The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to SEO - Part 1 of 2
(If you’re brand new to SEO, check out this post to get a sense of how we think about SEO around here.)
My goal in this article is to give you a better understanding of how SEO works—and greater confidence in implementing it—so you can have a website that gets tons of traffic. (Of course, you’ll need a website that works to turn that traffic into more leads, subscribers, and sales! Questions about that? Let’s talk.)
Otherwise, let’s focus right now on getting people to your site.
I’ve done my best to explain the techie stuff, but truly, most of what makes SEO so confusing is the lack of understanding about how it fits into the bigger marketing picture, so much of what we’ll talk about here puts that into perspective.
Let’s start with why even do all this SEO stuff at all…
Why Is SEO Important?
Good Search Engine Optimization = FREE advertising
I think that’s all I need to say about that, right?
Okay, next …
How it works
Search engines = Google
For our purposes here, we’ll pretty much use “Google” and “search engines” interchangeably.
About 85% of all searchers use Google. A handful go to Bing and other search engines, but not many. Google is really the only game in town.
Google tracks relevance
There are two basic truths that form the foundation of all good SEO practices:
Everyone comes to the internetGoogle for information.
Google makes almost all its money from paid, targeted ads.
That means that Google is highly motivated to give everyone the best search results for their searches so people will keep using them and they can keep pursuing Big Brother status.
For example, if you used Google to search for “local acupuncturists” and you got back results that included hand-quilting patterns and cat videos, you probably wouldn’t use Google again (unless you were really into cat videos. I’m not here to judge.)
But the point is that it behooves Google to give people the best results for what they’re searching for, which means that …
Google is your best friend online.
You know how Google will show you the ad today for the exact shoes you were looking at yesterday?
Google keeps track of not only what you search for, but when you search for it, what devices you’re on, where you’re located, when you’re most likely to be online, what’s your age, education and income, where you’re shopping, what you buy, your favorite color, and your shoe size.
While this may or may not be great for your mental health, this is fantastic for your business!
Once you realize how smart Google is your SEO gets easier because you understand that there’s no fooling Google or cheating the system.
You can simply talk about what you do and focus on the few, specific keywords that are relevant to the problem you solve to have a ton of SEO success.
Google will know what your website and business are about and send people your way who are already looking for you.
Because Google is actually rooting for you.
It wants to know as much as possible about your business so it can send you clients who will love you.
The lesson here? The more current, relevant info you provide, the higher you’ll be in relevant search engine rankings.
Lower the anxiety
This all means that it’s much harder to fool Google than it used to be. It’s just too smart. So, there’s no need for mysterious or complex practices to please the wily search engine gods.
Google wants to give its users great results.
That’s it.
If you get nothing else from this article, you’ll be ahead of the game if you understand that great SEO has more to do with stellar, clear content than mysterious dealings in code and website shenanigans.
How much SEO do you need?
Do you really need a sophisticated SEO strategy? It depends. Let’s answer these questions:
How competitive is your industry?
The more competitive your industry, the more you’ll need SEO. And I know what you’re going to say, “My industry is super competitive!” But, for most healers, it’s actually not.
For example, compare a personal injury attorney with a psychotherapist. Most people don’t care too much about which lawyer they hire after an accident. They just want the biggest settlement. They’re not going to scroll down very far in search results before they start calling attorneys.
Contrast that with a therapist. People will be a lot more discerning about which therapist they hire. They’ll spend time looking for someone they like who is familiar with their special blend of issues.
They’ll probably ask friends for referrals and maybe even search Amazon for books written by someone so they can get a sense of them before they work together.
In this example, they might not even rely on SEO at all. Think about your industry. How many of your clients and customers find you through search?
Are most of your customers likely to find you with foot traffic or online searches?
Again, if you’re a coffee shop on the corner in a walkable downtown, you don’t really need complex SEO. Your strategy might be as simple as creating a Google Business Profile so you show up in local search results. (And of course, making sure your Technical SEO is up to speed.)
But you don’t need to focus too much on creating content with a lot of searchable keywords. It’s unlikely that people will be looking you up from across town to visit you. The majority of your business will come from people walking by, or searching for “coffee shops near me” so you don’t need to spend a ton of energy on specific keywords that set you apart from other coffee shops.
(My caveat to this is if you have a really unique take on your coffee shop. That obviously needs some SEO attention because people will be searching for you from across town and traveling to you. Because cats.)
Do you get a lot of referrals?
A referral-heavy business needs less SEO attention than one that only gets a few.
Most thriving wellness practices and coaching businesses get a lot of referrals, so a sophisticated SEO strategy isn’t necessary.
It does depend, though, mostly on your industry and where your clients come from.
Would more traffic to your website turn into more customers and clients, or would you rather have more referrals? (Obviously, “both” might be a valid answer, but thinking about this will give you some insight.)
Is your product/service an impulse buy?
Candy in the checkout line at the grocery store doesn’t need great SEO.
The same could be said for an astrologer or psychic who does readings in a store or physical location.
(There’s probably room here to improve their business strategy. They might benefit from a powerful online presence so they could attract clients and do readings virtually, but that’s not the question here.)
Is it a necessary item or a luxury item?
People are doing more searches for things they deem “necessary,” so luxury items need more SEO to bring in traffic.
For most healers, this isn’t super clear cut and we get into brand strategy a bit with this discussion.
For example, if you’re a chiropractor specializing in sports injury recovery, your patients might see you as very necessary.
If you’re an energy worker or astrologer, your work is likely more of a luxury.
Of course, a strong brand and marketing strategy starts with the problem you solve for your people and why they should choose you over your competition. But, I’ll get into that with blog posts about brand and USP.
For now, just understand this is one area where your wellness or coaching practice might need some more sophisticated SEO juice. Keep this in mind while we discuss keywords below.
How quickly do people buy from you again?
A great example of this is realtors.
People tend to buy houses after several years or decades, so repeat business doesn’t do much to build a realtor’s business right now. (Current real estate boom aside.) Even referrals aren’t enough to make up for the rarity of purchases.
Realtors need great SEO (and a stellar in-person network) to be successful.
Your wellness practice isn’t likely that extreme, but how often do people tend to work with you? Do they repurchase? How often and after how long?
(Again, this discussion can quickly get into business strategy and your offers. Are they set up for maximum profits and in a way that serves your ideal clients the best?)
Overall, each of these factors affects how people search for you, and how much benefit you’ll receive from SEO.
The people who need search engine help the most are in highly competitive fields, get most of their clients/customers from search engine traffic, have a long time between customer buys, and have few repeat customers or referrals.
If this describes your business, you’ll need more SEO than you can get from this article, but then you’re probably not reading this because you’re not in my primary demographic.
If you’re in a relatively non-competitive field, e.g. reiki practitioner, psychotherapist, or energy worker, and you get tons of repeat customers and referrals that see you frequently, like massage therapists and chiropractors, you probably don’t need the kind of complicated, daily-maintained keyword analysis that a personal injury attorney in New York or a realtor in L.A. needs.
You just need to make sure that you have the basics right.
Now that we know how to approach SEO, let’s get strategic.
Your overall content strategy: make yourself relevant
Remember the first rule?
People go to the internet for information.
So, as we’ve stated above, to get good rankings, you need valuable, relevant content that people are looking for.
Here are a few tips to make sure that Google sees your content as valuable, relevant, and worth higher rankings.
Keep it current
Post consistently. (Even once a month is great.)
Give people a reason to return.
If your info is current and people keep returning, Google will assume that you’ve got useful information to share.
Blogs are different than they used to be but are a great way to provide current content on your site.
Not much of a writer? Post the transcript of your latest podcast or YouTube video so Google has words to read and your visitors have another way to consume your content.
Encourage people to share it
Google also takes note of how often your content is shared. For example, if you’ve got a lot of people linking to a post on social media, and other sites, Google assumes it’s useful content.
Know your brand
Since Google can ‘read’ your website, it knows what your site is about, what people are saying about it, how often, and in what way. It knows what pages people are visiting, how long they’re staying, and if they’re sharing it with their friends on social media and other websites.
So the way to convince Google that you have what your demographic needs is to get really clear on who your primary demographic is, what their problem is, how you’re going to solve it, and then talk about it.
A lot.
What will we use to talk about it? Your keywords.
Let’s identify your keywords:
[A note on keywords]:
Note that for the purposes of this article, I do not mean keywords in the META information of your site. (This is an old practice, so I’m not even elaborating here. I mention it in case you have someone in your ear telling you that they’ll do this for you as a part of your SEO package. Run from this person. Run far and fast.)
When I talk about ‘keywords’, I mean the relevant words that you’ll include in your content. That’s it. Okay, let’s keep going.]
Remember that your visitors are searching for information. A great question to start this process is:
What problem do you solve? i.e. what’s keeping your ideal clients up at night?
If you’re a financial advisor, your ideal clients might worry about their retirement.
If you’re an acupuncturist, your ideal clients might worry about their physical pain, recovery from an injury, or their chronic illness.
If you give art classes and workshops with a focus on intuitive creation, your ideal client might need a judgment-free creative outlet.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t feel their problem any less urgently, it just means that they’ll respond to content that paints a picture of the solution instead of an acute description of their pain. (This is also one of the secrets to non-sleazy marketing, but we’ll get to that in another post.)
Exercises to get clear, specific keywords from your perspective:
What exactly do you do?
Who do you do it for?
What is your Right Person’s primary pain and how do you fix it?
What kinds of things do your current clients say they come to you for?
Exercises to get clear, specific keywords from your ideal clients’ perspective:
Take a moment and put yourself in your ideal client’s shoes. If this is hard, think of a favorite client and what they’ve said about working with you.
What phrases or questions are they typing into Google? E.g. How to stop neck pain? What’s the most nutritious breakfast smoothie? What are the best road trip picnics? Etc.
Keyword Research:
Search for your keywords on Google.
Scroll down to see if there’s a section for “People also ask.” These are examples of popular searches. They might give you ideas for keywords and phrases you can use in your copy, or even headlines for blog posts.
Scroll down a little more to see if there is a “Related Searches” section for the same reason.
Look over your answers and make a list of the keywords and phrases most relevant to what your ideal client is searching for.
These are the main keywords and phrases you’ll use on your website and content, especially in strategic places like your Page Title and Descriptions that we’ll talk about in Part 2 of this article. For now, just sprinkle these around your website, especially on your homepage and Services/Products pages.
For extra credit, turn them into blog posts, newsletter articles, and guest posts for other people.
The best strategy is to understand the concerns of your ideal clients so you can create content that will solve them. Then, promote that content.
Supportive, long-tail keywords
Now that we’ve got the main keywords and phrases you’ll use in your content, let’s balance those with more specific keywords.
Specific keywords—also called “long-tail keywords”—boost the likelihood that you’ll show up in qualified results. But you need a combination of both to be successful.
For example, it’s not easy to come up at the top of a search result for something really broad like “attorney.”
In contrast, it’s easy to show up first for “how to teach my pet monkey how to say the alphabet backward” but that probably won’t do much for your business, because how many people are searching for that?
Find a nice balance of competitive keywords that are really searchable, and add specific, supportive keywords to make you stand out.
Again, this is where your brand strategy matters because what makes you stand out is usually what sets you apart from your competition, so get clear on things like your Unique Selling Proposition.
Write for humans
Copy that’s peppered with keywords reads awkwardly to both Google and humans.
Don’t worry about using your main keyword 25 times on your homepage. A handful is plenty.
Shoot for once in the opening paragraph, once in the ending paragraph, and a time or two in the middle. For the most part, just write what you need to write.
There are keyword rabbit holes you can go down if keyword research tools interest you, but I hope this article has left you with a clear impression of how important it is to simply write what your people want to read.
Focus on what you love to do. Include keywords about what you’re best at and who you’re here to serve.
Let that bring your best customers to you.
Coming Up in Part 2 …
We’ll use those keywords to develop clear Page Titles and Descriptions, create your content strategy, de-mystify the techie stuff, and talk about how to make your stuff more shareable and clickable!
