If you are just getting started with implementing SEO on your website, then you must have heard terms like keyword research, on-page and off-page SEO, link building, structured snippet, etc. The big question is –  how do you implement all these things to help you boost your search ranking?

 

In this tutorial, we will be talking about how SEO works and step by step guide to implementing SEO for your website in order to increase your website traffic search ranking, and take advantage of free organic traffic from Google.

This is the first of a 10 series blog post dedicated to search ranking, By the end of this series, you will learn the following

1. What is Keyword research and how to get started

2. How to add a keyword in the page title

3. How to add keywords in the page URL

4. How to add keywords in the meta description of your website

5. How to add keywords in H1 text and why it is important

6. How to use keywords in page content

7. Link building: why its important and how to get links to you website.

8. How to monitor your ranking

Are you just coming across the term SEO for the first time, you may want to read my previous blog post titled what is seo where I poured my heart into discussing SEO, how search engines work, why SEO is important, and how to get started.

Before we dive deep into the tutorial I need to give a quick disclaimer. SEO isn’t a get-traffic fast scheme. It’s a slow but steady traffic acquisition process that requires research, and implementation for optimal results.

with that being said let us dive into the topic.

what is keyword research

You see, for us to have an understanding of what keyword research is, we need to know what SEO stands for. SEO is the practice of making a website rank high in search engine result pages for “keywords” relevant to the website. The area of concentration and key focus here is the term “keyword”, so, what a “keyword”.

A keyword, also known as a key phrase or search term, or search phrase is a string of words typed in a search engine search bar where a user or searcher expects the search engine to return content or website URL that contains pieces of information relevant to the keyword. Example below.

What then is “keyword research”? Keyword research is the practice of finding and determining what keyword searchers, buyers and customers are using to find your website, product, or services in search engines.

Keyword research is a common practice among web content creators, SEO practitioners, and social media content creators. Only that, in social media, it is called “content idea farming”

Tools like answerthepublic is a good tool for social media content creators and SEO practitioners to get an idea of what searchers in their industry are actually searching for on the internet.

The key feature of this tool is the keyword idea or content ideas that you can get from it. This will help you create content that your audience is looking for.

why is keyword search important

let me paint a quick image for you here. Whenever you are in need of information on a product or service, or whether you are looking for an update or general information on something, what do you do? Google-it right?

How do you “Google it”?

By making a search. right!

How do you search? By asking and

How do you ask? Doing a voice search and typing text prompt is google.

By doing a voice search or typing a text prompt, you want the search engine to return a result that is relevant to your search query right? You need to be aware that, the result you get isn’t coming from the search engines themselves. that is, the search engine isn’t providing you you directly with the answers but the search engines are looking into their huge database of saved website URLs and website content to find and serve you with pages and content that match your search or query.

But with the existence of OpenAI Large Language Module artificial intelligence like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, that may be changing soon. But the moral of the lesson is that search engines are serving your result page feed with content created by web publishers.

For website publishers, or website owners to know how to write and position their content in a way that best matches the searcher’s intention, and search phrase, the publishes need keyword research. This will also enable them to know what to publish, how to publish, and generally how to position their content to rank for search terms in SERP (search engine result page).

in addition, the result you get from your search is a mathematically aggregated result that is suggested based on two major factors (1)by the creator of the information or website owner or publisher and (2) the search engine ranking factor that is primarily based on relevance.

Experts believe that there are over 300 factors that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex consider to show what result ranks in what position on their result page but that is a discussion for another post.

But first, here are 5 more reasons why keyword research is important

1. Help you identify relevant keywords

2. Enables you to prioritize content creation

3. Improves website traffic

4. Support effective PPC advertising

5. Enables you to stay ahead of competitors

ill be going in-depth on all these important of keyword research and how you can leverage them to get more traffic in a dedicated post. But first, make sure you subscribe to my notification by pressing the bell icon below.

Types of Keywords

Before you embark on your keyword research exploration journey, you need to understand that there are different types of keywords. One thing that I find interesting about these types of keywords is that SEO experts are unable to agree on the specific number of the types of keywords that exist.

According to Demand Jump in a blog post, they capped the types of keywords at 4 (four) which include the long-tail, short-tail, question, and intent-based keywords. While SEOpressor (a WordPress SEO plugin) in a blog post puts it at 9. Their list includes the long-tail, short-tail, short-term fresh keyword, long-term evergreen keywords, product defining keyword, customer defining keyword, geo-targeting keyword, LSI keyword and intent targeting keyword.

What to read more on the types of keywords? Click here

You probably may be wondering why it is important for you to understand the types of keywords before starting your research. Well here are 5 reasons why

(1) it helps you to target the right audience

(2) it helps you improve the relevance of your content

(3) increasing user experience

(4) increasing traffic

(5) staying ahead of the competition

Now that you have an idea of the reasons why you need to know and identify the different types of keywords, so, what are the tools you can use to help you in our keyword research rabbit hole? Well, there are a couple of tools that can help you with your research but here are some effective and reliable keyword research tools used by millions of people.

keyword research tools and their key feature

For you to be able to do your keywords with factual and accurate data to back and support your research

1. Google keyword planner: There is no better way to start a keyword research journey than google’s keyword research tool called keyword planner. Google keyword planner is a free tool offered by google ads that help identify keywords and provides data on search volume and competition. It’s used for identifying keywords ideas and prioritizing them based on their potential impact on your campaign

2. SEMrush: this is a popular all-in-one SEO tool that allows you to research keywords, track your ranking, analyze your competitors, and more. It provides comprehensive data on keyword volume and trends.

3. Ahrefs: this is another all-in-one SEO tool that offers a range of features including keyword research, backlink analysis, and content analysis. Ahrefs keyword explorer allows you to research keywords and provides data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and clicks.

4. Moz keyword explorer: this is a keyword research tool that provides in-depth insight into the potential of a keyword including search volume, difficulty, and click-through rates. It also offers a unique feature called “keyword suggestion” that recommends related keywords based on your initial query

5. keyword tool: This is a keyword research tool that generates long-tail keyword suggestions for various search engines, including Google, YouTube, Bing, and amazon. It offers a wide range of keyword suggestions and filters as well as data on search volume, CPC, and competition analysis.

6. Ubersuggest: This is a freemium keyword research tool that offers insights into keyword volume, competition analysis, and related terms, it also provides domain-level data on organic traffic, backlinks, and top-performing pages

other keyword research tools include answerthepublic, keyword sheeter, google trends, kw finder long tail pr, and keyword explorer by mangools.

To read more on how to do keyword research click here

After identifying your keywords, you need to strategically put and position them in your website for three important reasons (1) search engines can know what the page is about (2) readers and users can know what the page is about (3) the page can potentially rank for search result

Now that we are done understanding the first step of SEO (keyword research), I need to point out here that SEO is basically divided into three

(1) on-page SEO

(2) off-page SEO

(3) Technical SEO

If you want to read more on on-page SEO and off-page SEO click here

In summary, on-page SEO are practices you implement on your website in order to make rank higher in search results. This includes title tags, meta description, website architecture and structure, user-friendliness, site speed, etc while off-page SEO is things you implement outside the website like acquiring backlinks and social recognition.

Here are 5 on-page SEO checklists you must implement

1. SSL certificate: An SSL certificate is what nobles a website to move from HTTP (an unsecured website) to HTTPS (a secured website) no matter how well designed, structured or potential traffic you can get on your website with good quality content if you website isn’t running an HTTP protocol, search engines like google won’t display your website because your website isn’t a website for their users

it is important for you to make sure your website is HTTP enables if you want to appear and rank in search engine result pages.

2. Internal page linking: search engines like google make use of bots that crawl the web from one URL to another to find new content to add to its index (library). Your website needs to be properly internally linked for search engines to be able to find your website pages

also, a good and well-structured internally linked URL will help to suggest the most important pages of your website to earth gives so that they can know what page is more important to you, your business, and your objective.

3. XML site map: An XML (Extensible Markup Language) Sitemap is a text file used to detail all URLs on a website. It can include extra information (metadata) on each URL, with details of when they were last updated, how important they are, and whether there are any other versions of the URL created in other languages.

4. Title Tags: On a web page, a title tag is an HTML code that helps you give a page a title. and the importance of this is for search engines, users, readers, and searches have the ability to know what the page is about.

5. Less heavy images: using image that are of high megabytes i detrimental to the health of your website. It can cause low page speed NG bad user experience which may lead to high bounce. A webpage with high bounce rate sends a negative signal to earth engine that the page lacks relevance. That is going to hurt your traffic.

So, what the solution? using small sized images with high resolution is a good options but developers have found that using SVG (scalable vector graphics).

Although SSL certificate and XML sitemaps are regarded as regarded generally regarded as technical SEO. But for thee purpose of this blog, we will categorize it under onpage seo becuase for your website to get found, it need to be secure and not perceived as a spam website.

Also, the XML sitemap ( a complete link of your website url is important for earth engine to discover all the links and pages on your website.

Read more on on-page seo here

After implementing your on-page the next thing you need to focus on are those off-page seo tactics you can implement for you be get ahead of your competitors. And the reason ywhy you need to do this is because, activities outside your website like (1) websites linking to your website (2) social media popularity (3) properly listed google my business listing all play (4) submitting your website to various business listing websites, all play vital role in how search engines like google see your website and this help you rank better for relevant search terms.

5 off-page seo checklist you need to implement to rank higher in search

1. Backlinks: this is arguably one of the most important if not the most important off-page seo tactic you can deploy for.  But first what is a backlink.  In a post by Backlinko.com they describe backlinks as links from one website to a page on another website. MailChimp, an Email marketing cloud based tool describes it asLinks on websites other than your own that go back to a page on your website.

from the description of these two highly recognized and high authority websites, one can confidently say that “backlinks are links website links acquired from other websites, linking to out website. This can be likened to the African oral tradition where one can easily trace the authenticity of an information based on the link of transmission.

The benefit of acquiring backlinks cannot be overemphasized. One of the numerous reasons is domain rating. Domain rating or DR for shot is simply how search engines view your website based on the quality of content.

if other websites high quality and high authority website are linking t your website, it simply pass something called link juice to your website. This juice helps search engine suggest your website to more searchers. This will intern increase your traffic and can potentially increase your conversion (based on your objective).

2.  Social media activities:

Directly, social media platforms can drive traffic to a website, which can increase its visibility and authority in search engine rankings. When users share links to a website on social media platforms, it can generate backlinks to the site, which are a critical factor in search engine algorithms. Additionally, social media profiles and pages can rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) and increase a website’s overall visibility.

Indirectly, social media can improve a website’s SEO by increasing engagement and brand awareness. When a website’s content is shared on social media, it can attract new visitors to the site who may link to the content, share it with their own audiences, or engage with it in other ways. These social signals, such as likes, shares, and comments, can indicate to search engines that a website’s content is valuable and relevant, which can improve its rankings in search results.

However, it’s important to note that social media alone is not a substitute for good SEO practices, such as keyword research, optimizing website structure, and creating high-quality content. A comprehensive SEO strategy should incorporate both social media and other optimization techniques to maximize a website’s visibility and search engine rankings.

3. Google my business listing: i mentioned earlier that seo is the practice of making your website rank in search engines right?. Well, one of those things that can speed up your visibility and ranking most especially if you have a local based physical store or office or business and you are trying to rank for those search terms that are location based for example bedding store near me or law firms in (put in your city).

Google my business of GMB is is a directory and business listing tol that helps businesses list and create a profile for ther business online. The major benefit of this tool is that, it helps businesses get found easy most especially, businesses serving a local market.

4. Influencers: the web and social media most especially have evolved over the past decade. The approach of internet users in resent times has shifted to community building. Social media platforms like Facebook, twitter, instagram and TikTok have given content creators and individuals with knowledge in a specific field, niche or industry to gather followers of like minded.

In todays age, one of those step a business can take in other to generate traffic and sales is to partner with influencers and content creator that are (1) creating content things relevant to the business (2) have following than is useful to the business)

partnering with these kinds of influencers and content creators will books overall recognition and authority the business need to grow and survive.

5. Create content: the importance of creating content cannot be overemphasized. In fact, the major junction of the internet is the distribution and finding of content. Every business owner need to create consent that is engaging and shareable. There are different and numerous tactics that can be deployed to make a content engaging and shareable. Click here to read more.

With this, we have come to the end of this 1 of 10 series blog post. To catch up on subsequent blog posts, feel free to like, turn on the notification bell and also subscribe to our social media handles.