In the beginning...

It all has to start somewhere, and so our course begins here, with a simple explanation of what SEO is, why we have it, why we do it, and what you need to do in order to increase visibility, leads and sales.

But, there's a bit bit here about what SEO isn't.

What is SEO?

Imagine you've got a website, right? It's like a cool shop hidden in a vast, bustling city. SEO is like putting up a giant, flashing neon sign that screams, "Hey, look at this awesome shop!" to Google, the city's most popular directory. The better your SEO, the brighter your sign, and the more likely people are to find you amidst the city's chaos.

Although "Search Engine Optimisation" gives the impression that we're doing something technical to make our site appear more attractive to Google, that's not really the point at all. There are some technical things we can do, and some we should do to make sure Google will love our site, but there are plenty other things that are far more important.

Google stated (quite a while back) that they show popular websites at the top of their search results. They base this on relevance and authority, so we need to discuss these two items first, then we can get going.

What is relevance?

There are websites, and there are people searching for information, products, and a bunch of other weird stuff using Google.

Now, imagine Google is a super picky librarian named Libby who knows everything about every book in the world.

You walk into the library and ask, "Hey Libby, I need a book about how to train my pet dragon." Now, Libby isn't just going to throw any old book at you. She wants to give you the perfect book.

So, she starts by looking for books that have the word "dragon" and "training" in the title or content. But she doesn't stop there.

She checks if the book actually talks about pet dragons and not, say, a medieval knight's guide to slaying dragons (because that's a whole different vibe).

Libby also considers if other readers found the book helpful. If a lot of people have read it, loved it, and recommended it, Libby gives it a higher rating.

She even checks if the book's author is a renowned dragon trainer or just some random dude who once saw a lizard in his backyard. So, when Google talks about "relevance," it's doing what Libby does – making sure the content on a website is exactly what you're looking for, based on keywords, user satisfaction, and authority.

It's like getting the best dragon-training manual instead of a cookbook on how to roast a dragon. 

 

Thanks for the bizarre analogy, dude, how about we crack on and talk about "authority"?

Fair point.

Allright then, no AI generated images in this bit, instead we have a simple statement that explains what authority is.

Put simply, Google wants your website to be the best place to find out about information regarding your products or service.

That's it.

So, if you are a florist, make sure your website has all the information about where your flowers are from, why you get them from there, what people need to do to look after them, what type of pot they need, what soil, what feed, when to water, etc. etc. etc.

In short, if your website is about flowers, make it everything about flowers. If someone comes to your site looking for some information on where to plant, how to trim, how to feed, make sure you have that information.

People should be able to get all the information they need about flowers from your website.

There you go, you have the secret to great SEO.

Is that it?

You know what? It kind of is. 

That's going to be what we base the rest of the course on, but you'll have noticed there's quite a big table of contents, so there's obviously a lot of parts to the whole process and that's what we're going to be investigating, working on and developing.

On the whole, we're going to be talking about content, lots of it.

Content is king, it's been what Google has been banging on about for ever. The reason it's so important is because anyone can create content.

There are no secrets to SEO, there's no trick, and you don't need to be some sort of technical wizard, you just need to be able to get your information out to your readers in a way that will want them to keep coming back.

Applying the 80/20 rule

At this point, a lot of SEO courses start discussing some extemely technical aspects of websites, we're not going to do that.

There's a rule I've discovered over the many years I've been doing this, and it's that you can get 80% of the benefits of SEO by simply doing 20% of the work necessary.

Sounds lazy, but it's not, it's just a matter of addressing the most important aspects.

You see, many people spend way too much time focussing on the really technical bits, obsessing over the smallest part of a site or page, installing software and trying to buy their way to better rankings.

But that stuff doesn't matter as much as content, and making sure you write the correct stuff that people want to read about.

So, in the next section of the course, we'll be focussing on doing something quickly.

Yep, we've faffed around enough, let's get going and let's actually do something now that will have a positive effect on your website ranking and get you on the road to beating the competition.

Technical stuff can come later

Don't worry, later on in the course we'll be properly nerding it up.

We'll get into all the crazy terms and phrases that everyone discusses so, when you're done, you'll be able to talk like a geek to people and impress them with your knowledge.

You'll learn about LSI, keyword density, semantic SEO, keyword cannibalisation and all that jazz. 

But, you really don't need that for now.

So let's get going!