Optimizing SEO When Building Your Website

SEOBusiness Tips

Jul 29

This post may contain affiliate links. Which means if you make a purchase through them, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you!

You’re building your new website! 🎉 That is super exciting!

Do you remember that movie, Field of Dreams? They kept saying “If you build it, they will come!”

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when it comes to websites and the online space, if you build it, they will not necessarily come.

A website alone is not enough to have a booming business. You have to actually have people visiting that website.

What’s more, they have to be people who want/need what you have to offer.

If you’re grandma’s visiting your website, but she doesn’t need a tutu, I’m afraid that’s not going to do you much good.

SO! How do we fix that? Well, my friend, with SEO.

What Is SEO

SEO straight up stands for search engine optimization. Which means, optimizing your website for search engines. In particular, Google.

Simple enough right?

SEO may seem complicated at first. But really, it takes a little research, a few well placed words, and you’re on your way.

Now, it is a long game. So you won’t see results immediately once you start implementing what I tell you. But, it requires very little upkeep. Once you’ve got it set, you don’t need to keep updating it or making changes.

You will need to consistently create new content, but we’ll cover that a bit later.

Let’s dive in to…

Why SEO Is Important

SEO tells Google what your site is about so Google can send traffic to it for free when people search for the keywords you use.

You know how you hop on Google to look up, well anything, but let’s say you are looking for a website designer. You type in “website designer” and all these results pop up in a fraction of a second. And you start combing through them to see if one of them might be a good fit for you.

How did they show up? They showed up for you thanks to their SEO set up. They got you to their website because you were looking for them.

And that’s what we want to make sure your new website does for you.

That it drives people who are looking for you straight into your arms!

Without proper SEO set up on your site, you’ll spend a TON of time and energy just trying to drive traffic to your website. When in reality that’s not necessary.

I mean, it never hurts, but it’s not necessary.

So, why is SEO important? Because it drives qualified leads to your website without anything extra work from you after it’s set up!

Be sure to get your copy of the SEO + Pinterest Workbook here! It walks you through each of these steps complete with a checklist.

Key Pieces of SEO

Okay so let’s get into the meat and potatoes of all this.

Keywords

The first thing you need to do is research your keywords. Basically you’ll want a different keyword for each main page on your site. With your home page’s keyword being what you want to be found for.

So, if you’re a book editor and author, you’d want that to be in the keyword for your home page. The more specific you can be, the better. Book editor and author is vague so it’ll be tough to reach page one with that.

But if you’re a Book Editor and Author for Young Adult Writers. That will be a bit easier.

So make sure you’re as specific as you can. Remember, you want to be found by the people who are looking for you, not by everyone.

Research Those Keywords

There are two main keyword research tools I use, plus one to check other key SEO points.

Ubersuggest is awesome because it will run a check of your website and let you know where you need to make some improvements. But most importantly, you can search keywords and it will tell you what the search volume is, whether it’s a very competitive keyword, and will give you content suggestions based off of the word you enter!

There’s also now an Ubersuggest Chrome extension that I use all the time.

Keywords Everywhere is a Chrome extension that gives you data on any keyword you search directly in Google. No extra website to go to here! Just type in Google when you have the extension activated and all the data will pop up on the search results page.

SEO Meta In 1 Click This Chrome extension is great for checking all the other little details. Just go to the live webpage you want to check and click extension icon. You’ll see a window that tells you what the headers are, if the images have captions, the page title and description… everything! So you know exactly where you need to make some improvements.

SEO Pieces For Your Website

Website As A Whole

Site Title …the title of your site. 😉No but for real though, make sure the site title has your main keyword, the one you want to be found for. So in our previous example, that would be Book Editor and Author for Young Adult Writers.

Site Description This needs to be a super clear and concise description of your site, using those keywords. This shows up in the very brief description in Google search results. So keep it short and to the point and tell people what they will get from your site.

Meta Data This is all the data throughout your site that visitors don’t see but Google does. Things like tags and categories on blog posts and image data. Trust me when I say its easier to keep this up as you go than it is to go through every single picture on your site 2 years later to add the proper meta data.

Alt Text Similar to meta data, the alt text (or captions in Squarespace) on images is read by Google. So you want this to describe what’s in the picture. It helps make a huge difference in search result rankings. Be sure not to just keyword cram the descriptions. Google will be able to tell and it won’t help your ranking. Pretend that the text will be read by an assistive device (because it could be) and make it simple and readable, not jibberish.

Page Specific

SEO Title This is the SEO title you give to a specific page. You can add SEO titles to new pages on your website as well as blog posts. This is crucial for getting those pages to rank. A number of my blogs rank on Google thanks to adding good, keyword rich SEO titles to each one.

SEO Description Same as the SEO title, this is essential to getting your individual pages and blogs to rank. This description is what shows up in the Google search result, so keep it short, use keywords, and tell people what they’re getting.

Alt Text for Images This is the same as the Alt Text listed under the website section. You just want to make sure that any images on any new pages you create also have a keyword rich alt text or caption if you’re using Squarespace.

Maintaining SEO

Blogging

Now I mentioned earlier that once you set up your SEO you don’t need to tweak it or do anything else with it regularly. and that is true. But, you do need to consistently add new content to your website so that Google knows the website is updated regularly and current.

Blogging is the absolute best way to do that for so many reasons.

One is that it gives you a way to showcase your knowledge and expertise by putting more content out into the world.

Consistently writing about the same topics (for example cakes and baking) will tell Google that you know what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks you’re talking about when it comes to baking. So over time, you start to rank higher for searches looking for baking tips or recipes.

Updating old blog posts is another great way to give SEO a boost. Google LOVES to see that older content is being updated to stay current.

You don’t need to blog every day or anything like that. Just consistently. I aim for twice a month or every other week. A lot of bloggers blog weekly. It’s really up to you, just make sure you’re adding quality content to your website regularly, because yes, your blogs can rank on Google!

Did you know that content on Pinterest can show up in Google search results? 🤯A pin image can show up in the Google image results. But boards can also show up in regular search results if they are using keywords.

Are you picking up on a theme here?

The great thing about all those blog posts you’re adding consistently to your site to boost the SEO, is that you can also add them to Pinterest. Over and over again with new pin images. So one awesome piece of content can go a really long way to boost the overall SEO for your website. How cool is that?

Conclusion

I get the most traffic to my site now simply from Google searches. I don’t use social media anymore at all for my business (to amount to anything) but I’m still getting consistent traffic.

Implement the key pieces of SEO we chatted about above and you’ll start seeing the same kind of traffic to your site.

Really spend some time focusing on and narrowing down the keywords you want to rank for. Make sure they accurately describe what you do and also that people are actually searching for that. Be specific.

The keywords will make all the difference!

I’ve broken down the key pieces of SEO and Pinterest for you complete with checklist in this free Pinterest and SEO Workbook.