Site development and promotion

Did you find this SEO blog post via a Google search? Yes, my SEO techniques really work.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is probably the most important competitive digital marketing advantage that you can have over your competition. Ranking high for your target keywords not only puts you in the spotlight but also can help you steal business from your competition. In this day and age, if you rank anything past the first page on Google you will barely get any traffic so you need to work on your SEO if you’re serious about your online presence.

I’ve been doing SEO for the last 5 years, and throughout those years, I’ve tried to consume all the information about SEO that I could get my hands on. This blog post is all that information plus new ranking techniques that work in 2017, condensed.

I guarantee that even if you’re experienced with SEO, you will find a trick or two in this post that will help you climb higher on Google. This is a No-BS SEO tips guide where I will not only teach you the techniques but will also link you to plugins, tools and tutorials to implement them.

Every time I used a list I have ranked the steps to take in terms of easiness over ROI, i.e. the first items in each actionable list will bring you the most results.

YOU SHOULD WORK ALONG EACH STEP WITHOUT SKIPPING ANYTHING IF YOU TRULY WANT TO ACHIEVE THE RESULTS AND IMPROVE YOUR SEO. THEREFORE, BOOKMARK THIS PAGE AND KEEP COMING BACK TO IT UNTIL YOU’RE FINISHED WITH THE TUTORIAL.

Don’t have time to implement all this? Just hire me and I’ll get you there. You can chat with me via Facebook here.

1) SEO basics

Definition of SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is a way to reverse-engineer how a Search Engine (Google) works in order to rank higher in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). By having a strong SEO, a website owner can get free organic traffic that otherwise he or she would have to pay for. Easier said than done, ranking on the first page of Google is both a science and an art. I wrote another post that goes in a little more depth about what SEO is. 

Which factors affect SEO?

SEO is affected by a multitude of factors such as the authority of your root domain (flux.la), your subdomain (sub.flux.la) and the authority of the url itself (flux.la/10-seo-tips-worth-thousands/). Also Google takes thousands of other cues when it comes to ranking your site, such as time on site, bounce rate, social shares and more.

Remember, the goal of Google is to show visitors the best information within the first few results, so their algorithms must analyze a lot of factors to achieve that.

We can subdivide these SEO ranking factors into two sections: On-page and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to any optimization that you can do to the structure of your site itself. Here are the most important aspects:

1. Fix all your meta tags. Install Yoast SEO and make sure all your blog posts have a green light. Make sure to fill in a keyword rich title and description.
2. Use descriptive and straightforward URLS. example: https://alejandrorioja.com/blog/seo-tips/
3. Link to authority sites. Various studies show that linking to high domain authority sites like Wikipedia or Harvard can increase your Google rankings.
4. Site speed is important. Google has indicated in their webmaster’s blog that page load time is one of the signals they look at when evaluating your site: “Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.”
   Here is what you can do to improve your site speed
   • If you’re using WordPress,
     1. Install WP Super Cache (easy to use, less control) or W3 Total Cache(more control, harder to use)
     2. Install Ewww Image Optimizer to reduce your image sizes.
   • Otherwise, you will need to do the following
     1. Compress your HTML, JS, and CSS files via Gzip (Don’t do images)
     2. Use a content distribution network (CDN) like Amazon Cloudfront. (A CDN is a network of servers located all over the world all of which contain copies of your site. Using a CDN, you can distribute the load of serving your pages so that your sites can load faster.)
     3. Use Photoshop to optimize your images for web. 
5. (Nice to have) Buy an SSL certificate. This will make your site more “legit” but also will also give you a boost in the search results. Read the official announcement by Google.
6. Learn how to create the perfect SEO article or hire me to write a perfect article of 700-1000 words for $250. By perfect I not only mean SEO-wise but also content-wise such as this article so you keep people on your site and also generate business from it. Send me a topic and I’ll write something for you.

Off-page SEO

Here are some key factors that most people miss

1. Social Shares. Yes, Google DOES care about how much social traffic your article gets. Here are some ideas to boost that.
   • Join a lot (and I mean a lot) of Facebook Groups in your niche. Post to all those groups every time you create a new post, and repost every 2-3 months. This will increase your traffic like crazy, not to mention that each share, like, and comment adds to your social score.
   • As you can imagine, you would need to spend a lot of time posting to 100s of Facebook groups every time you wanted to promote an article. If you have been reading my articles, you know how much I hate doing repetitive tasks, so I created a way to post to multiple Facebook groups by means of a script. With this script you can bulk select all the groups that you want to post to, select a delay (to pass Facebook’s spam filter ? ), and more. If you want paid access to it, message me.
2. Press and Powerful backlinks from high authority sites. Here quality trumps quantity, although quantity shouldn’t be overlooked. A shout out from Forbes is worth a lot more than 100 lower-tier sites, but the lower-tier sites can help you achieve good backlink volume. Here’s how to get all those backlinks.
   • Reach out to other bloggers and writers to see if they want to cover your story. My most effective way to reach out is via Facebook Messenger or Twitter (in that order), email requests usually hit the spam folder but a carefully crafted A/B testing campaign will yield you good results. 
   • Build relationships with writers in your space so that they cover you not just once but multiple times. Provide value first before asking for anything. 
   • I can help you with more quality backlinks.
     1. For starters, if you want to guest post on my sites, by all means message me with a couple sample writings and ideas.
     2. If you’re an entrepreneur, I will feature you on my project Future Sharks.
     3. Lastly, if you want to go all out, hire my marketing agency Flux.LAwhere we can get you a ton more backlinks and press releases. Evidence of our work is our sister company Flux Chargers, which has been featured in Mashable, Engadget, Digital Trends, Yahoo Tech and 50 other top blogs. You can also check the press that I’ve received which includes The Huffington Post, BBC, Gazelle and others. 

What type of content optimizes well?

Generally, long content will out-seo any other short form.

The general strategy to write a blog post is to create one that adds value (just like this one, I hope). 300 word blog posts won’t cut it in the long term for the following reason: people will only click on your site, read the article in 30 seconds and leave, without giving you the opportunity to convert that click into a client. Also, long posts will naturally contain a healthy sprinkle of keywords throughout the text instead of a jam-packed 300-word article in which 50 of the words are just your target keywords. This blog post for instance is 2400 words. 

2) Dominate SEO and Rank High on Google

Now that we’ve covered the basics of Search Engine Optimization, it is time to talk about Search Engine Domination.

The secret in SEO that no SEO expert will tell you is that you need a combination of the following 2 factors:

1. Good Great content that naturally has your keyword(s) included in the body. Through multiple tests, I have found that the ideal length of a top ranking blog post of mine is 1500-2500 words. Neil Patel shows more stats about this here.
   • Notice the structure of this blog post. See how I naturally included multiple variations of the keywords (called LSI keywords) that I am looking to target “how to do seo”, “seo tips and techniques”, “search engine optimization wordpress”, etc. Make a special note of all the subheadings <h2>, <h3> that I’ve used.
   • You need to write amazing content that brings more value than your competitors if you want to rank higher than them. Check out this Skyscraper Technique by Brian Dean.
2. Backlinks. Backlinks. Backlinks. I put this one second because content must come first but backlinks are the holy grail of SEO.
   • You can check the backlink profile of your competitors page by copying and pasting the link into Ahrefs or SEMrush, from there you can go to each of the sites that are linking to them and try to get a backlink to your site.
   • You can also buy expiring domains and 301 redirect them to your site. You will get all the SEO juice that those domains had built. <— This is a very undervalued resource, provided that you find good domains. As an added plus, if you buy domains in your niche, you can redirect all their traffic to your site.

If you follow these two things (great content and solid backlinks) you can be sure your site will be safe of any Penguin, Panda or Fred updates.

Which tools do you use to do SEO research?

As evidenced throughout this SEO blog post, I am a big fan of tools and scripts to make my life easier. I have probably tested more than 30 tools over the years. Here are my personal favorites to outrank my competitors.

Essential:

1. (paid) Ahrefs. This tool will allow you to spy on your competitors backlinks and do advanced Keyword Research. I have the Lite plan for $100/mo. 
2. (paid) SEMRush. Similar to Ahrefs but now recently launched a beta version of a content optimizer that I really like. I am on the free trial.
3. (free) Google Keyword Planner. You can use the Keyword Planner to see the search volume and difficulty of a particular set of keywords.
4. (paid) Backlinksindexer. To index all the backlinks that you create. I pay $10/mo.

Nice to have:

1. (free) Alexa Toolbar. Although the Alexa Rank of a site has nothing to do with its SEO, I still find it valuable to understand what kind of traffic my sites and competitors sites are getting and where it is coming from. Here is how to lower your Alexa Rank.
2. (free) The Moz Toolbar, which helps me look at various metrics of a page (such as its domain authority) at a quick glance.

So what’s the exact step-by-step strategy that I follow to optimize my site?

I work with clients from various industries from bitcoin to biotech and consumer electronics. While each and every client has a different strategy, the SEO ranking principles are the same. This is the blueprint I follow for each post:

1. Define the goal of your content (aka. the content strategy)

There is no point in ranking high if that blog post is not allowing you to forge a relationship with your readers, earn Adsense Revenue or generate business for you.

Thus, the first step in writing is determining what you want to achieve with your post. Are you writing to generate leads? Collecting sign-ups? Do you want to be perceived as an industry leader?

The goal of your content strategy will largely determine how you will structure your blog post.

For instance if you want to be a thought leader then you need a long post, to collect sign ups you need an easier to follow funnel with reviews (and ideally a video).

2. Define the content topic

After you have defined your content strategy, think about what keywords and information your readers will find valuable.

If you’re writing about diet and weight loss with the hopes of selling your program to your subscribers, you want to create a relationship with your readers throughout a series of posts that inform the reader and that set you apart as a thought leader or expert in that field.

3. Find the right keywords to target

Ranking for “seo” is hard. Ranking for “seo tips” is a bit easier.

You can use multiple tools to find the keywords with the perfect balance of difficulty and search volume.

In Ahrefs, you can go to Keyword Research and type in a few of the keywords that relate to the blog post that you are looking to write.

After their algorithm runs, you will be presented with the stats for your keywords plus other keywords that you should consider.

Here, I like to pick keywords with difficulty <60 and volume > 500. Hint: You can sort this on Ahrefs. (Btw, I’m not affiliated with Ahrefs, I just love their tools)

Once you have 3 or 4 keywords identified, I get to writing.

(in my case “seo tips”, “seo optimization tips”, “wordpress seo tips”)

4. Writing the perfect content that SEOs almost naturally

What I do first is search those keywords and see what the top rankers are writing about and see if they are mentioning something I don’t already know. From there, I structure my post simply by headers. 

After the keywords are strategically placed in the H2 headers, the paragraphs pretty much write themselves.

Once the blog post is drafted up, it’s time for an SEO check via Yoast. On the focus keyword I pick the keyword with the highest volume from the 3-4 target keywords.

I hit Publish and then wait I hope it ranks.

No, of course not. That’s just the beginning the secret of ranking is what comes after.

5. The half-automatic, half-manual way of ranking the content

You wouldn’t want all the hard work of writing the perfect blog post to just go to waste, right?

A blog post is only valuable if it ranks on the first page, otherwise it really doesn’t matter.

Here are few things I do to rank such content:

• The obvious and easy one: share on all my social media accounts. Here’s the trick to automate all that: Use IFTTT and connect WordPress with all your accounts. That way you spend 10 min setting all up, and never have to worry about it again.
• Syndicate my content to Thrive Global for example automatically using the Medium plugin on WordPress (with the “canonical” tag, of course) 
• I already have a network of bloggers that I created that will reference my content and share it, this creates the necessary backlinks to help me rank higher. But Alejandro, how did you get this in the first place? Well, I followed this strategy to build relationships with bloggers.

Conclusion

That’s all. I just described the step-by-step SEO strategy that I use for my own sites and for my clients. Hopefully, you found it valuable and you act on this today.

Don’t have time to implement all this? Just hire me and I’ll get you there.

Have a friend that is struggling with SEO? Send them this guide to help them out. 

Did you learn something new? Let me know in the comments. Also if you know any other techniques that are not mentioned in this SEO post, please share them so that we can all benefit.

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