Jones Caimin. - SEO Step-by-Step: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Getting

SEO Step-by-Step

The Complete Beginner's Guide to

Getting Traffic from Google

2016 EDITION

Caimin Jones

Updated January 2016

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Copyright 2016 Caimin Jones.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Praise for this book

"The world of SEO was foreign to me, this book bridged the gap and answered so many questions. Simply written and very straightforward. Highly recommended."

Christine F. Anderson

"I love this book because finally I have a clear, concise, yet comprehensive guide to search engine optimization. The guide is completely up-to-date, which is critical because search algorithms change often. I highly recommend this book for beginners."

A. Stowe

"This book has really changed the way we are doing business! And the results are evident."

Amazon Customer

Welcome

Thank you for buying this book. My name is Caimin and I've been building websites for myself and clients (and getting them ranked highly in Google) since 1998.

SEO is by far the most effective way to get visitors to your site. Once you "get" the secrets, you'll be able to create a steady stream of visitors to your website, blog or online business.

This book is written for the complete SEO beginner in plain English . You won't find any confusing jargon, or long-winded histories of SEO; just focused, step-by-step strategies you start using today to get more visitors from Google.

If you can write a blog post or a web page, I can show you how to turn it into an SEO success.

Because this is a beginner's guide , it's been proofread many times to make sure it's the easiest guide possible. That said, if there's anything you're still not clear about, please feel free to email me and I'll try to help. My email address is on the last page of the book.

Let's get started.

What You Need to Know About SEO and Google

If you've poured your heart and soul into creating a website or blog only to find it doesn't get the traffic it deserves, you're not alone.

Getting visitors to your site isn't easy. You probably know you need to learn SEO but the trouble is there are so many SEO "gurus" slithering around you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a mysterious black art that takes years to learn, or can only be mastered by an elite group with insider knowledge.

But the truth is, the basics of SEO are straightforward. You can learn them and start seeing increased visits to your website within a week.

The first step is to understand that the goal of search engines is to keep users coming back by consistently delivering useful search results. They do that by investing millions every year in developing algorithms to predict as accurately as possible which content users will find most useful in search results.

Everything they do revolves around that objective.

Once you understand that, you know the golden rule of getting traffic - whether from search engines, social media or content marketing:

Create content real people love - on subjects they're searching for - and search engine traffic will follow.

Follow that rule and you'll attract visitors who will:

Stay on your site longer

Look at more pages

Come back to your site again and again

Tweet, Like, and share your content

These actions are signals that Google and other search engines look for as quality indicators when deciding how high sites and pages should rank. The more users you have on your site taking one or more of these actions, the higher you will appear in search results.

How search engines work

There are three main steps search engines take to decide which content should be promoted to the top of search results.

1. They visit your site to create an index of the content to understand what individual pages are about, as well as the overall subject of your site.

2. They count links from other sites and blogs as "votes" on the quality of the content.

3. They count social shares - likes, tweets, etc. - as more "votes" for your content.

Although search engine algorithms are a complex mix of hundreds of ranking factors, most aspects of search engine optimization fit in to one of these areas.

That's why this book concentrates on those three vital areas. By the end of the book, you'll be an expert in on-page SEO, link-building and getting the maximum amount of social shares for each piece of content you publish.

Best of all, by using free tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console (previously called Google Webmaster Tools) , you'll be able to see the success you're having in bringing in extra visitors and ranking for more keywords.

Note : Don't worry if you're not familiar with either of those tools, we'll look at setting up and using both of them in a later chapter.

"White-hat" SEO vs. "Black-hat" SEO

There are two types of SEO. This book is about White-hat SEO . It uses the honest tips and techniques I've used to increase the rankings of my sites and those of my clients over the last eighteen years.

Black-hat SEO , on the other hand, uses tricks and loopholes to try to game the system and trick search engines into ranking a site as high as possible, regardless of the quality of the content.

I'm sure you've seen ads promising a shortcut to page one of Google. Just buy Product X, adjust a few settings and wait a few days for a torrent of traffic. At worst, products like those are scams. At best, they're software that exploits a loophole.

The problem with loopholes is that sooner or later, Google closes the loophole.

Not so long ago, an easy way to improve rankings was to write a single article and then use software called an "article spinner" to create and submit slight variations of it to hundreds of different article directories. Within the content of the articles would be links back to the authors site - generating hundred of backlinks in a short time, leading to better rankings.

Just one problem.

Overnight Google changed its algorithm. Not only did it downgrade almost all article directories to junk status, it kicked sites using the article spinning trick out of its search results.

This meant improved search results for users, but a lot of black-hat SEO "engineers" having to undo years of work in an attempt to repair their rankings.

That's why I recommend sticking to white-hat SEO techniques. They work and they're a safe, reliable long-term strategy.

STEP 1: Choose the Right Keyword for Your Niche

Choosing the Right Keywords

Great content is essential for a successful website, but if you write posts on subjects nobody searches for, you'll never get any real search engine traffic.

That's why a smart search engine optimization strategy begins with choosing the best keywords. There's no point being on page one for a search term nobody uses.

The best keyword phrases have two essential qualities:

1. Significant number of monthly searches

Meaning there are plenty of potential search engine visitors.

2. Low competition

Indicating there aren't so many existing results that it will be difficult or impossible to rank highly for the term.

Many people struggle with getting traffic to their site because they haven't researched their keywords correctly. Instead, they just guess.

But here's an example of how guessing can lead you astray. Take these three keyword phrases: