5 Intermediate SEO Tips for Any Business | EP 497

Why You Should Clean Your Email List

1. Have a Fast Loading Website01:53
2. Have a Plan For All Content02:24
3. Do Keyword Research03:24
4. Invest in SEO Tools04:48
5. Review Analytics Regularly07:05

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:21 David Blackmon: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast, brought to you by WP Gears. I’m David Blackman.

00:37 Tim Strifler: And I’m Tim Strifler.

00:38 David Blackmon: Today we’re going to talk about five intermediate SEO tips for any business. Want to pay attention to this. We’re not going to deep dive. SEO is such a massive thing that it overwhelms a lot of people. I know for myself, for a long time it seemed like the elephant in the room that just overwhelmed me. Anytime I would go into Google analytics with their gagillion different reports, it just was like, holy crap. Where do I start? What do I do? I know it’s important and I want to be found and I want when people search for certain types of keywords from my business, I want my business to come up, but it just seems daunting and overwhelming. We figured we’d give you five intermediate tips that we feel like you can do right out of the gate to help your SEO. Tim?

01:33 Tim Strifler: Yeah, and we’ve talked a lot about that kind of the basics and the core, most important things like have really good content, have title tags, those types of things. But these are some things that kind of will help you take it to the next level when you are wanting to rank and you’re starting to focus on SEO. I’ll go ahead and get us started.

01:53 Tim Strifler: The first one is have a fast loading website. Now this is kind of more of a basic one. I could say it’s more of a beginner tip, but I think it’s important to be on this list too because it is really, really important. Google is taking the low time of a website more and more each and every year. They’re taking that into consideration and so a slow loading website is going to not rank very well.

02:16 Tim Strifler: Internet speeds are getting faster, people are on mobile devices, and so a fast loading website is very important and it’s going to affect your rankings if your site’s slow.

02:24 David Blackmon: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Number two on our list is have a plan for all of your content. I’m going to say this. Somebody told me this years ago, I think it was Nick Roach actually of Elegant Themes, CEO and founder, he told me, he said that your analytics should be dictating the type of content that you’re writing. I really didn’t understand what that meant at the time. I fully comprehend it now. Basically all it means is is that you want to find out why are visitors coming to your website. What are they coming for? What are they reading? If they’re coming to read a certain type of content, then you probably need to be producing more of that type of content because that’s gonna be what your readers want to read, which is going to bring them back to your website again and again and again. Have a plan for your content, set an editorial calendar, and it’s really going to help your SEO out.

03:24 Tim Strifler: The next intermediate SEO tip for any business is do keyword research. There’s lots of tools. My favorite, and I’m pretty sure David’s favorite for keyword research is Atrefs. It’s a premium tool, but worth every penny. The idea behind keyword research is you want to find out what people are searching for. A lot of times you have an idea of what people are searching for if you are a web design agency then you a lot of times would think that people would type in Austin, Texas web design and so you want to come up for that.

03:55 Tim Strifler: But there’s so much more to it than that then kind of the super high level short tail keywords. There’s a lot of long tail keywords of things that you can create content around that people are typing in. You can kind of think of keywords as problems that the user wants solved. A lot of times it might be web design company that specializes in restaurant websites in Austin. That’s a long tail keyword. It’s not a general term. It’s more specific, but that’s a problem that someone wants solved. They need to find a web designer that specializes in that niche that is in their area.

04:28 Tim Strifler: Doing keyword research, you can figure out what those things are that people are typing and then you create content around it. That way Google can rank you when it comes up. And now that’s someone that is potentially a buyer or someone that can hire you, that is on your website and you’re providing them with content, a solution to their problem.

04:48 David Blackmon: Absolutely. I will throw this out there. I’m, href segways right into our next, number four, which is invest in SEO tools. But before I dive off into that one, number four, I wanted to throw a free SEO keyword research tool out there, and that’s Google Trends. Google Trends is a great keyword research tool completely free. If you’re not at the point where you can dive into number four, which is making the investment in some SEO tools like hrfs, hrf’s minimum starting plan is like $100 a month. For some businesses that can be very expensive. However, what it can do for your business long term is insane. The amount of information that comes from a tool like hrfs or SEM Rush or any of the other SEO tools out there, it is incredible.

05:46 David Blackmon: I mean, I get to spy on Tim and see exactly what Tim’s doing, my competitors, to figure out, okay, I need to do this. I can see where they’re ranking, how they’re doing, what they’re ranking for. I find that type of information invaluable when you’re in business. If you can sort of peak behind the curtains and see what they’re doing in their business and stuff it’s hugely advantageous.

06:17 David Blackmon: I almost don’t want to tell people that do this because my competitors that may not be doing this, they might start doing it to me. I know how much of an advantage it is. I’m picking with Tim. We’re obviously partners with WP Gears and stuff, but there’s a lot of competitors out there that I just take a look at on the regular just to see where they’re at, what they’re focusing on and how they’re doing with it and stuff.

06:46 David Blackmon: What I like about it is it gives you the search volume for specific terms that you’re ranking for so you can tell where you really want to invest your time and money and energy in. Invest in SEO tools.

07:02 David Blackmon: We’ve got one more, Tim. What’s number five?

07:05 Tim Strifler: The last one here is review your analytics regularly. Now David mentioned that the tip he got from Nick Roach a couple of years back where your analytics should depict what you write new content on, that kind of all comes full circle. Because you want to be looking at your analytics, seeing what content is most important so that you can do what David mentioned and have that determine what new content you put out there. But you also want to see things like, oh, I used to, this used to be my most visited article here. I got a ton of organic search traffic, but now it’s Kinda to starting to dip.

07:40 Tim Strifler: Then from there you can see, okay, it’s time to refresh that block post, add more to it, make it more thorough so that you can start getting more and more traffic from it. We actually talked about that a few episodes back in episode 495. Reviewing your analytics regularly is very important for SEO, for conversion optimization, everything.

08:00 Tim Strifler: I know kind of tell on myself here, I don’t look at my analytics as often as I should. I should be doing it more often.

08:08 David Blackmon: I couldn’t agree more and I’m in the same boat as you, but there’s only so many hours in the day Tim.

08:13 Tim Strifler: Yeah, very true.

08:14 David Blackmon: Well, tomorrow we’ve got another great topic, five Facebook ad tips for any business. Tim, until tomorrow. We’ll see you then.

08:24 Tim Strifler: Take care. Bye. Bye.