SEO Tutorial for Beginners: THIS is How to Rank Your Small Business #1

in this complete seo tutorial for
beginners i'm going to show you exactly
what you need to do to start ranking
your website in google searches which is
going to give your business more
visibility and when people are finding
you you're going to have more customers
clients and more revenue and profit on
the other side so before i ever got
started here on youtube my web
consulting business relied 100 percent
on being found in google searches and i
actually was able to rank pretty high
for some really competitive keywords and
that traffic was completely responsible
for the consistent revenue that i was
able to bring into my business so
this stuff i'm going to show you really
works when you do it right but let's
just get right into step one which is to
decide on your keywords so if you want
to do seo right or at all really you
need to base all your work on the
keywords or key phrases that you want to
show up for when people search for them
but there's a bit of an art and a
science to getting this step dialed in
just right so
first of all
you want to write down some of your best
guesses what you think that your ideal
customers are searching for so this
should be a variety of phrases that show
uh buyer intent right things like
lawyers in dallas as well as questions
that show research intent like do i need
a lawyer so write down all your ideas
then you want to see which of these
terms are going to be your very best
opportunities of actually getting found
so to do that i actually recommend going
to the free online keyword tool called
ubersuggest.com where you can input your
phrase ideas and they're not only going
to give you more ideas but you'll see
how many people are searching for each
term per month and how competitive each
of them is too so the end goal for doing
this is to walk away with about three to
ten of your best opportunities
balancing out these three criteria
search volume right you obviously need
enough people
who are actually searching for your
phrase for it to be worth your time next
seo difficulty so uber suggests does
show you how competitive each phrase is
and even color codes them from green
being the easiest to kind of an orange
color and then red is the hardest
ideally you want to find those sweet
spots of really high volume and low
difficulty also keeping in mind our
third criteria which is relevant so uber
suggests is going to give you all kinds
of keyword ideas but they're only going
to be valuable to you if they're
actually relevant to what you're selling
so if they're telling you that lawyers
salary in dallas is going to be a slam
dunk to be found for that's great but
does that search at all line up with you
closing a client probably not right
that's probably people researching if
they want to become a lawyer not people
in the market to hire one so you need to
weigh out all three criteria and decide
on your top three to five keyword
phrases that you can get started with
and that segues us right into step two
create a long form page or post for each
phrase and i say page or post because
this might be a combination of phrases
that have that sales intent in which
case you'd want to create a sales page
or a service page as well as phrases
that have more of that research intent
where it would make more sense to create
a really good article that answers that
question for them and i love having that
combination of content that's designed
to attract people who are ready now
and attract those people who are you
know more in the beginning stages who
will be ready in the near future that's
how you start to build that runway of
future customers or clients so i know it
helps to see examples so let's just say
that you own a house cleaning business
in miami so
when you do your keyword research you
may come back with these top three
phrases house cleaning service miami
window cleaning miami and how much does
house cleaning cost so in this case you
might want to optimize your home page
for the term house cleaning service
miami then create a service page that's
dedicated to window cleaning as a
service and you'd want to create an
article addressing the question how much
does house cleaning cost so now let's
talk about how exactly you're going to
create those pages and what needs to go
into each of them to really stack that
deck in your favor to rank as highly as
possible so the first thing you want to
do for each of these key pages is write
them as completely and in depth as
possible it's not enough in 2022 to just
keyword stuff your pages and just hope
and pray that they rank right you need
to cover your topic better than the
other listings that would appear in the
search results some experts even go so
far as to say that you need to create a
page that's 10 times as good as
everybody else's
not easy to do but at least it gives you
a clear goal of what you should be
shooting for so depending on your level
of competition you want to write these
pages to be at least 1500 words
but quite possibly two to three thousand
words in some cases so you really want
to go deep and cover every important
aspect of what you're trying to rank for
and of course within this long form
content you need to include those
keyword phrases in some key places
including in the page title and url so
if you're creating your site on
wordpress you just need to install the
rank math seo plugin and then you can
control your page titles and your url
from that really easily so if you were
trying to rank for window cleaning miami
your url for that page would be
something like sunshineclean.com
window cleaning miami so having that
what we call an exact to match domain
like that is still super powerful when
it comes to good solid seo so you also
want to use your phrase in the top
headline on your page what we call the
h1 tag as seen here next you want to use
it at least once within the first 100
words of your normal body text on the
page at least once in a secondary h2 or
h3 heading just think of those as
subheadings further down in your page
and you'll also want to include an image
that you've uploaded with the exact
phrase as the file name for instance
this photo named windowcleaningmiami.jpg
and then you want to repeat that phrase
as the alt text on that photo too and
you can easily change the alt text with
that same rank math seo plugin that i
brought up before now alt text is just
text that you input onto an image that
is not going to be readable by people
coming to your site but it's really just
meant to tell google what the image is
about and finally if you can you want to
upload a video to youtube and then name
it with your keyword phrase and then
embed that video on the page that you're
trying to rank as well now i'm not going
to tell you it doesn't matter what the
video is because at the end of the day
people are still coming to your website
and the video should do a good job of
selling your service but in terms of seo
value it doesn't really matter what the
content of that video is it could be you
know a testimonial or an overview of
your business or just have a specific
service anything really and remember
here the name of the game is to show
google that you're covering your topic
very thoroughly and completely and
they're smart enough now to know
what kinds of words and phrases that a
really complete page on your topic
should include which is why you also
want to make sure you're using a lot of
you know related
keywords and keyword phrases throughout
the page and honestly if you did a good
job creating that content completely
like you should have those words are
probably going to have made their way in
naturally so in our house cleaning
example i'd probably expect to see words
like you know dust vacuum surfaces
windows things like that right
and i also like to get some more ideas
by just doing a google search for your
phrase then you scroll down to the very
bottom of that page where they're going
to have a list of their own variations
so try to work in some of these phrases
too
where they make sense okay so google can
obviously see the words that you use on
your pages but guess what else they can
see and what they probably care about
possibly even more than how many times
you're using your keywords they want to
make sure that they're recommending
content that people actually want to see
in other words you need to make sure
you're optimizing your pages
for human beings too because google can
see how many people are clicking on your
listing how far down the page they're
getting how long they're staying and if
they hit the back button to then
continue their search elsewhere so let's
just talk about all the things you can
do to make your page you know stickier
so that your potential customers like
what they see then google likes that
they like it and then they keep sending
more people your way as a result so the
first thing to do is you want to start
your page with a really clear headline
that lets people know that they're in
the right place don't make them guess
what your business does or what your
article is about okay then you want to
follow that up by getting right into the
good stuff as soon as possible right if
it's a service or sales page
let them know the benefits of working
with you if it's an article get right
into the actionable content and if you
really want to keep people engaged make
sure that you're writing like a human
being with a viewpoint and actual
expertise right because i see this all
too often especially in blog posts that
have obviously been farmed out to a
writer for hire who's done nothing more
than just research and regurgitate the
facts if your pages and posts read like
a term paper written by someone who
doesn't really know enough about the
topic to write about it with even a
little bit of personality
they're going to go back and they're
going to look for something else next
design is important too so if your
website looks at all outdated or cramped
or chaotic people are going to feel
overwhelmed and you've lost them so make
sure you're using images subheadings
short paragraphs with lots of white
space and lists where they make sense to
use them essentially
you're trying to give your content some
shape and a flow that keeps them reading
further because if they come and they
just see that giant wall of text with no
images and no sub headlines or bullet
points that's just intimidating and
people don't want to read it and i want
you to always remember this people don't
read websites they skim them so play
into that behavior by bolding certain
key phrases and using those images to
help you say what you want to say in a
more visual way that can mean using
infographics to show data visually or
even just using icons to illustrate your
benefits or using photos of your
testimonial subjects to help bring them
to life and make them more trustworthy
and another really smart way to keep
people on your site longer is to use
video and the video possibilities are
endless but you know for example you
could use a business overview video on
your home page or a testimonial
compilation on a service page or even a
video version of your article
right at the top of that post and
honestly even if you don't have a video
of your own you could always just find a
video on youtube that someone else made
that relates back to your content in
some way and then embed that on your
page and in case you're wondering yes
that's perfectly legal and ethical to do
that because that person still gets
views on their youtube account which is
good for them and you get the benefit of
keeping people on your site longer so
you obviously don't want to do this you
don't want to show a video from your
direct competition so try to find
something that's more neutral
but that still helps you make your point
and i do want to be clear here i'm not
generally talking about doing this on a
sales page i'm talking more about on a
blog post so if you're writing that
article about how much cleaning services
cost and then you find another person's
video on youtube that kind of goes into
all the the elements of how it's priced
out and it fits in line with how you
charge
might as well put it on your page and
keep people around a little bit longer
okay our next important to do is to
punch up your actual search listings
specifically the title and description
that pops up right here when it comes up
in a google search so this is super
important for a really simple reason if
you can entice more clicks than google
thinks you should statistically be
getting
in your based on your ranking position
they're going to take note of that and
reward you with a higher position next
time so
let's just say you're currently showing
up as the 10th result for your keyword
on google
google thinks okay
in this position this listing should be
getting clicked on one percent of the
time but if you're able to write your
listing just a little bit better than
the others and you manage to get clicked
on two percent of the time you've
doubled what google thought you'd be
able to do so then maybe next time
instead of showing up number 10 maybe
you show up number nine and so on and
the good news is this is super easy to
do and it's a hundred percent under your
control so the trick here is just to
sell the click by mentioning you know
unique benefits that you bring or
promising a dramatic transformation or a
tangible result they can expect by
either working with you or from the
information they're gonna learn in your
post so let's just check out an example
of a bad listing versus a good one so if
i were to search house cleaning service
miami here's the first result i get it
says miami house cleaning the cleaning
authority our house cleaning
professionals proudly clean homes in
miami doral hellea they go on to just
name all the towns and beyond and then
when you call on the da da da i mean
looking at this i can tell they're
cleaners but there's literally no reason
i'd be inspired to click this listing
right these words are all pretty cliche
at this point it just doesn't tell me
anything that i want to know and then
they pretty much just lay out the facts
and the areas that they cover so this is
really limited real estate so don't
waste it with cliches
uh pure logistics facts and locations so
let's compare that with this rewritten
version so i rewrote this to say miami
house cleaning that outshines the rest
whether you need a one-time deep clean
or weekly service the cleaning authority
makes it simple book online and enjoy
your newly sparkly clean home as soon as
tomorrow see how this one uses language
that's evocative of that
you know amazing feeling when your house
is freshly cleaned and it also stresses
how simple the process is and how soon
they can get started so this rewritten
version
would likely get many more clicks in the
original so if those two were going
head-to-head
the new version would have a definite
chance of overtaking that position one
based on click-through rates alone if
everything else were equal and you can
easily control this title and
description text with that rank math seo
plugin and speaking of plugins we need
to talk about probably my favorite one
that can make a huge difference from
your page load speed so how fast your
page loads is a major sticking point
with both the actual people coming to
your website and for google so people
generally will not wait any longer than
three seconds before they give up on
your site and google knows it so if they
can tell that yours takes any longer
than that they're a lot less likely to
show it anywhere near the top of search
results so the bad news is there are a
ton of ways a website can be slowed down
but the good news is there's one way to
speed it up that works way better than
anything i've ever tried and it's the
easiest thing ever to do so if you have
a wordpress website you just want to add
the nitro pack plug-in and they're going
to take care of the rest you do need to
get the plug-in from their website and i
included my affiliate link in the
description below if you want to get a
little bit of a discount but for most of
you the free version is going to work
just fine that one plug-in is going to
handle every aspect of speeding your
website up from compressing your images
with pretty much zero loss of quality
i'm telling you it's really impressive
to lazy loading caching all that
technical stuff you'll never even need
to learn because they just take care of
it all for you okay so up till now we've
been focusing completely on everything
you can do on your website but that's
only going to get you so far so to make
seo really work for you you need other
websites to link to yours specifically
i'm talking about getting backlinks from
good reputable websites backlinks are
really important because they signal to
google that other people around the web
think your website is actually good
enough to want to link out to it for you
know one reason or another think of them
as you know recommendations or votes for
you over your competition and since this
is such a big and important topic let's
continue the conversation in the next
video in this seo course by clicking
right here i'm going to show you all my
favorite ways of getting really high
quality backlinks without a whole lot of
effort so just click right here and i'll
show you everything you need to know