Last updated on December 7th, 2022
My career first started as a website creator and while I was playing with website builders one issue I ran into was that my target audiences could not find my websites. To fix this issue, I had to become an SEO expert!
SEO is an important part of running an online business and without it, many businesses would not be able to get off the ground.
Amazingly, 60% of businesses do not have an SEO strategy and 23% admit that they don’t plan on getting one! Maybe this is why 90% of online startups fail with 22% blaming marketing problems.
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Here, I am going to talk about the importance of SEO and how you can become an SEO expert (see also ‘Does Responding To Reviews Help SEO?‘). This way, I hope you can use this article as a stepping stone towards better marketing for your business and to help you achieve more success.
Why Is SEO So Important?
First, let me define what SEO is and how it works.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and it basically refers to the steps you take to make your website more ‘visible’ on search engines like Google or Bing. By visible, I mean more likely to appear in those top search results.
This is important because 67% of clicks go to the top five websites on a search engine results page, and 95% of web traffic overall goes to the results that appear on the search results page.
This means that the further down a search engine’s results you are, the less likely your website will get any traffic and revenue.
I cannot stress how important SEO is for online businesses.
I have seen it work first hand on multiple projects. They began with very little organic searches, low leads and little revenue but after I learnt about SEO, my websites became more visible and I finally reached my target audiences!
And it’s not just me who thinks SEO (see also, ‘How to Create White-Label SEO Reports and Automate Them‘) is vital for businesses. Although only 44% of small businesses have an SEO strategy, 75% of marketers who use it say that they find their SEO tactics to be either extremely or very effective.
Not only that but 70% marketers also prefer SEO over other marketing methods including PPC.
There are other benefits to SEO other than improving your website’s visibility. SEO is also proven to help cut costs for customer acquisition by 87.41%.
This means that convincing customers to buy from your business is less costly when SEO, so more of your funds can go into other aspects of your business.
But, getting SEO right is not an easy task. Google uses over 200 factors when ranking websites for its result pages, which is another factor why so many business owners struggle to make the necessary changes to their website to get it to improve its SERP rankings.
My Tips To Becoming An SEO Expert
There’s no shame in either not knowing or understanding SEO (see also, ‘What is SEO Intelligence?‘). I was in the same boat many years ago but I had to learn it otherwise my websites (and by proxy, my business) would not have been successful.
So, here’s how I became an SEO expert – check out my tips below and perhaps you can use them yourself in your journey to become one too.
Learn The Basics
The best place to start when learning SEO (see also, ‘How Long Does it Take to Learn SEO for Business?‘) is to start with the very basics.
I started out by checking out all the free resources at my fingertips. Of course, the internet looked a lot different back when I was working as a website creator but now, there are tons of free SEO resources you can use to learn more about it.
First, there’s other blogs like mine but there’s also podcasts and YouTube videos you can view or listen to in your spare time. This will help you understand the basics of SEO from a clear, trustworthy source: the people who actually use it.
Another resource I’d recommend is Google’s own SEO Starter Guide. Google is the largest search engine in the world with over 90% of web search volume, meaning that most of your target audience are probably using Google.
If you learn how Google sees SEO, you’ll have a better idea of how to optimize your website for the search engine.
I’d also recommend this beginners ebook from SearchEngineJournal. SearchEngineJournal have a lot of great resources and statistics to back up their research, and their SEO for Beginners ebook is a great way to kick off your SEO journey.
Try Out An SEO Course
Thanks to the pandemic, online learning is now easier than ever. Since 2019, there has been a 221% increase in new course creation and the online education platform. Coursera saw its student numbers increase from 21 million in 2016 to 92 million in 2021.
What this means is that it is now super easy to find an online SEO course.
I have found online courses to be a lot more nuanced than podcasts and YouTube videos. While they are meant to inform and entertain, courses are purely for educational purposes.
I’ve talked about some of the best free SEO online courses in another article but here’s the rundown of a few of my favorites:
- HubSpot Academy’s SEO Training – This course is a short but very easy to understand explanation of SEO. I think it’s a great place to start especially if you are struggling with understanding what SEO is.
- Udemy’s SEO Training Course – This course covers all the SEO basics, offers students strategic advice and allows them to build their own project alongside their learning.
- Coursera’s SEO Specialization Package – This package of multiple courses is a dense one but covers all your needs from SEO beginner level to advanced expert. I’d definitely recommend this one if you want to become an SEO expert.
Get Familiar With SEO Tools
SEO experts use a lot of different tools to help them with their tasks. So, you will have to familiarize yourself with them if you want to succeed. Here are some of the SEO tools I use for my projects.
- Keyword Research – 71% of marketers use keywords as their main SEO strategy because websites need content and using the right keywords will help you find your target audience. SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner are all popular examples of keyword research tools.
- Backlink Analysis Tools – The more backlinks a website has, the better its Google SERP rankings are. Because backlinks are so important in SEO, a lot of experts use backlink analysis tools to see how your backlinks stack up against your competitors and identify any issues that are holding you back.
- Technical SEO – Technical SEO refers to improving the performance of a website so search engines rank it higher. The best load time for conversion rates is 0.4 seconds, and technical SEO tools will help you get your website to that level of performance.
- Competitive Analysis – These kinds of marketing tools can help you keep track of your competitors to set yourself SEO goals. You can learn from their mistakes and successes to boost your own business.
Experiment
Nothing has taught me better than my own experiences, so I really recommend that you try different SEO techniques and strategies for yourself. I’ve had successes in my career but I’ve also had failures and they have helped me learn and become better at my job.
So, I’d recommend starting up a few WordPress websites, playing around with SEO and see what works for you before moving onto bigger projects and businesses.
Conclusion
Becoming an expert in any field requires a lot of time, effort, and patience – and the same goes for SEO.
I hope the information above will help you on your SEO journey and that the nuggets of wisdom I have learnt from my experiences help enhance yours. Thanks for reading!
