SEO for Dummies

Written by Andrew Rondeau in search engine optimization advice | 9 Awesome Comments - Add Yours?
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seo for dummies

Oh, I hate that headline, don’t you? SEO for dummies. To me, ‘dummy’ means an idiot and I’m not calling anyone a dummy or an idiot.

A better headline may have been Seo for Newbies.

But I didn’t and do you want to know why?

For SEO reasons!

According to Google (and they are only estimates…but they are getting better – see this post: Google Caffeine), only 3 people a day search for the term ‘Seo for newbies’ but over 100 a day do search for ‘SEO for dummies’.

So do I want the possiblility of only 3 people seeing my blog per day or 100?

Most people who work on-line are aware of SEO or Search Engine Optimization or even, Search Engine OptimiSation.

But what is SEO?

At a very high level, it is the process of optimising your website / blog for the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

So we do a Google search for ‘desk top fans’ for instance, and those sites that have been optimised for that particular search phrase are returned on the first page.

Even though there were over 65m websites, we only look at the sites on the first page, don’t we?

So depending upon how your Google settings have been set-up, that could be just 10 sites per page.

So unless you are on that first page, you will not receive any visitors to your site via the Google search facility.

In fact, it could be if you are not in the top 3 sites, you will not receive any visitors to your site via the Google search facility.

The higher position you are in the more traffic you will receive.

These are the top 10 results inside Google, and the percentage of times that they get clicked**

Google Position
% of clicks
Visitors per 1000
1
42.1
421
2
11.9
119
3
8.5
85
4
6.1
61
5
4.9
49
6
4.1
41
7
3.4
34
8
3.0
30
9
2.8
28
10
3.0
30

What Do You Notice About The Clicks?

It doesn’t take much more than a glance to see that the closer we are to the top of the listings, the more potential customers visit our web-site.

Visitors select higher results far more often than they select results below.

So if the search engines were sending out 1,000 visitors per day for a keyword, the #1 result would receive 421 of them.

But each time you step down that ladder, there’s a massive drop in the amount of traffic that you get.

Here’s where ranking matters – big time!

Position #1 might get 421 visitors…

But position #2 might only get 119 (just over 1/4 of the visitors of position #1);

Position #3 would get just 81 visitors (1/5th of the visitors of position #1);

Position #6 would receive just 41 visitors per day (1/10th of the visitors of position #1);

So to step up from position 2, to position 1, could result in 3 or 4 times more sales for us.

Or to step from position 6 to 1 could mean we earn TEN TIMES more sales.

So what does SEO stand for?

Yes, I know it really stands for Search Engine Optimization but get it right and it means more traffic, more visitors and potentially more sales.

So SEO is crucial to your on-line business if you want more traffic and more sales.

And your goal?

To be in that number one spot for several keyword phrases.

There are numerous tools around that will tell you how often a certain keyword phrase is searched for, like the Google Keyword tool.

But if you do have a little cash, invest in something like Market Samurai, it is by far the easiest and most sophisticated tool available when it comes to keyword research.

So you add the keywords to your website tags and use them in your website titles and descriptions and, of course, your blog titles.

But just as important as keywords is linking.

Google loves your site to be linked to and from other websites and blogs. And the higher page rank the websites are that link to you, the better. And Google also gives weight to relevancy as well. The more relevant the website is linking to yours the better.

I am NOT saying don’t link for non-relevant sites, it’s just Google gives more weight to relevant sites (or so we are to believe).

You can read about some of the backlinks I have in place by reading these posts:

Improve page rank with this free backlink love from Google and Digg

How to improve page rank by having a link building campaign

See what I’ve just done?

I’ve linked from one of my blog posts to another. Google likes that as well.

So when you get a chance, refer to a previous blog post, as long as it is relevant to the current blog post.

Keywords and back-linking is just the start of optimising your website / blog but they are key.

So remember SEO stands for more traffic, more visitors and potentially more sales.

That’s it, my introduction to seo for dummies.

** source Market Samurai




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9 Responses to SEO for Dummies
  1. Bachrum

    In the calculation, you mention that the site who is in #1 position will get a lot of traffic (approx. 421 perday). My blog is in #1 position for the keyword of dummy blog, but my traffic still not much as you mentioned there.

    Please advise me for this issue… thanks
    .-= Bachrum´s last blog ..Adgitize Raise The Ad Prices =-.

    Reply
    • Andrew Rondeau
      Twitter:

      Bachrum

      That’s 421 clicks per 1000 searches.

      The keyword (according to Market Samurai) “dummy blog” is searched for 7 times per day. So if you are in the number one spot for that phrase you could get up 42.1% of 7 = 3 clicks per day.

      Andrew

      Reply
  2. Kok Siong from Cancer Research

    Yes, you are right Andrew. Only the first place in the google search can really drive massive traffic to our blog. But sometimes we really need to optimize the famous keyword for longer time to see the result. Anyway, thanks for sharing Andrew! :)
    .-= Kok Siong @ Cancer Research´s last blog ..Tamoxifen – Breast Cancer Treatment =-.

    Reply
  3. A. Hagan

    I enjoyed reading over your statistics. I recently read a study conducted that suggested approximately 90% of online searchers never make it past page 1.

    In addition, the likelihood of someone clicking through to a website located in positions #1-3 on the first page and positions #4-10 is dramatically different. I forget the approximate percentage but it really reinforces the necessity of getting to that top spot.

    Reply
  4. Neil

    Hi Andrew

    Excellent article. There is a truism that says ‘second is first loser!’ and this is certainly the case in terms of SEO. The difference between first and second is huge but WHAT you choose as your keyword is the most important thing. No good being top for a term that get loads of traffic but no buyers. That’s why I also use Market Samurai… just about the best tool in my IM arsenal Ithink.

    Reply
  5. Robert Doebler from Pittsburgh hifu treatment

    Hey Andrew,
    You’re right about dummies and their little knowledge about SEO. Forget about implementing it, SEO terms itself can be very confusing for newbies because that’s how I felt when I was new to SEO works. Optimizing comes first if we want our sites to rank in search results, without optimization the sites remain stagnant somewhere.

    Reply
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