2015-10-14
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Recently Kelci asked me over onmy Facebook Pageabout SEO for idiots. I decided to do a full post on it (isn’t she lucky?) because it is such a cool and expansive topic.
So what exactly was her question? Here it is:
«Found your blog the other day and have learned MUCH more than the previous 100 blogs I had found combined. I see that you have an article about SEO secrets below but I was wondering if you can direct me to like an “SEO for idiots” type of thing… I really need to understand the basics».
So here you go Kelci. Here are the 10 basics of blogging search engine optimization.
Oh, and this isn’t really for idiots. None of my readers are idiots. And if you are learning about SEO so you can grow your blog you are a long way from being idiotic.
A crude illustration of how SEO works
Let me start by giving you a crude example of how Google SEO works.
Google has developed automatic algorithms that rank your site. They send out what are called “spiders” to “crawl” your site and check it for over 100 indicators that determine whether your site is valuable or useless. These indicators include things like backlinks, domain age, traffic, fresh content, etc.
SEO is the art of making sure those spiders are happy with that they find. It is an extremely complex field that is constantly changing but in all that chaos there are a few constants that have remained true since the beginning. I’ll talk about those here.
The 10 basics of blogging SEO
As always guys and gals, if you have any other tips please leave me a comment and add to the fun. I absolutely love reading the huge comment-essays that you all tend to write.
You need your own domain and hosting
The first thing that beginners need to know is that you need your own domain and hosting. Free blog set ups do not do any favors for your SEO efforts.
Why is that?
Well many people speculate that if you were really serious about your website you would get your own name and host it yourself. And Google only wants to point to websites that are considered serious and trustworthy.
I recommend all new bloggers get their own domain and hosting setup right from the beginning. You can read more about why in my blog hosting review that I did recently or check out my 9,000-word guide on how to start a blog and dominate your niche. It has lots of details and tips.
