Before we start, I have a very important question: why should you care about SEO? 43% of all eCommerce purchases come from Google, and the conversion rate for organic traffic from Google is 10-30% (5-10x higher than ads). One of the best perks is that organic traffic is permanent. You turn your ads off, you stop making money. You can’t turn organic traffic off, once you get it, it’s there to stay.
The first piece of homework, Google, how long does SEO take? Yep, that says 6-12 months. And yes, with these steps, it is exactly how we rank in less than 2 months.
Ranking for your first keyword on Google can seem daunting and even impossible! We are here to tell you that not only is it possible, but by following these six steps, you can rank for your first keyword in under two months.
Having great search engine optimization results on your site is not accomplished by doing one or two tasks! You can not achieve positive SEO growth by simply enacting one or two action items. It is a holistic process, like puzzle pieces working together to complete a picture.
However, we know your time is valuable! To help you quickly achieve your SEO results, we have organized these tips from the easiest to accomplish to ones that take a little bit more time to complete. For best results, be sure to focus and complete all six steps.
1: How is your metadata?
Website metadata is unseen HTML code that communicates and clarifies information about your website to search engines. Metadata is found in multiple places, but the two key areas you need to focus on are the meta description and the site tagline.
- What is the meta description?
The meta description is where you describe the content and quality of the page to search engines. Search engines populate the meta description to appear after the name of your site on the search result page. The optimal meta description length is 155-160 characters. It is essential to include your chosen keywords in this description!
- What is the site tagline?
The site title and tagline work together to tell what your site is about. The title sums up the entirety of your site, while the site tagline is a short description that develops the title more descriptively in seven to eight words. Your tagline must be catchy, simple, and memorable to grab and keep your audience’s attention. Be sure to include your keywords or their synonyms in your site tagline.
2: How fast is your site?
Search engines pay acute attention to how fast your site page loads on desktop and mobile platforms. The shorter the load time of your site, the better the user experience and the happier the client. Here are a few key areas to look at to ensure your site load time is as fast as possible!
- Enable image compression.
- The majority of website load time is due to image size, meaning the smaller the image file, the quicker the load time! Compressing the images can reduce the file size by 90%. Additionally, it is essential to remember that JPEGS are more SEO-friendly than PNGS are.
- Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.
- All websites contain multiple code sources. These digital codes can be incredibly long, which causes long load times for your page. Using a plugin compresses these codes for a faster load time!
3: Have you indexed your sitemap?
- First, ensure that you have indexed a site map for your site. A sitemap tells search engines important information such as:
- How often each page of your site is updated?
- When changes are made to your page.
- How important the pages of your site are to each other.
You can easily use a website plugin to create a sitemap for your website automatically.
- Second, you need to index your page’s sitemap with search engines. The top two search engines to submit to are Google and Bing. Submitting your sitemap to Google is the same as telling them which pages you think are high quality and worthy of being indexed, but it does not guarantee indexation. However, indexing your site does benefit your SEO by achieving the following:
- Helps Google understand how your website is laid out.
- Shows potential errors you can correct to ensure your pages are correctly indexed.
4: Take time to optimize your current content.
Content is king when it comes to search engine optimization! Have you looked at the current content on your website recently? We recommend looking at these three key items to optimize the content you have currently posted:
- Optimize the image title and alt text:
- Be sure to use the keywords you desire to rank within your image titles and alt text. Both of these areas are found in the media section of your website attached to the individual image. You can quickly fill this in when you add the image to the page!
- Interlink your content.
- Create a good site structure by linking your content together! Internal linking makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site. It also allows search engines to crawl your content quickly and easily.
- Manage keyword density.
- While it is important to use your keywords, be sure to avoid keyword stuffing! Using your keywords too often is negatively looked upon by search engines.
Ready for the heavy hitters? While the four methods we have listed are critical for your SEO performance, the next two are perhaps the most important! We recommend starting with the first four, as they are quick action items to accomplish. While these next two steps are more time-consuming than the first, the time invested is rewarded by significantly bolstering your search engine optimization results.
5: Start adding new content asap!
Just like social media, you have consistently and frequently created new content on your website.
- Content is text, video, audio, or static images on your site. The best way is to create a blog.
- Choose the right keywords.
- Keyword research is the best way to ensure your SEO efforts are effective. The best place to start is to think like your potential website visitor! Look at your competitors. What keywords are they using?
- Be sure to:
- Focus on image optimization.
- Create content of the right length- blog posts are recommended to be around one-thousand words for best SEO recognition.
- All content should be engaging, valuable, informative, credible, and high-quality for search engines to rank it highly for visitors.
6: Backlinks. Backlinks. Backlinks.
I cannot stress enough the importance of backlinks. In social media, social proof is one of the most important things for brands. Google is quickly moving in that direction. The websites that are ranking the quickest, are the websites that have the most social proof (backlinks).
- We cannot stress enough the importance of high-quality backlinks in SEO best practices!
- Backlinks are when another site adds a link that leads to your site. Search engines see them as a stamp of approval for your site!
- How do you get quality backlinks? There are only two ways (legal) to get quality backlinks.
- Start emailing! When you do your keyword research, you will notice blogs that write about topics that apply to your brand. When you find that, send them an email, showcase your product and ask if they can mention you in their blog. Sounds expensive, right? NO. Blogs make their money off ads and their readers, so they are constantly looking for quality content. If your product is high quality, they’d be happy to display it on their site. We spend more than 40 hours a month sending out emails to our clients.
- Purchase or start websites and blogs and use those to write blogs and guest posts for your brand/s. We own over 70,000 websites that we use to provide high-quality backlinks.
These are the steps that we have used to rank hundreds of sites in less than 2 months. It works for any niche and any market. I have used it for travel blogs, roofing companies, and every e-commerce niche you can imagine. Works like a charm.
Thank you for taking the time to read our Six-Step SEO Method, if you found it valuable, please tag me in your story or send me a message letting me know what you thought!
Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for more information on building start-ups and eCommerce marketing!
Cheers,
Zach and the Qerā Marketing Team
