The ABC of SEO – How Does It Work?

In my journey as an SEO specialist, I have had numerous business owners, content creators and marketers mention that they don’t know what SEO is let alone how to implement it. The one thing they are sure on though is that it’s 100% needed especially with all the recent iOS updates and changes to third-party cookies which have made marketing even harder. I've put together this simple guide to explain the most asked question "SEO - How does it work?".

SO, WHAT IS SEO AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

I’ve put together this simple guide covering all you need to know to get started with SEO and score those top positions in Google so you can grow you audience, sales and revenue (minus the ongoing ad costs and upkeep of other marketing methods).

If you want to learn a marketing tactic that will save you time, effort and money, read on!

WHAT IS SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is all the steps you take to help your website or piece of content rank higher in search engines like Google when somebody searches for it. SEO is an organic strategy meaning you don’t have to pay to be seen or found, it's completely free to implement. For example, if somebody searches Beauty Salon Sydney in Google and you rank in the top position, SEO is all the actions you take to attain that position.

SEO - HOW DOES IT WORK?

SEO is made up of three primary components. Each component must work together to boost your ranking.

TECHNICAL SEO

Technical SEO refers to how your site is built and functions and can be broken down into three main areas:

Speed

Site speed is all about how quickly your website loads and responds to a user’s interactions.

Let’s be honest, nobody likes a slow website especially Google who have directly said that it’s one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank. Make sure your website loads efficiently – aim for under three seconds.

Crawlability

Search engines like Google crawl the world wide web using links to find and index content, including yours. This includes links within your website and pointing to your website. Help Google do its job – make sure you have a sitemap and robots.txt file installed to help it crawl your site.

Mobile Responsiveness

Nearly every single person on planet earth has a smartphone that they are almost entirely inseparable from. This means, even on the go they are searching for information. For this reason, it’s essential to have a mobile friendly website that functions and performs well across different sites. A few things to consider include site speed, image sizes, ease of navigation and legible fonts and colour choices.

My recent blog 'Top 3 technical factors your website can't live without' breaks down how to check these ranking factors.

KEYWORD RESEARCH AND OPTIMISATION

It’s important to understand what your ideal audience is typing in Google so that you can add those keywords to the correct places on your website and optimise accordingly.

Begin by creating a list of keywords you believe your audience is searching in Google. To help generate ideas, type a keyword in Google and see what suggestions or related keyword phrases they suggest or use a tool like Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool.

Next up, you’ll need to select the right keyword for your business. If you’re a smaller business, your best bet is looking for mid-to-high volume keywords with a low difficulty score. This means they’ll be relatively easy to target yet have a decent search volume. SEMRush will give you this data too.

Finally, add those keywords to the required spots on your website. Join our SEO Made Easy program to access the list of places your keywords need to be placed on across your website.

BACKLINKS

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They increase your domain authority. The higher your domain authority, the more chance you have of outranking a competitor for the same keyword, if all other things are equal. A few examples of ways to score backlinks include testimonials, directory listings and guest blogs that link back to your site.

Developed by Moz, domain authority is a score between 1 and 100. It’s determined by the quality and number of links to your site. A brand new site would have a domain authority of one or two whilst websites like Facebook would have a domain authority close to 100 as they have almost all websites linking to them.

OTHER SIGNALS

There are other minor signals like social media and citations that will impact your ranking but if you focus on the top three mentioned above, you’ll create a website that pleases the Google powers to be.

If you would like to know how to implement each tactic, join our program SEO Made Easy.

WHERE TO START?

The best place to start is with technical SEO. It's important you nail the foundations of your site before progressing with your keyword and backlinking strategy. Before that though, I recommend setting up your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts and integrating with to your website. 

Please send me a message if you have any questions on how to progress.