Jill is one half of a lifestyle entrepreneur duo who helps others ditch their day job in favour of building a business doing something they love. In this 6-Part Series, she will share some of her most savvy business tips and tricks.
Jill Stanton // Philippines // ScrewTheNineToFive // Lifestyle Entrepreneur
I remember the day I first heard the term “meta tag”. I was fascinated by it and immediately started to imagine how many millions of web searchers I could get to my site, just by ramming as many keywords onto a website as I possibly could.
After 2 months and no improvement in my traffic, I gave up on this magical idea of search engine optimization.
And then I met my husband.
You see, Josh is what I like to call an SEO hoe. The man just loves SEO, which means I’ve come to learn quite a bit about it just by listening to him geek out over things like page authority, Serpfox, and backlinks.
Now if your head is already starting to spin or your eyes are starting to cross because you don’t know what the heck “Serpfox” even is, don’t fret.
Thanks to my ongoing SEO-ducation I’ve learned some really simple ways of breaking down the basics of SEO. Which means you, my friend, are about to learn some seriously lucrative strategies that you can start implementing right away to target your most ideal customer.
Before we do that, allow me to break down the two sides of SEO: On-site vs off-site.
ONSITE SEO VS. OFFSITE SEO
Onsite SEO is essentially the process of you optimizing your website and webpages to target specific, low-competition keywords and ultimately rank in Google for those particular terms.
Offsite SEO is any and all promotion you do for your website outside of your website, or in other words getting other people’s sites to link to your website.
So now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s talk about how you can optimize both your on-site SEO, and more importantly, your off-site SEO.
HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR ONSITE SEO LIKE A PRO
The best thing about on-site SEO is it is incredibly easy to optimize your efforts and get the most traction out of your website as possible.
We’re talking 3 easy tweaks to your on-site content and that’s it.
So what are they?
Tweak #1: Optimize Your URLs
This should go without saying, but if your individual post URLs don’t follow the structure of www.yourdomain.com/keyword you need to change them asap.
Why?
The way Google works is they want to make sure they are ranking pages that are relevant to the keyword phrases searchers are using.
That means if your URLs do not contain the main keywords, or even the title of your posts within the URL, then you run the risk of your site getting passed over for those taking the time to optimize their individual URLs.
And we don’t want that.
Tweak #2: Optimize Your Post Titles
Similar to optimizing your URL, including your main keyword within your post title is essential to maximizing your on-site efforts and giving that post a fighting chance at ranking in Google.
Just remember the one golden rule of crafting post titles: They have to be eye-catching!
Why?
Because you essentially have about, oh, three whole seconds to grab a reader’s attention and make them want to click on your post and read your content.
So make sure you bring your A game!
Tweak #3: Install a Plugin
This tweak is based on my assumption that you are running your website on WordPress. Since WordPress pretty much dominates the space for cheap and easy website creation, I have a feeling it might be a safe assumption.
One of the many benefits of WordPress is the never-ending list of free plugins they offer, making it easy for you to search for a specific function, click “install”, then “activate” and revel in your website’s newest feature.
But before you run a search for “countdown plugins” or “tag clouds”, look up “SEO by Yoast”. It is the one and only plugin you will need to optimize your on-site SEO.
Why?
Because not only does SEO by Yoast allow you to customize your Google title and description (to control what shows up in any given Google search), but they also give you a real-time analysis on how well your page is optimized—allowing you to see what you need to improve on and what you’re doing well.
It is hands down my favourite SEO plugin on the web, and one that can drastically help to improve your on-site SEO.
Enough of this on-site business, let’s get to the stuff that really matters: Off-site SEO.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until next week to get your hands on my 3 quick and simple SEO strategies that will not only getting you ranking in Google, but banking….the big bucks!
Until then…
Jill is an affiliate marketer and lifestyle business owner hell-bent on teaching others how to use affiliate marketing to replace their income and escape the 9-5. She can usually be found over at ScrewTheNineToFive.com or scrolling through an endless stream of picture quotes on Facebook.
