TLDR: Yes if you find the right person to run an SEO campaign for your website it can be insanely profitable but these people are very rare. They are rare because if someone can structure and run an effective SEO campaign why would they do it for your business for a few thousand dollars, when they could do it for their own business and make a few hundred thousand dollars? Most of the minor “SEO” offerings you see for a few hundred dollars are a complete waste of time. A proper SEO campaign is something that takes several years to fully execute. That’s the bad news, but the good news is SEO is a skill that is very easy to approach and learn. I’ll outline a list of effective techniques you can use on your website below. You can do everything yourself, learn a new skill, and build your business!
This is written from the perspective that your website is built in WordPress.
1.) Setup Your Website:
a. There are loads of great website hosting companies, one of the best for small scale beginner websites is Bluehost. If you are just starting your website select the Basic plan from this page:
https://www.bluehost.com/hosting/shared b. Make sure to activate your Free SSL certificate. Link all your images over HTTPS and all of your sites pages as well. HTTPS is a ranking signal:
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html c. Claim Your sites webmaster tools account, this lets you see your organic traffic rankings:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/#?modal_active=none2.) Identifying Your Target Audience:
a. Using Google keyword planner research your keywords:
https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/ b. Install google analytics on your website, link it with your webmaster tools account, setup goals, and annotate every time you make a tweak. Learn the inns and outs of analytics here:
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/3.) Install the Yoast SEO plugin on your site (
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/).
a. Take the keywords you researched in step two and incorporate them into your website
<title>most important | second | 3rd | site title/name <title>
<meta name="A proper description of your website that hopefully utilizes the most important phrase from your title">
meta content="INDEX, FOLLOW" name="GOOGLEBOT">
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="rating" content="Family">
<meta name="language" content="English">
<meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
<meta name="dc.identifier" content="https://yourwebsite.com">
*Do this for process for every major page of your website to ensure each page is properly targeting the terms and phrases you want it too.4.) Increase your websites speed:
a. Use these free tools to identify where you can improve your site speed:
i.
https://tools.pingdom.com/ ii.
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ iii.
https://gtmetrix.com/ iv. *Make the needed changes or hire a developer to assist. This is not like a grade in school, it’s not imperative that you get a 100%. Just remember that every second of load time you shave off can increase your conversions by 7%:
https://neilpatel.com/blog/loading-time/5.) Setup your Adwords Campaign
a.
**Don’t start spending money to advertise your site until you have completed the first 4 steps. If your site is slow and not targeted when you send visitors there the site will not convert. Plus if the site is not targeted well you will have a lower quality score and spend more $$ for each click: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/140351?hl=en b. Create an adwords campaign, link it to your analytics account and track your conversion rate.
c. A/B test your ad text every month to improve your click through rate and quality scores.
d. Adwords is a discipline in and of itself. Complete the courses here to become an adwords certified partner: (
https://landing.google.com/academyforads/#?modal_active=none) and then when you get really good you can win prizes from google, like the picture of my buddy and me below on a free trip to their campus :)
6.) Setup a remarketing campaign through either (
https://www.adroll.com/) or (
https://www.criteo.com/).
7.) Run a link building campaign. This is a very long play, try to think of a way to add value for other people and attract links. I’ve had success in the past by starting program/event that can naturally attract attention like a fundraiser or scholarship.