Update your approach to search traffic with our Search Engine Optimization tutorial! With all of the changes over the past few years with Google, creating an SEO tutorial seemed like a good step to get the search traffic you deserve. Please note that search strategies are changing constantly, so something we discuss today might not necessarily be viable tomorrow. However, these ideas provide a good foundation to receive traffic from Google.

Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

  • Keywords positioning is huge! Make sure your Page Titles include your keywords. For example, the title of this blog post is: Search Engine Optimization Tutorial. Using Search Engine Optimization Tutorial in the title and about 3-5% throughout the page helps Google understand the importance of the keyword in their search engine. To learn more about keywords, check out Keyword Research & Website Development.
  • Schema helps you optimize your site for semantic search. Check out Josh Alexander’s post on WordPress Schema for more information about how to use the free Schema Plugin.
  • Unique, quality content matters! While there are a number of different SEO formulas that popped up over the years nothing beats unique, quality traffic.  Matt Cutts, Google’s Search Engine Wizard, put on Youtube how the correct grammar & spelling do not completely influence search results. However, they have found the sites with the best editing are the ones that have the highest chances of being ranked higher. This has to deal partly with higher quality content being more relevant to users and partly with it working better in social media. One thing I am doing is using an editor to go through my work after I have published and edited it to have another set of eyes on my posts.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

  • Backlinks are the foundation of many search engine optimization campaigns over the years. There is a lot of value in finding quality links back to your site. The easiest way to get backlinks is to use quality content to get backlinks. To get quality backlinks, check out our Link Building Strategy post to start getting backlinks to your site.
  • Social Search is going to keep getting hotter! You need to combine your social media marketing efforts with your search strategy. Instead of just repeating something that I discussed in detail about a month ago check out Social Search to learn more about how to do this effectively.
  • Start focusing on your video marketing strategy. Youtube is owned by Google, which means they will give you more credit for using their internal products to promote your own business. First, it is an opportunity to get additional backlinks in the description line below Youtube’s videos and second you get traffic from the third largest site on the internet.  Combining social, video, and search makes for an awesome explosion in traffic. It is why my traffic jumped from 8,000 visits in November to 14,000 visits in December.

Search Engine Tutorial 2012 Summary

While this is a lot to for one go, start implementing two or three of the ideas listed in this post everyday. If all you do is create 10-20 quality backlinks, some tweets and updates, and 2-3 posts per week every week for the next 52 weeks you will be amazed at the results. Search traffic is not instantaneous, but when it comes it comes in waves faster then you can imagine. Now use this search engine tutorial to improve your rankings and traffic.