What Does the SEO Process Actually Look Like in Practice?

How important is it to appear at the top of online search results? The first result gets about 32% of all clicks.

That is enough to tell you that if you want search traffic, you have to appear in the top few search results. It鈥檚 not always easy to do because you鈥檙e competing against thousands of other sites for the top spot.

You can give your site an edge by learning about the SEO process. This is where you apply the SEO best practices in a methodical manner.

Read on to learn more about the SEO process and get smart marketing tips.

1. Analyze Your Site

The SEO process begins with an audit of your site. You need to measure things like your current SEO rankings, site speed, security, and meta descriptions. These things are among the basic and best SEO practices.

If you want to know your SEO score, click here for an analysis.

2. Keyword Research

Keyword research is a critical step in the SEO process. You need to know what keywords get used by your target audience and target them.

There are a number of SEO tools that can help you with keyword research. The main thing is to understand your target market.

Develop a list of keywords based on the various stages of the customer journey. For instance, someone at the beginning of the journey would look for general keywords or try to DIY a problem.

Someone who鈥檚 ready to buy is likely to look for your specific product or service.

3. Set Goals

You know enough about your site and your competition. You should set goals for your site that are attainable and measurable.

Your initial analysis gives you a baseline to work from. You should pick a few keywords to target and work on improving your SEO.

Be sure to continually check your progress. Keep in mind that Google rolls out major updates a couple of times a year because they can impact your progress.

4. Build Content

Your content has to do a couple of things to get noticed by search engines. The first is that it has to have your keywords appear naturally in the content.

The second is that it has to be helpful to readers. Keep your target market in mind and try to help them address the problem they鈥檙e trying to solve.

5. Get External Links

Once you have your site set up, you want to get other sites to link to your site. This does a couple of things for your site.

First of all, you can get traffic to your site if someone clicks one of those links. More importantly, a link to your site tells search engines that you have good content on your site that their users will like.

Get high-quality links to your site through social media, online directories, and guest posting.

Learn the SEO Process and Get Big Results

The SEO process is made up of a few simple steps to follow. Follow the best SEO practices laid out in this article, and you鈥檒l be on your way to getting more traffic to your site.

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