SEO, or search engine optimization, is a complicated process. As a creator, you simply want to know how you can improve your website and webshop so that more people would land there and ultimately buy your work. How do we arrange a meeting for the two of you? With this course.
This is a beginner SEO course for creators, that includes practices designed to help you cut through the complexity of search engine optimization via easy-to-follow steps.
First, I’ll be quick to lay down the foundations. I’ll tell you what to focus on first when it comes to SEO, and perhaps most importantly, what to ignore for now.
SEO has three main pillars:
1. TECHNICAL — Ignore it for now 🙈
Technical SEO, of course, is all about the technical aspects of your site. Setting everything up in a way that those little Google bots or spiders can actually find and crawl your content, organizing the pages in a structure that search engines will like, and taking care of everything between site speed, indexes, link problems, URL issues, structured data, and broken pages.
Technical SEO is often said to be the foundation of SEO, and I agree. If I created this course for brands and marketing managers, I’d dedicate a bigger section to the topic.
But to you, a creator, a small entrepreneur, my message is to ignore technical SEO (for now!) and start with other parts of SEO (mainly content) that can help you understand SEO more quickly, and bring you results that will make you confident enough in the subject to dive into the technical side of things. I promise you’ll get there.
2. LINKS – Can try this 💛
Links connect the whole web, and the more links point to your site and content, the more Google will think yours is a good place to hang out.
The more backlinks you have (links targeted to your site), the more votes you have from others and the search engines, as a sign that you have value and credibility.
You can point links to your site from your other platforms, such as your social media profiles, you can ask for them (from fellow creators or sites that interview creators 😉), and you can simply earn them with a good content or product page — those links are the best.
Besides backlinks, as part of SEO, it’s good to manage your internal links as well, those links that connect your pages within your site.
(In other words, if two pages are thematically relevant to each other, they should be connected via a link.) Links are a part of SEO that you can start experimenting with on your own too, if you’d like.
3. CONTENT — Focus on this ✅
In my experience, content is a great place to start with SEO if you are a creator, because content SEO is often intuitive and an easier game field for creative people.
I know this because I am a person who loves writing creative stories and I can more quickly understand how keywords are connected to a blog post that Google will like than fixing technical issues.
Content SEO is about making sure that the content on your website is optimized in a way that will not only cater to your target audience but to Google as well, meaning you will rank in a great spot in search. And if you land in a good place with any of your pages, the likelihood of people finding your website and webshop and buying your creations will grow significantly.
This is the part of SEO where you get to be the most creative, tell stories, and showcase products in a fun way, while not necessarily talking directly about business. I think you’ll like it.
And, before you move on, try this quick test. You’ll find one in each chapter to check your knowledge.
That was all the main introduction to our topic. Now, let’s dive into the practices of creating SEO-driven content. We’re going to cover these three main chapters:
- What are keywords and how to find them?
- How to use keywords and optimize your content?
- How to optimize webshop pages for search?