Why Search Engine Optimization is the Key to Making Money Online

July 10, 2018

18 min reading

There are all kinds of ways to make money from a blog or a website. You can sell ads, write sponsored content, or work with content partners. You can create an online store or use affiliate links to send your readers to the online store of someone else. You can even create a subscription template, where readers have to pay to view your content.

However, none of these strategies will work if you do not have a steady stream of visitors to your site. This is why the first step to making money from your blog or website is building an audience. That's where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Whenever you google something, Google's algorithm works to choose the stories and messages that will answer your question. SEO is about understanding these algorithms. This way, when someone google something that applies to your website or blog, they will not have to dig multiple pages of results to find yours.

For example, here is an article I wrote:

Source: Google

Now, whenever someone searches for "How to Start a Business," they find my article in the first place. According to Google, I am the top authority on starting a business. Not Bill Gates. Not an Elon Musk

A former English major in the mid-twenties with no business experience is ahead of Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey – everyone.

Now, there are a lot of things that have gone into this top ranking, which I will do my best to explain in this article. But before doing that, let's first address a larger issue.

How important is it to have a high ranking on Google?

In short, a lot.

You might think that using social media is the best way to get your blog or website seen. I do not want to neglect them. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and everything else can be powerful tools to help you build a follow up.

But there are two main reasons why Google ranks in the search results:

1. Google is the most visited site in the world. Even getting a fraction of Google's traffic is important to your website.
2. Optimized content can stay in the first place as long as it's relevant. A Facebook message appears in a stream for a few hours. A tweet could be ignored. But a top-notch Google message can take months, if not years. For example, I wrote my article "How to Start a Business" in October, and it's # 1 eight months later. You can not get that on social media. Even if you use a post pinned, you only have one. There is no limit to the number of Google articles you can write.

So, now we know what SEO is and why it's important. But, how do we really optimize our content? How can we make content online that appears on the first page of Google, Bing and other search engines?

Related: Your SEO Checklist: 4 Steps to Optimize Your Website

Before writing your message, make sure your site is optimized.

Search engines care more than words on the page. They also take into account factors such as the quality and consistency of the speed and authority of your site. There are tons of other factors that go into website SEO, but break down those two.

Speed ​​

There are a ton of reasons for your site to work as fast as possible. Web users are notoriously impatient, and they are likely to leave your website – maybe forever – if it only takes two seconds to load. At the same time, improving the speed of the site can lead to increased conversions, downloads and views.

Entrepreneur Contributor Thomas Smale has two great strategies that you can use to improve the speed of your website. The first is to optimize your images. He writes, "Research shows that on average, more than half of the memory load of a website is absorbed by images. One of the easiest ways to improve the loading time of your pages is to optimize all your images for the web. "

Chances are that you can probably reduce the size of your image files without sacrificing quality.For example, it is not necessary to download an image of 5,000 pixels by 5,000 pixels in a box of only 500 square pixels.This image is 100 times larger than it should be, and that could be the difference between a fast loading site and a slow site.

You should also think about the density of your image.Most of the computer screens only display images at 72 pixels per inch (ppi), which means that everything that is lighter is wasted – like watching a high definition Blu Ray movie on an old TV.

a square of 500 pixels, you should check the ppi to make sure that it is set to 72. Often, the images are fixed at 300 ppi, which makes your image file four times more large than necessary without improving the quality

Smale's second suggestion is to optimize for mobile. He writes: "Users spend an average of 69% of their time on smartphones. Yet, many commercial sites continue to perform poorly on mobile. It's something that companies can not afford. "

There are all kinds of things you can do to improve your mobile performance, for example, if you're creating your own website, you can implement Accelerated Mobile Pages to simplify your mobile pages and speed things up." [19659004] If you use one of the popular web hosting sites for your website, you need to check to see how this host performs on mobile. Entrepreneur Segun Onibalusi contributor found that Duda has better performed on mobile as WordPress, Wix or Weebly, but you should do your own research to find the one that works best for your content.

19659019] Marketing Campaign

Authority

The authority comes from different sources – users, other websites and search engines – but in reality it comes back to trust.

How long? b has it been relevant and for how long have you been creating content around a given subject? Do other experts use your website as a source? For example, Entrepreneur published his online list of the top 500 franchises each year since 2001. We divide each of the companies – why did they list? , the history of the company and more.

This kind of consistency and longevity has made our rankings remarkable. If you go to the McDonald's franchise page, the Entrepreneur Rankings are mentioned in the first two sentences: "McDonald's continues to be recognized as a franchise company. first order. Entrepreneur ranked McDonald # 1 on the Franchise Entrepreneur 500 for 2018. "

We are not just an expert on franchises – we are the expert. So when we write an article on franchises, our authority helps push that content to the top of Google. If you searched for "Cheap Franchises", you will see something like this:

Source: Google

We are not just the result of superior search – we own four of the top five places . We are the authority on cheap franchises

But, that does not mean we are the authority over everything. There are many topics that we do not cover at Entrepreneur . For example, if we write an article about the World Cup, we would not expect to be ahead of ESPN or FOX Sports. These sites cover football every day.

In the same way, you can create your own niche on Google. The more general you are, the more likely you are to meet a website with more authority than yours who has written on the same subject. But, if you can create specific content for an audience, you can avoid the giants in your industry and find your way to the top spot on Google.

For example, Entrepreneur Special Products Editor Andrea Huspeni a website called The Life of This Dog, which is called the "trusted resource for dog parents to discover the latest events locals in their community. "

Recently, This Dog's Life published an article titled" 8 of the Most Dog-Friendly Offices 2018. "Now, if you had to google" Dog-Friendly Offices ", you would not will not find the story of This Dog's Life.The first place would be taken by an article from a much larger website, Fortune .

[19659004] Source: Google

Note the date on this article – it was published in March 2016. This is a good example of a good Google's lifetime result. During the last two years, people who wanted to learn about dog-friendly services were going Fortune r read this article.

The Fortune article was also the occasion of this dog's life. Since this is from 2016, it is possible that these suggestions are out of date. Dog lovers might rather choose to look for something more specific, such as "Dog Friendly Offices in 2018." And guess who is on the first page for this search, before the article Fortune ? little specificity has allowed this dog's life to rank on the first page on Google – even reaching the # 1 for a while.

Related: 4 Reasons Why Quality SEO Will Cost You, and Why Worth It

2. When writing your message, you should have a keyword or search term in mind.

Google will not magically rank your website in the top 10 just because you are writing a post. You need to help search engines by predicting what people will look for to find your story. For example, let's say I write an article for Entrepreneur about what kids need to run their own lemonade stand.

If I wrote the title of an article on lemonade, I could try writing a funny or punny title, like (bear with me on these):

1. Comment to be Beyoncé and "lemonade"
2. Lemonaid: Useful tips to run your summer position
3. Sugar, water and lemons: A perfect recipe

And if someone read my article in a newspaper printed, he could see a picture of lemonade or read a little bit of history and understand what it's all about.

But nobody on the Internet is looking for terms like "Lemonaid" or "Sugar, Water and Lemons". They might look for "How to Be Beyonce", but they will not want a story on the lemonade stands as an answer.

If you are writing an article for the web, then, it is important to be clear. Here are some top SEO headlines for an article on how to hold a lemonade stand:

1. How to Operate a Lemonade Stand
2. Tips on Operating a Lemonade Stand
3. What Ingredients Have you need to run a lemonade stand? A checklist

These titles are simpler and reflect how a potential user would look for information on lemonade stands. It is important.

The key search term in each of my titles is "Run a Lemonade Stand" because I want people to find my article when they are looking for information on the use of a lemonade stand . When selecting your own keyword, you should try to think of how people would look for the information you offer.

Related: What's an SEO?

When you choose your search term, you must use it in the post.

Putting the keyword in the title is important, but it's not the only thing you should do to optimize your story

You should also include your keyword throughout history, including in your intro and in a "heading 2" or H2 tag, somewhere in the piece.

One potential way to add keywords is the use of related links. By adding related links with similar titles, you can add keywords without changing the content of your article. In my story on "How to Start a Business", I added a link to a story on "How to Start a Business Online." This story is more specific than mine because it only concerns online businesses, but it still contains keywords that I've used.

Use internal links to other stories on related topics of your website. For example, I could add a link in my article on child entrepreneurs or how parents can make money for the university.

If you have the budget, online tools such as Searchmetrics or Brightedge can help you often, you should use your keyword in the article, as well as additional keywords that you should include in your article. If you do not do it, it's OK. Try using your keyword or search term as much as you can without going overboard

File: 10 Search Engines You Do not Know

You should always write as if you were talking to people and not to a machine.

Search engines penalize short articles (less than 300 words) that create keywords without saying anything. Google and others prefer longer items.

Depending on the subject, what "longer" means may vary. For an article on lemonade stands, 700 words can be longer than the average. For an article on how to start a business, search engines might require something closer to 4000.

This is another difference between writing for search engine optimization and writing for a newspaper . In a newspaper, each word occupies physical space on the page. Every useless word is literally a waste of space.

Online, it's better to take the time to make sure everything is clear, even if it takes a few extra words.

You should also write in an accessible manner. Try not to fall too much into the weeds, even if you are talking about something technical. If you write with easy-to-read prose, search engines will be more likely to rank your story well and, more importantly, your readers will appreciate it.

Which brings us to the last stage of search engine optimization … [19659004] Related: Meet the Real Search Engine Optimizer

3. After writing your post, you have to share it.

And it is necessary that other people also share it

It's pretty simple: if people share your article, it means that they think others should see it. Is not this all the interest of a search engine – directing people to the publications, websites and information that they should see?

In the same way that you could buy a product or service after someone recommended it. Google and other search engines are more likely to engage on your page after others have shared it.

You need to use social media to start this conversation so others can recommend your message. To do this, you can use one of the following two strategies:

1. S 'press your own social network
2. S' tap on the social network of a partner.

Ideally, you could do both at the same time. For example, Entrepreneur Associate Editor Lydia Belanger interviewed Alisha Marie in an article titled "What Does This YouTube Star Do With 7.3 Million Subscribers to Deal With Burnout"

with 4500 followers, which is already a good start. But then, the article had more firepower when it was shared by Entrepreneur official Twitter and Facebook accounts, which have about 3.4 million followers each. In addition, Mary has put the article in a story on Instagram, drawing in its 3.7 million followers.

By exploiting all these sources, the history of Belanger was shared by accounts with more than 10 million followers

. perspective, the Instagram account of Bill Gates has about 1.7 million followers

Related: SEO 2018: 15 Rules to dominate the search results online

ago Many Ways to Create Partners Your Content You could do what Belanger did and interview someone with a great social follow up. You can agree to exchange stories with other websites or blogs in your area, where you share their stories and share yours. You can create Facebook groups with like-minded people who will want to read and share your work.

But it's also important to develop your own social network. In this way, you do not have to rely on the participation of others. You can start the conversation that gets you recognized on Google.

In an April 2018 message, Entrepreneur Contributor Deep Patel offered seven ideas to increase your social follow-up. They are:

1. Develop a multichannel approach. You never know which social media channel will be in favor in a few years. If you have the resources to do it, it never hurts to establish a presence on multiple platforms.
2. Invest in the marketing of influence. These do not have to be long-term partnerships, but influencers can help you connect with your target audience.
3. Engage commentators as quickly as possible. Facebook and Instagram use "engagement" as the main factor in their algorithms to determine what to show their users. If you can respond quickly to your subscribers, they will be more likely to interact with your content.
4. Amplify the scope through similar audiences. Remember to use paid marketing on social networks once you have established a clear strategy.
5. Measure the success of a strategy through on-site and on-site measurement. The badyzes are your friend. Use the tools made available by Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics and many other things to understand what works and what does not work.
6. Create a clear and unique brand identity. We have already seen how important it is to carve out a place for search engine optimization. The same goes for your social brand. Social networks are crowded, and you do not want to be a mediocre version of anyone else.
7. Find creative ways to delight people. According to Patel, the average person shares a positive customer service experience with nine other people. So, if you can create a positive and memorable experience, chances are you'll develop loyal followers who will become your brand ambbadadors.

However, as in all things, the number one key is simpler. If you work on growing your social media platforms with deliberation, consistency and patience, you will do well.

Related: 9 Key Questions to Ask an SEO Company Before Engaging

Recap: To optimize your content for search engines, you need to do three things.

One of the best ways to gain traffic is to improve the search engine optimization of your site. Ranking in the first page of a search engine results page (SERP) can literally bring millions of people to your website. You can then use this traffic to sell ads, write sponsored messages, or even create a successful online store.

To optimize your content, you must first understand that SEO starts with building your website. Work with a developer or search what Google and other search engines expect from your website, then do what you can to make sure they get it. Concentrate on creating your website as quickly as possible. Over time, you should try to strengthen your authority on the topics that are essential to your website.

Next, you must write a message that targets a specific keyword or search term. Make sure you use this keyword in the title as well as throughout the article. You must use the links and internal links that reference your website and inform Google of the purpose of the article. At the same time, make sure that you write something that informs the reader and not only targets Google's algorithm.

Finally, you need to create an online conversation about your play via social media. Use partnerships as well as your own platforms to create a buzz around your website that even Google can not ignore.

If you can do these three things, you can create top-notch items and put Google's power in the palm. from your hand.