“Free traffic” to your website. The holy grail of marketing.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as free traffic, and search engine optimization has long been very competitive.
But let’s have a look.
I’ll share with you how we approach SEO here at Cloud Clicks.
For starters, SEO means Search Engine Optimisation.
Or the art of optimizing your website so that search engines such as Google rank it highly.
In reality, while first-page rankings are great, you need to rank in the top 3 for your chosen keyword to get any decent results.
But that is where it starts. It’s not just about one keyword anymore.
It’s about buckets of keywords. Related keywords and search queries.
So, the first thing you need to do is identify the main keywords for which you want to rank.
In my instance, I want to rank for “web design Sunshine Coast“.
But people might also search for Sunshine Coast web design or web design agency. Or Maroochydore website designer…….
We’ve optimized our site for web design Sunshine Coast, as it gets the most searches (but how many of them are other web designers? It’s hard to know), with some secondary keywords thrown in.
Once you have your top keywords, you also want to create a list of related searches.
Like “Shopify website”, “WordPress”, and so forth.
Then, you need to create relevant content for search engines. Once people click on your link and land on your site, you also need to convert them from browsers into leads.
Easier said than done.
But let’s say you have a pretty tight copy, and it is written in a way that Google digs; well, you should be ranking, right?
False. Unfortunately, Google looks at more than just your site’s content.
For example, how old is your domain?
What other content is on your domain?
How often do you post?
What are those posts about?
But also, and this is what most people think SEO is: links.
How many other websites are linking to your site?
And not just your homepage, of the page you want to rank for, but all pages on your site.
We have a list of websites that gladly accept guest posts, and those are usually a good starting point.
But what we do for ourselves and our clients is some reverse analysis.
What is the competition doing?
We look at who else is ranking for the term we want to rank for, analyze the links pointing to their site and subpage, and try to find suitable, non-spammy sites.
We then create a list and start reaching out to see if we can submit a guest post to any of those sites.
Sometimes, we get lucky and get good responses. Other times, we reach out to dozens of sites before we hear back from them.
It’s a bit of work.
Once you find someone who will post your post, usually for a fee, you still have to write the article. It needs to be a semi-decent article. Otherwise, it might get rejected. It should also be relevant to the site you are linking back to.
So you can see that you spend hours getting just one backlink quickly.
In 2020, I had some time on my hands, so I reached out to Zapier, as they have a process for guest post submissions.
It took me nearly a year before my article got published.
But it is a solid backlink. You can check it out here:
https://zapier.com/blog/avoid-duplicate-entries-in-zoho-crm-with-zapier/
I submitted some ideas, got them approved, did the work, submitted the work, did revisions, took screenshots, and finally got the article published.
Thinking about it now, I’m probably due to write another article.
I just have to find the time.
Anyway, I hope you learned something about the “dark art” of SEO 😉
If you’d like to have a chat and see if we can help you rank better, get in touch -> https://ghl.cloudclicks.com.au/discovery-booking-page-step-1-page