SEO for Non-Techies: Unlocking the potential of SEO for online success
Want to drive traffic to your website and grow your online business, but are intimidated by the tech side of things?
This post will break down the basics of SEO and how it helps your website rank on search engines like Google and how to set up SEO for online success.
SEO may seem complicated, but we’ll simplify and show you why it’s crucial for bringing organic traffic to your website. Plus, we’ll share the three easy steps (and one bonus step) to get your website ranking on Google.
Firstly, why is organic search optimization important?
Because it’s all about getting free organic traffic from search engines. And free organic traffic is nice.
Think about it – if someone searches for “best dog collars for puppies“, and your product page shows up in the search results, they might click on your link, land on your site, and buy those puppy collars.
Don’t worry, I am Urban Renström, there is always science and research involved in everything I talk about, teach, and demonstrate.
But let’s be clear, search engine optimization won’t help the:
- PPC strategy.
- Email marketing, or
- Social media marketing.
Search optimization is only concerned with improving your pages and posts so they show up in the search engine result pages (SERP) and send you organic traffic. Organic traffic is why we use SEO for online success.
“What Happens if I Ignore All the SEO Advice?”
🙈🙉🙊 the worst?
You risk being 👻”ghosted” by Google – which means no organic traffic, no sales, and a dead business. So don’t make that mistake!
Note: I’m using “URL”, “page” and “post” interchangeably. Pure SEO gurus would cringe at me.
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, also known as a web address. Every webpage, post, image, podcast etc. has a URL.
So, how does all of This SEO Stuff Work to Get Free Organic Traffic?
A) SEO helps your website get found by search engines. B) so that search engines will index the URLs on your website. C) and categorize the content on those pages. D) so, when a person searches for “best dog collar puppies”, “how to get an accountant” or “how to increase cash flow” etc. E) your URLs get selected and are displayed in the SERPs, then. F) people will click on your link. G) to your website. H) be amazed and throw money at you. I) you become an instant internet millionaire.
So search engine optimization has three pillars as its foundation.
SEO for online success has three pillars of SEO – tech, on-page and off-page (plus content) are the core functions in your locker to get organic traffic. All three pillars are additive to get your pages and posts noticed and indexed by Google and get ranked.
| Technical SEO | On-Page SEO | Off-Page SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Website Hosting | Page headline, | Link Building |
| Website Theme | URL/Slug | Outreach |
| SEO Plugins | Words on the page | Earned Media |
| Google Search Console, Bing webmaster tools, | Words on the page | Social Media marketing and mentions |
| Google Analytics | Internal Linking | Reviews, Recommendations and Testimonials |
| Website Structure | Meta description | Public Relations |
| Navigation | Images, pictures and graphics | Guest blogging |
| User experience (UX), User interface (UI) | Influencer marketing |
#1 Is Technical SEO.
Technical SEO is focused on ensuring the foundation of your website itself is set up in the best possible way. When set up and done right Tech SEO gets your website found on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
As with a house, if SEO, is built on a weak or broken foundation is not stable and will easily crumble and break.
Technical SEO is all the “behind-the-scenes” stuff that will be taken care of for you with the right tools, choices and options.
Good and proper website hosting1 will take care of your SSL cert, page speed and website deliverability.
The newer website themes1 (WordPress based) are designed from the ground up for SEO – the structure, size, code etc. They also have user experience (UX)1 and navigation1 built in which uses industry standards and is intuitive for visitors.
SEO-specific WordPress Plugins help with organic search efforts by generating sitemaps1, checking for broken links and incorrect redirects, improving Local SEO rankings, identifying errors and optimising metadata and tags.
Google Search Console1 is the main webmaster tool for improving your website’s search appearance and organic traffic. This is done by checking URL indexing issues, website server errors, website load issues, and security and speed issues.
- These are “set and forget”.
#2 On-page SEO is the Biggest Lever to pull for Organic Traffic
On-page SEO is everything you see on a page. The words, images, URLs etc. On-page SEO is the biggest content optimization lever you can pull to improve your page’s rankings.
Why?
Because the words you use
On-page is the keywords you use, the text on the page, the page title, the URL you use (and structure), and the meta description. It is also the subtitles and the FAQs you use or don’t.
On-page is also the images you use, their ALT text and the caption, which internal and external pages you link.
On-page is more about the Entities used vs the keywords (although important)
None of these on-page SEO factors is “set and forget”.
#3 SEO for Online Success requires Plenty of Off-Page SEO.
Off-Page is getting visibility for your website not using the tools from #1, 2.
Backlinks – websites putting a link on their website back to yours.
At the heart of off-page SEO is building backlinks. Because all search engines use backlinks as indications of the content’s quality. Therefore, a website with many high-value backlinks will usually rank higher than a website with equal content but with fewer backlinks.
Off-page including everything you can do to promote your products and services. It’s like PR, marketing, and sales all rolled into one.
#4 (should be the #1) SEO for online Success Factor is Content.
Yes, that overused catch-all phrase – content.
Want to know the worst part:
Without content on your website, there’s nothing for search engines to rank. No reason for search engines to feature your pages. The result is not traffic.
Therefore, content is the most important aspect of SEO and search optimization.
As part of your on-page SEO process, you’ll need to do keyword research to figure out what questions your customers are asking about your products and services, and then create content to answer those questions.
The Three Simple Steps to Unlock SEO for Online Success
In order to get organic traffic you must:
- Do your research (including keyword research) to understand the questions people are asking.
- Create Content: Answer those questions your customers are asking – using the keyword you discovered in the research phase.
- Optimizing the content using your on-page SEO magic wand – focus your efforts on search optimization, not search engine optimization (yes there is a difference).
- Build a strong backlink profile through a solid off-page SEO strategy – the number and diversity of links from other websites are a major page ranking factor.
- Measuring and analyzing the impact of your search optimization, and making changes as needed to improve your chances of success. This is the wash, rinse, repeat cycle.
Ok, that was 5 simple steps! Action these five steps in that order and you’ll get a tsunami of organic traffic from search!
SEO for Non-Techies: The Priority Reading List
In an earlier📆 article we showed why the SERP page is the “best-fit answer” to the questions people ask and why you must rank on page 1.
One of the common questions asked is how SEO help grow a business.
Also, we discussed the 12 basic concepts of search engine optimization. And digging deeper we learned how the 3 Pillars of SEO play together to improve the visibility of the page and post to help get organic traffic.
We also saw that Google page 2-♾ is the “dead man zone” and “where the bodies are!” ☠.
Getting a Tsunami of Organic Traffic?
Worse is the dwindling email list, the bare appointment book and the underperforming online courses. Time to turn the trickle into a torrent.