Company
Search Engine Optimization or better known as SEO has been in existence since the dawn of search engines.
Some covet it, some think it's all mumbo-jumbo that doesn't work.
The true believers have done something right and experienced positive results with SEO, while the non-believers probably haven't done SEO the right way and thus have a negative experience with it.
What we can tell you is that Search Engine Optimization does indeed work, but it takes a lot of work for it to bring you positive results. SEO is not by any chance a miracle pill which you can swallow and see results the next day.
SEO takes effort to build up, it takes time to manifest, but when it does, then it will be smooth sailing from there on.
Gone are the days where you could just keyword stuff your pages and see traffic pouring in. It also doesn't pay to play the Black Hat game, as once Google penalizes and blacklists your domain, it's as good as dead in cyberspace.
Today, we'd like to share with you 7 simple steps you can follow and implement to increase your traffic through Search Engine Optimization.
Let's get started shall we?
You first start out by listing out a list of keywords you would consider as the main keywords your target audience would most likely use to search for your business.
These are preferably short-tail keywords, usually comprised of 1 - 3 words.
There may be stiff competition for the keywords that you have chosen, accept it as a challenge as SEO is not new, Google is 20 years old now.
However, sometimes you may get lucky and stumble across less competitive niches. If you happen to be in those niches, then congratulations, your SEO journey will be much much easier.
For the rest of us though, we will need to employ some creative strategies to secure streams of traffic, that's what the rest of the steps are for after all.
Now remember, take the stiff competition as a challenge and go after your chosen primary keywords. As your site grows stronger, content targeted at your chosen primary keywords will start to rank.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves yet, for now identify the top 5 primary keywords in your category using the following guidelines:
You used to be able to use the FREE Google Keywords Planner in Google Adwords to get search volume data. However Google has reduced the accuracy of its estimates over time, thus making the data inaccurate these days. Which is why we recommend to use an SEO keyword research tool such as SEO Tester Online's Keyword Explorer tool.
Our screenshot above shows the keywords we picked:
Once you feel your chosen primary keywords describe your business well then move to the next step.
You could spend countless hours or days brainstorming every keyword or you could use your competitors to give you the answers.
By using the Copy Metrics tool in SEO Tester Online, you can identify the keywords that your competitor is ranking for.
Simply click on Copy Metrics to bring up the tool then find your competitor's page which you'd like to research and paste the link in the URL bar. Click analyze and you will be presented with all the topics your competitor is ranking for as seen below.
You can emulate the success of your competitor's page by seeing what keywords they're using and evaluate if they're suitable for your business.
If the list of topics are not enough for you, simply click on the Keywords tab to reveal even more keywords your competitor is using. You get information like the frequency the keyword is used on the page as well.
This is a goldmine of information for search engine optimization
Primary keywords usually have big search volume and match your business really well. This also means you can expect high volumes of quality traffic from them, however it is usually very difficult to rank for them as there's stiff competition.
However, don't fret, that's where the long tail keywords come in. You will use long tail keywords to supplement your primary keywords and bring you traffic. Being a secondary keyword, expect the volume to be lower, but the plus point is that the competition will be lower as well.
You can leverage several long tail keywords to bring you multiple traffic flows.
Using the technique above, create a list of 20 long tail keywords that match the following criteria:
Now if you have 20 long tail keywords for each primary keyword,
5 primary keywords X 20 long tail keywords = 100 keywords
This list will easily give you 100 long tail keywords to work with and will be a great keyword bank for you to refer to later on as you create your first pieces of content.
Up till this point you should have the following ready:
As you filter your list of keywords to just 10, you'll need to keep in mind your topic authority that your site is already ranking for. Make sure they're within the same topical areas as you will be able to rank for those keywords a lot easier since Google already trusts your authority in that topic.
As your authority in the main topics increase, you can slowly expand into other topics, however it will take significantly more time to rank for a new topic.
For the 10 keywords we recommend to pick:
2 Primary Keywords - these are the most ideal keywords that fit your business. Even if they're competitive, over time you will be able to build up your authority for them. The goal right now is to start planting content seeds into Google. These seeds will grow over time to bring you extremely valuable traffic.
4 long tail Keywords for each Primary Keyword - these long tail keywords will supplement your primary keyword. They need to be a good fit for your business and are focused on niche topics that aren't as competitive. These keywords will grow your traffic instantly, helping your primary keywords gain momentum over time.
They need to have similar search volume and also closely related to your primary keywords, preferably these are keywords that you feel excited to write about. That will make the following steps more fun and less tedious to complete.
Alright, now you have 10 keywords to work with, 8 of which should be easier to rank and be able to bring you traffic instantly. Let's move on to the fun stuff.
Now that you have your 10 keywords to work with, it's time to start writing content around those chosen keywords and publish them.
We recommend writing one article for each of your 10 keywords, you will end up with 10 solid pieces of content which you can publish and rank for.
But why 10 pieces of content? I thought two primary keywords meant two articles only?
Well the reason is to increase the odds that Google will at least rank half of those published content. Nothing is certain when it comes to search engines and Google can be quite picky these days.
To increase your odds of success, you should produce content in batches. This way we are certain to get some winners to increase your traffic. Out of the 10 pieces, Google may only rank 5, or 2 or if your content is really good and a bit lucky you may get all 10 pieces of content ranked on Google.
People always say quality over quantity, however for Search Engine Optimization, we need both quality and quantity.
Now don't sweat your pants just yet, you don't need to produce all 10 pieces all at once. In fact you can drip them out over time, we recommend 1 piece per week to keep it consistent.
If you're feeling all pumped up and can push harder, feel free to pump out as many pieces as your time permits.
Here are some on-page SEO tips that you may want to take note of:
Once you have published all 10 articles, give each piece about 2 to 3 months time to get ranked. Search engine optimization is a game of time, be patient and don't panic if it takes a bit longer than expected. If you're lucky you may see results as early as 30 days!
With a good batch of content like this, we hope to see at least 50% of the content get ranked on the first page of Google by the end of the third month. That would be a good indication that you're on track and that our strategy is working.
Rinse and repeat the above steps, keep building more content around your list of 5 primary keywords and 100 long tail keywords. Over time as you build more content, expanding topic by topic, you are guaranteed to see your traffic increase.
Alright, you've published your first 10 articles, now what? Search engine optimization is an on-going process that brings you long term results. Nothing will continue to bring you results if you stop working on it, just as how you need to eat to function, the SEO machine needs to be fed with quality content constantly to bring you results continuously.
For a start you can look at publishing one article per week, you should be accustomed to this schedule after the initial 10 you churned out earlier.
As you get better at keyword research and writing, you may consider to increase your output to two articles per week and continue from there. If you are able to churn out an article a day then you are guaranteed to dominate your niche.
Now remember, keep producing content consistently on a weekly basis, and up the output as and when you are able to. The faster you put out quality content, the faster you will see results.
Finally we've come to the final step of this SEO guide. Sure you've put out quality content on a consistent basis, search engines are picking up your keywords and serving your pages on the SERPs. This process may be a bit slow, how can you amp up the process so that you are able to get results faster?
As with anything, be it a product, service, business or even an article, you will need to promote it in order to get even better results. Shove the 'Build it and they will come' mentality out the window.
There are over a billion websites on the internet, and as Neil Patel puts it, that would average to 7 websites per person, which is way too many for comfort.
The amount of content available online today is just overwhelming, what are the chances of your content getting through to someone if it was not promoted? In fact, what are the chances of someone to use the keyword you selected to search on Google?
Well we can know this from the search volume naturally, but what are the chances of said person clicking on your content over a competitors? The odds are usually stacked against us, unless you are as famous as Neil Patel or Gary Vaynerchuk.
The natural solution to this is to promote your content on all of your available media channels, it could be social media, your email list, or simply through paid advertising.
We recommend you start with the FREE channels, social media networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter are great platforms to promote your content. You could even use Instagram if you're good at creating great visuals for your content.
Next is your email list, if you have one, consider sending your subscribers an update every time you publish a new article. At the end of the month you can send a newsletter that compiles the updates of the month to remind them of your great content.
If you have the budget, then you may consider using paid advertising, but then it would defeat the purpose of doing search engine optimization in the first place. It can however get you instant results.
The key is to continue to promote your content over at least six months, don't just share your content on social media once and forget about it. Reshare it every two weeks or every month, nobody will remember that it was shared before, and with the amount of content on social media, it may take you a few shares to reach that single person.
Unless your content is time sensitive, we highly recommend you to reshare your content as many times as possible, but don't post the same content every hour, that would make you look desperate and have a severe lack of original content.
We recommend SEO Tester Online as the tool of choice to do your search engine optimization research work.
It is one of the best looking tools out there and is simple to use, plus it gives you a ton of useful data.
We did a review of the tool recently, you may checkout our SEO Tester Online review to learn more about it's other cool features and functions.
You can also check out their official website for more details, but if you do decide to subscribe to the tool, we have a an ongoing partnership with SEO Tester Online that grants users who purchase through us a 20% discount off the shelf price for the first year which we are happy to give to our readers. Just contact us via our contact page and ask for the discount and we would be happy to set it up for you.
We hope you learned something from this guide and are ready to start your SEO journey, if you need any help in SEO, Web Design or Digital Marketing in general be sure to contact us for a FREE consultation and find out how we can help your business out. Until the next one.
Living in the Digital Age is a blessing for most of us, especially the small businesses as it gives the little guy a fighting chance against the Goliaths in the industry. Every business needs a website today, but sadly not every business has one yet, those who resist the digital wave are destined to slowly fade into obscurity.
The digital savvy businesses with a proper website have another challenge - bringing traffic to said site. You see, a website is like a brick and mortar store, and to much popularity, no, the old adage of build it and they will come sadly does not apply to websites as much as physical shops.
Websites are virtual entities, existing in digital space, unseen by the naked eye as you stroll the streets or shop in a mall. As such, if you build it and leave it, then most certainly your website will not have much traffic.
How does one bring traffic to their website then? The fastest and easiest would be to put out ads, there are plenty of options today, ranging from search engine ads such as Google Ads to ads on social media such as Facebook Ads. You see instant results, but they disappear as soon as you stop pumping money into your ad campaign.
Budgets are always limited for any business, what more if you're a small business thriving in today's economy. As such paid ads are definitely not a long term solution.
Fret not, there's a long term and dare I say Evergreen method which is much more economical and will continue to bring results for you long after your ad budget runs out. What's this magical solution you ask? SEO and Content Marketing, but that is better left for another article, as today we will be introducing you to an SEO Tool which is able to help you achieve Evergreen success.
This tool is SEO Tester Online (STO). Now let's dive into how this tool can help you achieve success in the long term.
After logging in to SEO Tester Online, you are greeted with the Dashboard. This page summarizes the tools available to you as well as the number of credits you have left for the month.
As SEO Tester Online runs on a credit system, every SEO Spider deployed will deplete the number of pages and exports you have in total. A popular item in SEO Tester Online is the White Label reports (coming soon in June) where you can provide SEO Audit Reports to clients and prospects using your own branding.
At the bottom of the page are four boxes which describes the functions for each tool in the SEO Tester Online toolset.
That's all for the Dashboard, it's clean, and simple to understand, use of colors are pleasant and makes the UI look stylish.
Let's move on to the next tool - SEO Checker.
The SEO Checker as described on the dashboard is as below:
The online SEO analysis tool for a web page.
Find the SEO errors and solve them to improve your positiong.
As in the description, this tool allows you to analyse the SEO of a single webpage. You can analyse your own page, or a competitor page and find out what they're doing right and improve your own SEO.
Next we look at the results pages for the SEO Checker tool. Here we have the Overview page which shows an overall SEO score as how STO sees it. The SEO score comprises of 5 main areas, namely Basic, Content, Web Performance, Mobile Performance and Social.
There's also a rendering of the checked page in both desktop and mobile views to make sure you have the correct page checked. You may also opt to download the report as a PDF document.
In the next page, we have the Basic area of the analysis. The major items analysed here are:
There are tips for each item which explains in detail what they are their purpose, best practices and how to improve and add any missing item to your web page. Scores are given based on a total of 100 points.
Next we have Content, which basically analyses the content on your page. The analysed items are as below:
This section even shows you the number of words you have on the page. Again there are detailed explanations and tips on how you can fix the issues reported in this area of the SEO analysis.
The next area in the report is Speed. How fast is your website? Why is it slow? What's the cause? You can find out from this section of the report where a number of speed hogs are listed as below:
As we can see, some usual suspects such as minification and compression are present. If you are running a WordPress website then most of these items can be fixed by installing a caching plugin. There are many FREE caching plugins for WordPress, take your pick, we're personally tried WP Fastest Cache, Cache Enabler and Autoptimize.
The last section in the report is Social. We all know the importance of social media in marketing today, as such you would want to make sure pages shared on social media are represented correctly. You can do that by entering the information and image you want to appear when someone shares your link on social media.
There are essentially two items you need to take note of here:
The report also checks if you have a social plugin installed, possibly to make it easier for visitors to share your pages and also a Facebook popularity score.
Those are all 4 areas in the report, go through each item thoroughly and very soon your website will start ranking for your targeted keywords.
The next tool in STO is SEO Spider. Similar as the SEO Checker tool, but the SEO Spider will crawl your entire website and provide you with an overview report much the same as what SEO Checker provided.
The areas in the report are the same, as such we will not mention them again here. You can also enter your competitor's website and analyze their SEO. Who knows, you could learn a thing or two from your competitors.
The next tool we're going to look at is the Keyword Explorer. A powerful tool which you can use to check the relevance of your intended keyword. You can also compare a few keywords against each other. The number of keywords you can compare simultaneously depends on the plan you have, which ranges from 3 to 5.
As seen in the above screenshot, we are comparing three keywords whereby a slew of information is presented. You can see at one glance the Search Volume for each keyword, the Difficulty to rank for, Cost per Click (CPC) for each keyword and the Competition for each keyword.
The graph below shows us the interest over time for each keyword, which can show us the trends for whatever keyword we are exploring for. We can also change the country, which is good for local SEO, as we will get the exact stats for the country selected.
There's a nifty feature where we can get Suggestions for other long tail keywords for the keywords we're exploring for now. This is a powerful tool in the hands of an experienced search engine optimizer.
An interesting addition to the toolset of STO is the SEO Editor. It's much like a souped up word processor which tracks SEO related elements such as your Title tags, frequency of keywords used in the copy.
As you can see in the above screenshot, it has all the basic word processing functions as well as a right panel which displays the number of words, keywords, secondary keywords etc. This will aid you when you are writing content for your website or blog.
The downside of this tool is that it doesn't allow you to save multiple articles, and you can only save the latest copy you are working on. Once it's done you can choose to export it as a Word or PDF document. You can also import documents to the tool or use the Wizard which will guide you through.
Though not as advanced as a dedicated SEO Editing software such as WebTextTool, but it sure is a nice addition for beginners in SEO.
The final tool on the list is Copy Metrics. A relatively new tool to the STO suite, you can analyze any webpage's content. It's fairly simple to use, just key in the page which you want to analyze it's copy or if you have the text you can opt to directly paste the text in the Text tab. Choose the country you want the tool to analyze for, click Analyze and the results will be shown in a while.
Here's an example of how the results look like. The Metrics tab shows you overview information such as Text Difficulty, which is a measurement weighted with the importance of keywords used. Views Monthly, Buy Intent and some Stats which includes Reading Time, Average CPC and Total Words.
The tool also lists out the Main Topic, which essentially tells you what topic this article is most likely going to be related to by search engines based on the keywords used.
The Topic tab shows a list of Keywords, Search Volume, CPC, Keyword Density in the article and Keyword Difficulty scores. There are also quick links you can use to analyze any keyword with the Keyword Explorer and open a search page in Google.
The third tab is the Keywords tab, which also shows the list of keywords used in the article. The only difference here is that it shows how frequent each keyword appears in the article and how many words it is comprised of.
Lastly, you have the option to change the language of the UI between English and Italian.
This concludes our review of the SEO Tester Online SAAS (Software as a Service), the founders of SEO Tester Online have some new features lined-up and will be releasing new tools later down their roadmap. Checkout the SEO Tester Online roadmap.
Previously we did a comparison between the PDF report generated by SEO Tester Online and SERanking which you can checkout as well to find out how the generated report looks like.
If you'd like to get SEO Tester Online for yourself, there's an awesome Lifetime deal on Pitchground at the moment
This is a great tool if you're in the market for an SEO tool, we highly recommend you sign up for SEO Tester Online, they do offer a trial account if you would like to test it out first.
If you'd like to get SEO Tester Online for yourself, there's an awesome Lifetime deal on Pitchground at the moment, be sure to grab it as soon as possible as it is a limited time deal.
You can also learn more about SEO Copywriting to better understand the importance of SEO in Digital Marketing today.
Do share the article if you found it to be useful, until the next one.
Copyright © 2004 – 2025 All Rights Reserved Seraph Studios (002708832-T)