7 Keys To SEO Before You Even Start

Over the course of 9 years in SEO, I've seen a little bit of everything. I've personally evaluated thousands of domains over my career. As most know, SEO has changed a lot, so SEO strategies and techniques change with the search marketing tides. SEO in 2016 is a far cry from SEO in 2006, it's always changing and it's tougher to rank today than ever before.

Rough estimate, I'm going to say over 70 percent of the domains I've evaluated have had one SEO mistake after another. Even with all the resources we have today, the latest victim was only 3 days ago. I've seen patterns build that honestly have me questioning where business owners get their SEO advice. There's a lot of credible sources out there, but there's also a lot of regular Joe's that claim the title "SEO Expert." So you have to be careful what you read and who you hire if you're looking for SEO services.

After this last evaluation, I felt it would be proper to bring these key issues up since I'm still seeing a large percentage of our clients make these SEO mistakes. So, shall we?

(1.) Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the very first (if not the first) thing you should be doing. It's not the simplest of SEO task, but it's not rocket science either. Targeting the right keywords is crucial to SEO and the operations of your business. And as you'll see, keywords play far more important roles as we work through this article.

If you're wondering where you can search for keywords to find relative terms and see search volumes for keywords, try Google Keyword Planner.

Just in case you don't know, keywords are any word or word group. A keyword could be "apple," "bird," or "nike shoes." Keywords are the heart of search engines as you can find pretty much anything you want to search for. If you're looking for a new pair of shoes, you likely take to Google and use that exact keyword phrase to find what you're looking for.

Since most of you are either selling products or services, your keyword research should bring back results of keywords that closely resemble what you're selling or what services your business offers. Building your keyword panel (a group of keywords to target) should be priority.

When you're researching your keywords, look for keywords that have search volume. This means users are searching for it. If a keyword has little to no search volume, it's going to be tough to see traffic come to your website targeting it. You should find as many keywords as you can, a few hundred if possible. Some niches will have far less I know, but take what you can get.

(2.) Mapping Out Your Content

There's a reason why Content is King, I'm sure you've heard the terminology in SEO before. In order to map out your content, you need to know the keywords you'll be mapping out. You can put it in a spread sheet, Google SS or Word doc. 

Each page on your website needs to be unique, specifically designed to rank for a specific keyword. 

(3.) Content Structure In SEO

I'll pretend that you already have all your keywords researched, as well as your content targeting your keywords mapped out. Basic SEO, SEO 101 teaches us a few important key elements to SEO optimized content structure. First, let's say that we're targeting the keyword "How To Rank A Keyword."

Using your keyword in the page/post URL - If we're trying to rank for "How To Rank A Keyword," we want to use this keyword term in our URL. Example;

(yoursitename) dot com/how-to-rank-a-keyword/

Best SEO Practice tells us to use our main keyword in a <h1> tag within the article. All <h> tags are important but none more so that the <h1> tag, And since content is valued top (being the highest valued) to bottom (being the lowest value), we want to make sure our main keyword <h1> tag is at the top of the page.

Our <h1> may read; "How To Rank A Keyword In Google Fast"

See how I included the keyword in the <h1> tag? Notice my main targeted keyword is in the main front of the <h> tag, that is for a reason. This is another SEO 101 tip. When you use <h> tags as they do go from <h1> to <h6>, always try to make sure the keyword is in the main front.

<h2-h6> tags should be utilized throughout your content more than once.

Yet another SEO content structure tip is having your main keyword listed in the first paragraph. You also want to make the main keyword and any secondary keywords are listed throughout the article. Keyword density (the percentage of times a keyword appears in the page) should range from 3-5 percent. 

You can also add images, video and internal links to add more SEO value to your article.

(4.) You Only Need One Page/Post To Rank Any Keyword

This tip leads to the biggest issue I've seen with many of the websites I've evaluated, multiple pages targeting the same keywords. This can be a huge mistake and one that does more harm than good. If you have multiple pages targeting the same keyword, your own content can fight one another trying to be the ranking page.

You only need one unique page/post to rank any keyword (in due time of course). All of your content should be targeted in this same manner. You don't want 10 articles using the same keyword in the title or URL. You can use secondary keywords within multiple articles and should. Then build internal links with them using the appropriate anchor text.

(5.) Keywords Have Competition Levels, Know Them Out The Gate

Every keyword you could possibly target has a competition rating. Google rates competition in keywords as low, medium and high. Some SEO software providers and tools assign a number to this, 0 being the lowest and 100 being the highest.

While other SEO experts will tell you not to go after competitive keywords, I suggest that you do. They are likely keywords that you want to rank for and if so, you need to be targeting them right outside the gate. 

By targeting competitive keywords from the start, it will give your content more time to develop rankings for the chosen main keyword and any secondary keywords used. You'll be able to promote it via marketing, perhaps social media marketing since social signals and shares do have small SEO value. The longer your article is published, the higher chance you have to rank for it. 

(6.) Ranking Competitive Keywords

Back to the old phrase "content is King." When you're a new statup business or have a website that is SEO young, writing high authority content is the only way to go about it. If you have a competitive target keyword, you better make sure that the article is page one worthy.

I don't know how many times I've evaluated websites only to find they have 20-30 articles targeting the same main keyword. No wonder you don't rank. Again, it only takes (1) article to rank a keyword. Remember that before you map and plan your content. 

You still want to aim for long-tail keywords, these are simply keywords with 4 or more words. They are easier to rank for as they have less competition. 

(7.) Where You Fall In Line With SEO

Most websites ranking first page on Google are there for a reason. You'll find upon research that likely, these websites have high DA (Domain Authority) or have 10 year old websites. 90 percent of the time, you can find these websites rank for a reason.

If you have a new website, your DA is one, the lowest possible DA. Means you're at the bottom my friend. Domain authority is a good indicator of the SEO value of a website. Moz is the creator of DA. You can download the Moz toolbar to easily check the DA of any website.

I don't know how many times a business owner will come to me saying "I want to rank first on page one in a month. I go to evaluate the website and they have a DA5, most cases a DA1. My answer, "there's no way in hell." Sure, you can gain quick value doing some black hat SEO (which I do not) because eventually, you will fall from grace.

So you have to know where you fit in within the "SEO World." Know that SEO takes time and you'll be rewarded for the time you put in. SEO is a long-term solution.

Thoughts on SEO

SEO is very complex, there's thought to be over 200 different SEO ranking factors. I feel like it's closer to 300 myself. What we do know, there's a lot of them. And all of them together determine where you will rank for your keywords.

You can avoid a lot of mistakes just by applying what you read in this article and start taking action on your own website.

Lastly, don't rely just on SEO to grow your business. Sure, organic traffic is often our top converting traffic. Sure, SEO can bring in title waves of traffic and backlinks. What SEO doesn't promise is sales. Utilize other marketing tactics and strategies to evolve with your SEO. This is especially true for those of you that have starter websites with no SEO value.

Your website is going to take months to get established. In the time being while you wait on your SEO, you can be using marketing tactics to bring in traffic, leads and generate sales. 

And as always, if you need someone to do it for you, I'm always here.