Entering the world of SEO can seem overwhelming, especially for small businesses or new marketers. With its own unique language and guidelines, it can seem like there are a lot of barriers for entry. This article will go over some beginner SEO tips that will help simplify things a little.
Think of Your User
The biggest piece of advice for entrepreneurs who are new to SEO is to consider who their user is and how best to reach them. This may seem obvious. However, it can be easy to caught up in the more technical aspects of SEO and forget the core purpose: the user. Without a clear picture of who your core audience is, especially in an online setting, how can you create content that will engage them? To do this, consider creating search personas, mock-ups of customers who represent your core market. Then consider: when these people are searching, what words or phrases do they usually use? This is also a great time to do some simple market research, such as a focus group or a survey. Once you have an idea of your customer, and some words and phrases they often use, you can get an idea of where to go next.
Meet a Need
Once you know who your customer is, and how they search, you can start a new brainstorming process: unmet needs. What want or need causes your customer to search for words or phrases related to your business. These underlying needs can help you begin to plan content. For instance, blog posts, video and photo content, e-books and more! The biggest tip for beginner SEO is to create genuinely relevant content for your user. This will help people who need your goods or services to find your business.
Make Yourself Visible
The last step for businesses looking to get into SEO is to use the knowledge we’ve gained through our first two steps. By combining words and phrase used by your core audience with genuinely meaningful, you’re already on your way to successful beginner SEO! For next steps, check out Google’s SEO guidelines to fine tune your efforts.
One Response
I think this is a great post that emphasizes some of the most basic, and yet most crucial aspects of SEO. You point about SEO ultimately being about the user is absolutely true, and although like you said very obvious, it is certainly true that it can get berried and forgotten when we overthink other aspects of SEO. It is a basic concept and yet one we should make sure to constantly remind ourselves.