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16 Comments

How to start with SEO?

I have built a travel planning tool (www.travelwell.io) and want to boost the organic traffic. Therefore I started a blog. Now I have the problem that I have information overload and don't know how to start the whole SEO-thing.
I really appreciate any help!:)

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    The easiest thing to get started with is On-Page SEO (also known as Technical SEO). This means you improve your HTML to make it more crawlable by Google while also ensuring you surface the right information. This improvement also has the biggest impact when you are just getting started. For example, take a look at this tutorial for improving your Page Titles.

    PS: I'm building SEOly to be an affordable suite of SEO tools for Indie Hackers. We'll send you one bite-sized actionable tip at a time to ensure you improve your SEO presence.

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    1. Keyword research (find low-competition keywords that have decent traffic).

    2. Writing (structure your content with relevant headings).

    3. Publish consistently.

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      I might add to a fourth point: optimize for the searcher intent, i.e. what is someone looking for when they search for one of your keywords (google the keyword to see what type of results Google sees as relevant and match that intent when producing your content)

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      Yeap. This is all we need.

      You can learn more as you run into face different problems. Don't try to read a lot at the beginning

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      Easy but powerful! Thanks a lot!

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        Yeah, this is basically it, or at least definitely enough for one person to get started.

        Just to expand a little. The most common mistake I have seen is a poor choice of keyword. Doesn't matter how much you write, what's your content structure, or if you publish consistently, wrong keywords won't bring any results.

        My advice: really focus and take time to select 20-30 highly relevant, low competition keywords, but with decent keyword volume. Also, it would be great that these content pieces would connect between them, thus having it easier to internally link them.

        Having good keywords is already 50% of the job.

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          Amazing! Thanks for the further details!! I really appreciate it!🚀

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    Read up on Nat Eliason. He runs a SEO agency and publishes super high quality articles on generating organic traffic via SEO.

    You can read up on stuff he's written here:

    To give you a little TLDR on SEO:

    • Focus on ranking for medium volume keywords with low competition and upgrade your content 1-2 months after you've posted the article
    • Write content that educates or entertains
    • don't over optimize for keywords within the article (i.e. include it in the title and maybe 1-2 times in the article)
    • Optimize for the reader taking away value, not some algorithm that most people can only speculate about at best
    • write about what current articles aren't writing about and what readers want to see (research is super important)

    One thing I wish he wrote more about was distribution. Distribution is super important and can make or break an article once you've finished.

    You'll need a process for posting your article. Find out what communities you can initially share your articles with to get that initial traffic. Find other partners that you can use for backlinks or mentions (other blogs, newsletters, etc). Have a plan for "upgrading" your article which updates content, includes higher value (i.e. higher volume) keywords, and reposting updates.

    Outside of posting on your own blog, do guest posts. This can be a great way to seed your site with readers when you have little (or no) audience.

    Technical SEO is a different beast altogether. While you need to write for readers, you need to structure your site for google. Add meta captions on images that genuinely describe the image, don't use it as an excuse to jam in a keyword.

    It's a lot. I know. It can be daunting in the face of tons of information. The best way to learn is to focus on < 3 things and try to do them REALLY well in the beginning. I learned this by writing a piece on Dopamine fasting. I focused on writing high quality content backed with research and distribution. Even with focusing on only these 3 elements of content marketing/SEO I was able to rank 1st page for a medium volume KW.

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      Wow. Thank you James! It is incredible how much knowledge can be found in this group! I really appreciate your tips and your shared knowledge!

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    I had the exact same problem about a year ago, I knew SEO was important but didn't know what it meant. The key for you is to understand the high level concepts first, about what to do and how to do.

    One of the common mistakes we all make is write/publish a lot of content then do nothing about them. People won't see them then!

    Building a system and distributing are so so so important.

    I wrote about my experience here so you can see if it is helpful: https://kevoncheung.com/seo-tips-articles-for-founders

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    ————————————————
    FOR GETTING STARTED IN SEO
    ————————————————

    The most important thing to do first is identify your highest value keywords.

    These are not necessarily the highest traffic keywords. Your highest VALUE keyword-phrases (KWPs) are the KWPs that result in sales, or signups, or whatever the metric is you are trying to improve.

    When you are starting out, it is hard to know what your highest value keywords are, but you have to make an educated guess. Use the keyword research tools that are out there, and look at the most expensive terms. Look are what your competitors are buying. If the terms are expensive, it usually means they work — your competitors keep buying those KWPs because it's ROI-ing for them.

    Identify your highest value keywords and they use them in your titles, and in body of your writing.

    Writing excellent articles with a sensible keyword-density of your highest value terms KWPs the best way to get started. Then it's all about getting backlinks from "good neighborhoods."

    Also, try this excellent free keyword research tool:

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seostack-keyword-tool/labjajhkfjfncpiddbgdimcaldgeognn

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      This is amazing! Thank you Rowe!

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    I also had your problem, and tried to learn everything by myself. But I didn't have enough time and energy to take care of the blog and the site and seo. This is why I asked some of my friends who also have some successful sites how they manage that, and they told me that they hired a company to take care of everything. I also contact them, because I have nothing to lose. They helped me a lot by increasing the ranking of my site and blog, and now they are responsible for the maintenance. This is their site https://mtpremium.net/ .

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    How do you plan on monetising the service?

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      Affiliation in the beginning and later as a B2B software product.

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