SEO Tutorial: Complete (Step-by-Step) Guide

Key Takeaways

in this video I'm going to show you how to get your website to the first page of Google and get free organic traffic and the training in this video is going to be extremely beginner friendly so even if you have no idea what SEO is you'll walk away with enough actionable advice to get started today my name is Matt Diggity and I've been getting websites to the top of Google since 2009 through my business's Diggity marketing lead spring and the search initiative I also teach this stuff to nearly 3 000 people through my course the affiliate lab let's take a trip back to 2009 when I created my first website back in the day I was an electrical engineer working 60 hour weeks in a cubicle pretty much just hating life I've read the four hour work week and I was sold on the idea of making money online so I created a gratitude Journal iPhone app built a website for it and then was like um now what how do I get people to actually come to this website so I started applying the generic SEO advice I was reading on the internet advice like create quality content and write for the reader what does this stuff even mean it was no surprise that I wasn't getting any results but at that point I had an epiphany wait a second I haven't an engineering background let's approach this scientifically so I started running controlled experiments and then Google's algorithm started revealing itself to me since then my results have been consistently on the up and up but let's back up for a bit what actually is seo seo stands for search engine optimization it's the act of optimizing a website with the goal of increasing its performance on search engines such as Google but what is Google even looking for let's think about that for a minute Google wants its users to be happy if you were to Google how to cook meatloaf what would make you happy well that's easy you'd want the first listing you click on to give you a kick-ass meatloaf recipe that requires Google to be able to sift through millions of web pages on the internet to be able to figure out which article is the most relevant to what you're looking for but what if there's 30 million meatloaf recipes all over the Internet actually there are how is Google supposed to figure out which one is the best that's when Google's algorithm looks at other factors such as whose website is the fastest whose author is more credible and how many other websites linked to this recipe in this video I'm going to lay out these Google ranking factors so you can start getting results today even if you plan on hiring someone to do SEO for you it's still important that you know the basics otherwise how would you know if they're doing a good job or not now before we get started I'd like to ask if you would do a good job in smashing that like button for the YouTube algorithm smashing the like button helps out my channel a ton but it also helps the algorithm know what kind of content you want to see more of SEO is broken down into three main focus areas first we have content the content you write on your site is the foundation to SEO you're not going to get on page one of Google for how to cook meatloaf without posting a meatloaf recipe next we have links when one website links to another website Google considers this a vote of confidence and lastly we have technical SEO this includes standards like having a fast website that looks good on mobile devices I'm going to explain these SEO Focus areas as we go through this video training starting with content the First vocabulary you need to understand on your path to becoming an SEO expert is the concept of keywords keywords are the words that someone types into Google when they're searching for something when you're writing content each article you write should Target specific keywords the key no pun intended is to find keywords that are going to help grow your business but aren't too difficult for example ranking for a keyword like tennis would probably be life-changing for your Sporting Goods store but the competition level is just too high a keyword like best tennis racket for beginners is much more reasonable but will still drive sales best tennis racket for beginners is what we call a long tail keyword long tail keywords are longer more specific and have less competition let's say you have a website in the smart home Niche and you're looking to write some content on Smart Home gift ideas to buy others head on over to the free tool answerthepublic.com and type smart home gifts here this is going to give you a big list of topic ideas to choose from and the great thing about answer the public is that all these keywords are long tail more specific and less competition this one looks interesting for the rest of this training we'll use best smart home candles as a walkthrough example the first thing we need to do is figure out what type of article Google expects to see for the keyword best smart home candles we do that by Googling it and taking a look let's open this first article by smart home Pursuits well the first thing you notice is that this article was written in 2021 so it's outdated and should be easy to beat let's analyze its format as you scroll down you'll see it has a brief introduction then a section on what actually are smart candles a recommendation on their best one and then we get into a listical format showing their rankings of smart candles one by one Google has already shown us that it likes this listical format so we should follow suit it's time to write the title of your article create your title with the following rules keep the main keyword towards the front use related keywords to make the algorithm happy use interesting words dates and numbers to encourage clicks and keep the link to about 60 characters for our article I suggest using best smart home candles of current year top 5 flameless lights it's all these requirements straight on now where do you write this title in two places the first place will be at the top of your article this can be done in your WordPress editor by filling out the field here for title the second place will be your title tag this requires you to install an SEO plugin like yoast or rank math book both are free go ahead and drop your title right here in this spot your title tag is what ends up being shown the Google search result here that's why it's so important to optimize it not only for keywords but for clicks you want your listing to stand out while you're at it you want to fill out the description field here's the rules for creating a description put keywords such as best smart home and candle in there Google will highlight them as I'll show you in a sec use clever copy to encourage them to click and limit to 160 characters an example description for this article would be light up your home with the best smart candles of 2022. find out which has the best dot dot here's what the description looks like in the search results notice the Bold keywords that draw the eye also notice what I've done with the Cliffhanger at the end find out which one has the best what oh my God I need to click to find out very nice next it's time to do a bit of research before you start writing your article remember back in high school when you would make an outline before writing an essay we're going to do the same thing here but to make search engines happy they like to see a certain format we have our H1 title up here at the top which you've already learned how to create and add to your post underneath that you have your subtopics marked as H2S and those subtopics are broken down further into sub subtopics called h3s and so forth seems logical and organized but where do we get these subtopics from straight from Google itself the answer to doing well on Google is always found on page one of Google open back up that article in first place for best smart home candles see this what is a smart candle heading that's an H2 so is this playable Smart LED Bluetooth candle and this other candle here and this one too then we have the section down here talking about why you need a smart candle and smart candle ideas broken down into h3s too Google obviously loves that article because they put it at the top of their results so we can assume that this outline is pretty damn good but here's how you make yours even better you're going to open up even more articles for inspiration and create a superset outline based on what's already working in Google open up a Google doc and create create your well-researched master outline based on what Google already loves now it's time to start writing starting with the introduction paragraph which goes right here after the title the introduction paragraph is the most important piece of content in your article its job is to get people to stay and read if people go to your article read it for only a second then bounce back to the search result that's a signal to Google that your content sucks here's the rules for writing a killer introduction paragraph the job of the intro is to hook the reader do whatever you can to make sure they read the rest of your article don't have any fluff think about what they search for in order to land on your page this person searched for best smart home candle they already know what smart home candles are you don't need to start explaining them just get straight to the point which one is the best build trust why would someone trust you to tell them which smart candles are the bomb I've left a link in the description to a full video on intros so make sure to check it out after you finish here now that you've written your introduction paragraph it's time to start filling out the rest of the content gaps between the H2 subtopics but what to write and how to write it you want your content to read naturally sure adding keywords in your content is important to tell Google that you're relevant to the topic of smart home candles but when you overdo it that's called keyword stuffing and Google hates that if you were to write a sentence like the simply collected 3D Smart candles the best smart home candle that you can find for your home this looks like to both readers and Google's algorithm use keywords but keep it looking natural you also want to add related keywords to your content you can find related keywords by going to the bottom of the search result for your keyword and seeing what Google has on display words like Google Alexa app and electric are super important to sprinkle into your content now that you've started on your article how long does it need to be how many words are ideal well as you already know the answer to Google is already on Page One open up the top ranking article and see how long they wrote their piece you can use the free Google Chrome plugin detailed to find this out in a single click now it's time to upload your finished article onto your website as you already learned when users stay and read your content that's a huge ranking signal to Google this has a lot to do with how your content looks to the reader make sure to use bite-sized paragraphs that are easy on the eyes and friendly to read use interesting images and videos to entertain people as they scroll lists are good for breaking up the text and use callouts to bring attention to important points in your content next what your url be insert keywords into the URL which is a major ranking Factor separate words with hyphens and keep it short and sweet here's what I'd use for our smart home candle article as you know the process doesn't stop there when you continue to write more content on a given topic such as smart home doorbells thermostats and lighting Google will eventually start to think you're an authority on the topic of Smart Homes and when that happens you're going to start seeing a huge traffic Improvement on your website as you write more content Interlink those articles together a link or backlink is when one article links to another article in its content and when users click that link they end up at the destination when two relevant articles link up that helps Google understand what these articles are about a link can be created in your WordPress editor by highlighting the text that you want to use for the link clicking this link button here then entering the destination URL here speaking of links that takes us to our next pillar of SEO foundations and that's link building we just talked about internal links when one page of your own website links to another page on your website you also need external links from other websites to link to your content according to this study by atres the more links you have to your content the more traffic you can expect to see external backlinks are one of the biggest ranking factors in Google's algorithm and should not be ignored why because it's like a vote when one website links to another it's like saying I like this other website so much I'm willing to send my visitors there here's how to build backlinks first you need to identify where you want to link from ideally you're looking for other websites that are relevant to your own website getting a backlink from a site about scuba diving to your site about Smart Homes isn't going to be helpful you also want links from sites that are trustworthy and the easiest way to judge that is if the sites get Google traffic themselves once you've identified who you want to link from it's time to outreach to them with an email first find the contact information for a website on their contact or about page then you want to send them an email like this hey Reed I love your website and I've been a long time reader I just wrote an article on Smart Home candles that would be a great supplement to your content on budget-friendly smart home devices if you wouldn't mind linking to my article that would make my day that was awesome well done it's time to move on to the third pillar of foundational SEO and that's technical SEO don't let the name intimidate you this is the easiest part think of SEO like a race between websites to get to the top of Google you've already created content that Google loves this is your car you've built links to it this is your fuel technical SEO is where you tune up your car to make sure it goes fast luckily SEO tools make this super easy and the free version of screaming frog is more than enough to get the job done here's what you're looking for slow Pages pages that look bad on mobile devices pages with no internal links pages that Google can't find any broken links and the Subscribe button for more videos just like this one