be tempting to fix your own toilet after watching some videos on YouTube, but is that the best use of your time? Will you do a great job without the years of experience a plumber has? Probably not.

Do SEO yourself or work with a professional? #seoexpert #yeg #yegbiz

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Summary

If you’re ready to start doing SEO, the resources in this article are a great place to start. Gain an understanding, put expert methodology into practice and test, test, test. Good SEO takes time, keeping up-to-date, and lots of trial and error.

There’s no doubt that SEO is foundational in getting your website to show up in search results. Here are some statistics to back that up:

  • 160+ billion monthly Google searches
  • 51% of searches are longer than 4 words (i.e. long tail keywords)
  • 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation.
  • 75% of marketers say SEO is content creation and the highest ranking content is about 1,200 words
  • Marketers see SEO as becoming more effective, with 82% reporting effectiveness is on the rise and 42% of this group stating effectiveness is increasing significantly.
  • Organic search (SEO) leads convert higher than social and outbound leads

Want to see more SEO statistics? Click here. and here and here

Are there SEO practices that have worked for you? Let us know in the comments below. Also, please share this article with anyone you know who may want to get a better understanding of the SEO trade and its practices!

75% of marketers say SEO is content creation and the highest ranking content is about 1,200 words #yeg #yegbiz

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We are here to help! Contact us if you’d like to discuss SEO strategies for your website!

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