SEO for Beginners – How to Rank in Search

– So if you're not showing upon the search results page, you're missing out on ahuge untapped potential of all these customerswho literally are typing your products into the searchbar wanting to purchase.

– Welcome to The Journey.

I'm Nealey.

– And I'm Morgan.

– And today we're going overthe beginner's guide to SEO All right, other thanbeing a super cool acronym, what is SEO? – So SEO stands forSearch Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is the work that goes into your website.

So it's actual work that you have to do to prove to Google and other search engines that you're the most relevant answer, and the most trusted for searches related toyour products or business.

So those two things.

Relevance and trust iswhat Google's looking for to determine which, whichwebsites it should rank on the first page.

And so when I sayGoogle, just so you know, I'm gonna be using that interchangeably for all search enginesbecause 167 billion searches happen on Google a month.

– That's a ton.

Most searches happen on Google, right? – Right, so I'm just gonnause Google interchangeably, I mean, it is the 167 billionpound gorilla in the room, so, we're just gonna go with it.

– I'm scared.

All right, so SEO likewhy, why is it important? Why should we invest our time, energy and money into it? – So search engines, they'rethe new Yellow Pages.

This is where people go to find answers.

Billions upon billions ofsearches are happening each month, and many of those are foryour products and services.

So if you're not showing upon the search results page, you're missing out on ahuge untapped potential of all these customerswho literally are typing your products into the searchbar wanting to purchase.

88% of people researchbefore they buy, and they're- where do they research?- [Nealey] That's huge.

Google, so you need to just-it's just plain and simple.

You need to be there.

So instead of me tellingyou, let me just show you.

Let's go check out asearch result right now.

– Cool, let's do it! – All right, so we're gonnabreak down the different pieces of SEO by going to thesearch results page itself.

– Okay.

– So, let's dive into it.

So let's go to Google.

com andwhat's an example business that we should look into? – [Nealey] Um, let's try lawyers.

– [Morgan] Laywers, ahh, that business of yours is getting big time, huh? – [Nealey] Something like that.

– [Morgan] Yeah, Phoenix, Arizona you need a lawyer now.

So lawyer Phoenix, Arizona.

So what I just typed intothe search bar is known as the search query, and thisis a phrase or a question that you are looking for answers for.

This can contain yourkeywords, for example, lawyer is a keyword andPhoenix, Arizona is probably a keyword.

So now let's look at thethree different pieces of the search engine results page, also known as the SERP Okay, so these first two sectionsright here, these are the ads – paid ads, and normallyyou can tell because they have a little ad flag right there.

So you can see there are two ads here, and then if we scroll down tothe next section, this is the local map listing sections.

So these are local businessesonly, so if you serve a national audience or youdon't have a physical location that you serve, then youaren't going to show here.

The way that you appearhere is you have to have great SEO on your website, and you also have to have an optimized Google My Business profile.

And you can see that only afew businesses appear here, so there's usually three, this is known as the local three pack, and then occasionally there'd be an ad.

So this is an example ofsomeone who's paying to appear in the local listings, andthen these three below it are the ones that are naturallyorganically showing up here, which Google has deemedfor Phoenix, Arizona, these are the best three.

You can click on more places, and that's going to bring you a wider map of all thedifferent local lawyers.

So you can see quite a few, and then you can dig into their Google My Business profile from there.

So here's an example of one.

So the next and last piece at the bottom, these are the organic results.

This is where you want to be, because unlike the paid ads, you have to pay to play for those, so once your ad budget isout, poof, you're gone, you're no longer there.

But with these, you prove toGoogle over time that you're the most relevant andthe most trusted answer, and then you're gonna stayhere for a long, long time as long as you continueto show Google that you're better than your competition.

And people love these.

A lot of people, while ads are affective, we're kind of trained tojust skip over the ads and go straight downto the organic results, and so, so many people willjust hop down right here, and they'll click and find their lawyer.

So I wanna go back to thetop, and I wanna talk about keywords and keywordcompetitiveness because keywords are things whichwe'll be talking about you need to put all across your website.

It's these search termsthat people are looking for and so you need to makesure that you have that on your website as well.

Um, however; some are muchmore competitive than others.

So if you look at lawyer Phoenix, Arizona, there's about 32 million results.

It's pretty broad.

Phoenix is a pretty big city.

If we change it to somethingthat's less competitive, let's say a dog grooming-dog groomer Phoenix, Arizona, only 2.

3 million results.

So clearly, less competitive business, so there's not as much competition there, which is great if you're adog groomer cause that means you have a- if you'redoing the right SEO, it's gonna be easier toappear on the first page for that search term.

Unlike lawyers wherethey put a lot of money into advertising, it's a very, very, very competitive space.

There are people alwaysfighting for those top spots.

– Should we only put short keywords? Is there anything else we can use? – So initially, no.

With Google, you need to startsmall with, they're called long-tail keywords, sothey're, they're keywords with three, four, five, six words altogether, um, because you need to prove your authority in the small, less competitivespaces before Google is going to realize that youshould be ranking for these more broad terms.

So, for this example, if I'm a dog groomer, let's say I specialize in poodle grooming.

So, we're gonna changeit to poodle groomer Phoenix, Arizona.

And you can see thecompetitiveness, there's only 300 thousand searchresults, so this is great because there's not as manypeople who put poodle grooming on their websites, and so for me, this is a great opportunityfor me to start building that authority with Google.

So remember if I'm a doggroomer and you go to my website and there's absolutelynothing about dog grooming, it's just my name, my phonenumber, and maybe a photo, Google's gonna look at that and think, this doesn't talk anything about – It's not relevant.

– Yeah, it's not relevantso this person must not be great for this keyword.

They're probably not a dog groomer at all.

So our job is to go and makesure that all the content on our website is relevantto those keywords.

– All right, so you'retelling me all I need to do is update just a little bitof content on my website? – Not exactly, so rememberthat we're doing this not only for our usersso they have information, but for Google.

– Okay.

– So and Google wants ourwebsites to be structured in a very particular way, right? Ultimately it's a robotthat's scanning the backend of our website, so thebackend data of the website Google wants to make sure thatwe have it formatted in a way that it can easily read andknow what our website is about.

So these are things likeour H1 tag, our meta data, meta descriptions, whichI'm gonna go into right now to show you where this is.

– [Nealey] Awesome, let's see it.

– [Morgan] So, for, since we're here on this poodle grooming website, let's go to this one.

Puff and Fluff Grooming and Pet Sitting.

– [Nealey] I'm all about rhyming.

– [Morgan] It's a nice lookingwebsite, it has great colors, great branding, but the problem is, Google doesn't see any of that.

This is what they see.

Boom.

– [Nealey] That's gross.

– [Morgan] That's not that pretty.

And end users, your customers, if this was your way that your website was presented, they would get nothing from this;however, this is exactly what Google looks at when they'rewanting to rank a website.

– All right, so you'retelling me that I have to know how to code to do that? – Not necessarily, becausemodern day website builders already have this built in here.

You can see with this website, they're actually using a plugin for WordPresscalled “All in One SEO” Where you just put it in andit just makes it super easy for you as a non-technicaluser to update all of these SEO elements, which is awesome.

So as part of this, you needto have your meta title, so this is basically the titleof each part of your website that, when you go back to thesearch engine results page, you, this is what will show up.

So for this example, they set their meta title for Puff and FluffGrooming and Pet Sitting.

And then you can also see righthere the meta description, they get to choose what that is.

All right, so that's the basics of SEO, the search engine results page, everything on your website.

– We just talked about everything on-site that you need to do to yourwebsite, so now let's talk about the things off-site.

– Okay.

That shows Google that you'rethe most trusted answer for search results.

– All right, so explain trusta little bit more for us.

– Yeah, so I have an analogy.

So let's say that you get a call one day, and it's from a fifth grader, and the fifth grader says, “Hey, Morgan is the best basketball player in the entire world.

” Are you gonna believe him? – Probably not.

I think you paid him.

– Right, all right now whatif Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan called you up and said, “Hey, I've got the scoopon this new player, Morgan.

She's the best basketballplayer in the entire world.

” What would you say to that? Would you believe them? – Oh absolutely.

– Yeah.

– They have authority.

– They have authority, so you will trust their opinion, and it's the same thing with Google.

The way that Google cantell if your website, if it should trust yourwebsite, cause again, we could toot our own horn all day long.

And we see this all the time.

People say, “best dog groomerin Phoenix, Arizona, ” right? Like people love to toot their own horn, but with Google- [Nealey] Self-proclaimed! – It needs that authorityfrom other people, and that's where backlinks come in.

And so backlinks arelinks on other websites that point back to yourwebsite, and Google uses this as an indicator to see, oh okay this is actually a really good website.

Other people are talking about it.

Now, with backlinks, it'squality over quantity.

You don't just want to go onthe internet and go put your, you know, go on every comment, every YouTube comment, like just put your website everywhere cause that's gonna look spammy.

Google's not gonna like that.

It wants really high quality, the Michael Jordan's, if you will.

– What is one thing they can do right now? – The biggest thing that youcan do that will give you so much bang for your buck is to put content on your website, especially content that has your keywords.

To determine those keywords, you should probably.

.

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What are the products andservices that you offer, or what are the productsand services that you want your customers to know about? For example, using the doggroomer in Phoenix, Arizona, maybe is there certain typesof grooming that you do that you're really well known for? Let's say you're the bestdarn toy poodle groomer this side of the Mississippi.

– (laughs) Okay.

– You should have a separatepage with content on it about that specificservice that you offer.

So that's what I recommend.

Go make sure your pagejust has tons of content so that way when users, andultimately Google look at it, they know exactly whatyou're about, and then Google will start ranking you.

All right guys, I hope youfound this beginner's guide to SEO helpful, and thatthese are actionable things that you can start doing now, so that way your customers can start finding your business online.

If you're gonna get startedand you found this helpful, let us know in the commentsbelow the number one thing you learned about SEO today.

– Awesome, and make sureyou like this video, subscribe to the channel, and if you wanna see these videos first, ring that bell.

But this has been The Journey.

Signing off.

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