The 3 main sections of SEO broken down to show you what needs to be worked on first.

The 3 main sections of SEO broken down to show you what needs to be worked on first.

Whenever you start to do your own SEO you may think it's an easy thing because you just need to build a few backlinks.  Well, I can tell you that backlinks will definitely help you out if you know where to get the right ones, but that's not the only thing you need to focus on when it comes to doing your own SEO.  Almost everything factors into your rankings, not just building links on 3rd party websites and aiming those links at your pages, and that's why I'm going to go over the basics in this discussion

Yes, I'll only be going over the basics, but even then this discussion will have a lot of information in it lol.  If I were to dive deep into every little section here it would be a 15,000+ word discussion, and no one wants to read that much content, so it would be a wast for me to write it all up haha.  You'll understand what needs to go into your SEO and you can decide to do it yourself or outsource it to a credible company who can help you boost your rankings.  I do know that if you aren't aware of everything that goes into SEO, and you've been paying people money to do it for you, your eyes will be opened a bit more when reading through this discussion.  You'll understand what you need to do for your own website in order for those high-quality backlinks you just purchased to take full effect and help boost you to the top of the SERPs


Website Hosting
When you start to think about your own optimization and rankings, you need to start with the company that is hosting the actual code of your site.  You can go with big box companies like GoDaddy and be put on a shared hosting plan with 100 other websites, but your pages might lag a bit and take a few seconds to load.  Now, a few seconds isn't a bad thing, but if you pair it up next to a website that has its pages loading in 0.02 seconds, then you're going to be seen as the lesser of the two and your rankings will not be as good.

Yes, your rankings won't be as good if your pages take a little while to load.  This is because Google and the other search engines want to give their visitors the best experiences possible, and your slow loading website isn't a good experience for most people, so you'll be bumped down the rankings until you speed up a bit.

Don't worry, you can just get a better plan on a more dedicated server or you can switch hosting companies entirely.  I like going with NameCheap because they're not expensive and they're decently fast for the amount of money you pay.  I also like using t35hosting.com for some of my bigger websites since I've been with them for a while and their support is top notch

If you're on a $1 a month hosting plan you shouldn't expect anything great.  There are even people out there that pay $5 a year for hosting and then complain about their pages taking forever to load.  Don't be one of those people, just pay a little bit of money each month and get a better host


On page optimization
In the world of SEO, there are 2 main things you need to do, one is on page optimization and the other being off page optimization, and neither can work its full potential without the other.  Think of this as a sort of yin and yang scenario, both work well with each other to create balance, but you can't just have one and expect everything to be amazing.

Your design needs to be responsive
If your design itself isn't optimized for mobile traffic, you're going to notice your rankings slipping.  Google now prioritizes websites that are mobile friendly since over 50% of their traffic now comes from smartphones.  Remember, they're trying to please as many people as possible and give them the best experience online.  If your website isn't fitting just right within their phones, you'll get a kick down the rankings over time.

Add alt tags to your images
This is something more and more people are starting to catch on to.  You need to add little tags to each of your images so the search engines understand what they're looking at.  Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing have extremely intelligent algorithms along with spiders, but you need to think of them as blind when it comes to your images.  Adding the alt tags to your images is like putting brail on them in order for the spiders to read what the image shows and they can then report it back to the engine itself.  The better your website is understood, the more likely you'll rank, and that means more traffic for you

You need to add optimized titles
This is a pretty basic part of optimization since it's likely what you'll be found for in the SERPs.  Think about it, how often do you add a title to your page and find that exact one within the SERPs?  Pretty often, and that's why you need to optimize it.  Add a keyword or two, make it look natural, and it also needs to be written in a way that entices someone to click through.  If you can do that, you'll have a winning combo for both the engines as well as the people viewing your listing.

You need to add optimized descriptions
Again, this is a pretty basic thing in today's world since it's been a staple for on-page optimization for the last 20 years.  All you're doing is adding a meta description to your pages.  You'll likely want to use a unique description for each page so you can spread a wider net on keyword targeting, but that's entirely up to you (do it anyway lol). 

I like adding 2 or 3 keywords into my descriptions in order to target a few as long as I'm not adding this description to my homepage or a product page.  If it's a general blog post or subpage, I will target multiple keywords, but if it's my homepage I will tend to just target my main keyword.

Add plenty of meta keywords
Bigger engines like Google don't really factor in your meta keywords anymore, but the smaller engines used by a few people still look at them.  You may not get an extra 1,000 people a day to your website because you added some meta keywords, but you will likely see some additional people every month coming in and hopefully making a sale  

Your content must have the right keyword density
If you're writing your own content or outsourcing it to a credible content writer, you need to make sure it's optimized for the keyword your trying to target.  I like using a keyword density of around 3% even though people say going up to 5% is perfectly safe.  I want to make sure my content will be well within the density guidelines set by the search engines just in case they decide to crack down a bit more on what they're indexing. 

If you're targeting 3% or even 5% keyword density, this means you will have 3 or 5 keywords in every 100 words of content you're writing.  If you're going to write up a 2,000 word article, and I suggest you always shoot that high, you will now have 100 keywords in that article if you are going with 5% density.  If you don't know how to write, having 100 keywords in your content could make it look unreadable, and the search engines won't be too happy with that.


Off-page optimization
This is the other major part of SEO, and it's because you're now building votes in the form of backlinks on 3rd party websites.  The more votes you get from established 3rd parties, the better your rankings will be, but this section of SEO needs to be approached with caution because it can be screwed up quite easily.

Build quality backlinks
Sure, you can pay someone to build you 1,000,000 backlinks today and only spend $10, but you won't be happy with the outcome since those links are likely spammy and search engines hate spammy style links.

Instead, focus on building relationships with websites in your industry and niche, then reach out to see if they're let you write up some content for them.  You write up an amazing article for them, they give you a dofollow backlink, and you get a boost in the SERPs for getting mentioned on a quality website.  If you were to just post a spun article to 1,000 wiki pages, you won't get the same quality even if someone tells you it's amazing and will put you on page 1 for all of your keywords lol.

Increase your online reputation
People tend to focus only on placing hyperlinks when it comes to getting your 3rd party votes.  In today's world, an unlinked mention helps you build up your reputation online, and that might get you some additional links from the people reading.  Now, on platforms that auto-generate your URL into a link, you can post and be just fine, but some platforms won't do that because they don't want to riddle their pages with spam.  So, just post your blank URL with not hyperlink and people will likely highlight it then right click and open in a new tab. 

In the next few years we will likely notice more optimization tricks like this because the search engines are starting to look for more mentions online about your website, then they will factor it into their algorithm and rank you accordingly.  If you do the mentions now, you will be ahead of the game later, and you will likely get a nice little boost in the SERPs


In conclusion
When you decide to do your own SEO, you need to know what you're getting into before you start, because you could really screw something up and hurt your rankings for a very long time.  If you know what you're doing, just take your time and never rush it because you could still screw something up lol.  Never hire a freelancer who is just going to use software to build your tier 1 high-quality links, because you're just taking 2 steps back before you even start.  Take your time, focus on high-quality stuff, and you should be just fine


Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/TommyCarey


Thanks!

Tommy Carey