A while ago I attended an SEO course.  The course was run by Michael of Digital Class.

I knew a bit about SEO already, but a refresher and more info on current trends is always a good idea.

So, what is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.

It is important to have your site optimised so that search engines and people can find you.

SEO is also about making your website friendly to search engines but also for users as well. If your website is hard to use this will not be good for usability and can impact your listings on search engines as well.

This is not a short term fix for your website. An SEO Strategy is a long term strategy, which can take up to months to see results. Even though it is a long term strategy and you will not see immediate results it is a good idea to have an SEO Strategy for your website.

How does it work?

There are a number of things you can do to improve your websites SEO.

One part of the SEO process is that you add keywords, phrases to your pages. These terms are searchable via search engines and then indexed to have your article get found more easily.  

Keywords can be added to meta data, tags, keywords and titles. If these keywords are popular search terms then your article will hopefully appear on page 1 or close to of the Google Search results.

An SEO Strategy means that it is also more than keywords, it is content, building links on other sites and much more!

• On page SEO – Make sure that your titles for posts have a searchable term and your keywords in it. Search for popular terms using web tools, Ensure that all images have ALT Tags on them. This is helpful for accessibility and is the most important SEO factor for images.
  
• SEO Content – Your content needs to be relevant and helpful is best for SEO. Website with strong content builds better relationships and fuels more ways to showcase via different channels. If your content is fabulous, more people will share it and therefore help with SEO.
• Link Building – Google uses links as votes so, therefore, it is great for SEO. Build links from other sites, industry listings, sites you like or recommend and more. Google does not like follow links if you have paid advertising on your website. This violates Google’s webmaster guidelines. If you do promote a site that you are paid to review it is advisable to use a nofollow link.

 

Keyword Research

It is advisable to research what keywords to add to your posts or articles. Having an idea of what people would search for can help your article get higher up search results, and also improve your organic reach.

I look at the topic I’m writing about and do a Google search on similar posts. I see what keywords they have used and to see how popular these content pieces are.

Michael mentioned that  Google Keyword Planner is a good tool to use.  This tool is free, as long as you have an adwords account.

I use Google Keyword Planner namely because it is free and secondly due to the fact that the data is coming from Google.  Google corners the market in Australia with 90% of search traffic in Australia coming from Google it is one to make sure

This tool gives me phrases to add to my posts as well as keywords. Having long tail search terms I feel is good as I like to search on Google for a certain combination of words and I’m sure others do this too.

Another tool which Michael said was the next best option, and the most affordable is KWFinder. You can do a few free searches per day.

One thing that Google is prioritising, mobile friendly websites. 

“We will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results,” said Takaki Makino, Chaesang Jung and Doantam Phan in a blog post for Google webmasters.” (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/20/google-mobilegeddon-will-shake-up-mobile-search-results)

On the first of January this year I updated my website to be more mobile friendly. It is now great on all devices and looks amazing (well I think so). 

 

I know there is more to do and I will get to more of my SEO Strategy soon. There is always something to do with SEO on your site.

Another tool that is a must have is to install Google Analytics on your website. Keeping track of popular content is ideal, you then can optimise your best articles and then write more content that your readers want.  The data that Google Analytics gives you is gold as this can show you so much to understand how your content is doing. Without this analytics tool, you are really flying blind.

This  SEO course from Digital Class was great and made me think of all the things I need to do to make my site better. As said, I’ve optimised my website to better for mobile. On my site over 30% of my readers are using a mobile device. If your site is not able to be seen easily on a mobile screen you are missing out on readers.

I need to focus on making sure that all my posts are SEO optimised, some of my articles from when I first started the blog are not great and need to be improved.

Speed Test for your Website

Google is concerned with speed and load time of your website. If it takes forever it is not great for SEO.  Check out your website with this great tool from Google, it also gives you what needs to be fixed: Anazyle your Site Speed from Google

Other sites that test your website are: 

• https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/
• http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
• http://www.webpagetest.org/

 

 

Want to Learn more about SEO?

Do you need a refresher course on SEO or need a great course on the fundamentals? If you do consider Micheal from Digital Class

The course covered everything you need.  You get digital notes that you can follow online or print out.

Micheal put things into everyday language that everyone can understand, so don’t freak out if you are not technically minded.

Thanks Michael for a great course.

Sign up to my newsletter

Stay current with all the things that are happening on Mummy to Twins Plus One? Don’t miss a thing by signing up to my newsletter. This newsletter will list all giveaways and fabulous things that are happening.