u/el4z Been hired by my dad to do SEO. Don't know how to do SEO Hey guys, I'm a 24 year old in New Zealand, freshly unemployed and just been offered a job by my dad to help him with search engine optimisation for his website and potentially his clients as a service in the future. Reading some free online content has me beginning to grasp the fundamentals but mostly thinking I'm in over my head. What are some quality free courses I can educate myself with? Is it possible to do effective SEO with zero experience website building and using moonfruit as a template? A lot of the information I've read has been in regards to getting into the code and optimising it for specific keywords, I haven't spent a huge amount of time on moonfruit but it seems pretty different from WordPress. I'm about to finish my first day and so far all I've accomplished is submitting my dad's website to all the reputable looking directories I could find, set up a Facebook page, made a Google my business account and fixed a few broken links on his site. Any advice would be hugely appreciated. I could post the website I'm trying to rank if that'd be helpful but don't wanna be spammy. Thanks! 38 💬🗨📰👈
johnnyfeech You are on your way… First thing you want to do is find the "keywords" that his business is trying to rank for (an easier way to think of it is finding the keywords that you "think" people will plug n to search engines that would help them find your type of business or service). After you've drafted a list of keywords…post things on social media that reflect your type of business, punch in keywords that relate in the text/description section of your posts. Hashtag similar business keywords (that are relevant and make sense) don't be SPAMMY, be helpful and informative with your posts (and don't forget to post to Google +) although G+ is a baby to Facebook (Google shows favor to those who use their platform and therefore COULD show your business in various search engine queries (They'll never show a Facebook post in search results, but they will show a G+ post if it is relevant to the search query. Remember, don't bang customers over the head with offers/sales or things like that, be helpful and give advice and solutions to peoples problems, show them things that solve problems and make your business a trusted source/brand. If there is a blog section on the website, write some valuable content and share the shit out of it anywhere you can. Lastly, spend some money on Google AdWords (it doesn't have to be a lot of $) just enough to give you some presence in the space. This is a "VERY RUDIMENTARY" way to get started…to be sure this is a complicated effort that (if you're lucky) will show results in months not weeks. So keep at it, read and learn yourself and you'll be fine
el4z ✍️ That was a very helpful and prompt reply! Thanks for breaking it down a bit. I was planning on doing the Google adwords certification course this week then begin investing in my first keywords next week. Your post has me stressing out a little less, I appreciate the positivity.
ACGillesp When he says "spend some money on Google adwords", make sure to get the free credits of $100 or so, and call Google adwords support. It's a completely free consultation. Tell them it's your first time setting up an adwords account and you want to optimize your campaign. I have saved thousands of dollars in making my keywords be an exact phrase match because the adwords campaigns take advantage of users with broad keyword match types. el4z ✍️ I'll be sure to do that. Thanks. Murrayz Make sure to double-check all keywords though, first time I did Search Engine Advertising (SEA) Google set up a campaign and used B2C keywords instead of B2B. Monitor it closely after launch.
anax44 Backlinko.com is a great place to get some good beginners information. Also, you don't need to be familiar with much other than basic html. What kind of site does your dad run?
el4z ✍️ He's a graphic designer and also generally involved in advertising – this site just has a short description of what he and his team can do, images of his previous work and a phone number. It's only a temporary page apparently so it's only one page for the moment. I guess the main goal of the page is to get phone calls so he can offer a quote.
deskfull So you will want more content/pages (services, about, projects, portfolio, clients, testimonials, blog) aimed at the type of work he does. Is he focused on a geographic market? Does he cater to a specific market? It would be difficult to rank well for "graphic designer" but less difficult to rank well for "auckland graphic designer" or better yet "auckland graphic designer for medical clinics." el4z ✍️ Right, so pays to go for a less competitive niche. I think the main website will be live in a month or so but I'll keep those ideas in mind for then. I'm done for the day but now I've got some homework. Thank you everyone.
Hansoftech Keyword research is the basic to start with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Use Google keyword planner for this.Build your content with high search & low competitive keywords. Do on-page optimization with proper Title tags, Meta tags, H1 tags, alt tags etc. then move on to off-page optimization i.e creating an account on social media sites, Joining forum discussions, Engaging in social bookmarking sites etc.. Starting an online business timmyfish001 Sup dude! Fellow kiwi here. I've been working in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for a while now and if you happen to be around Wellington and wana catch up for a coffee and pick my brain about anything, feel free! Heaps of good advice here and sooooo much info online but if you wana chat just holla at me!
el4z ✍️ Thanks for the offer man! I'm living in auckland but my girlfriend's from down there so who knows, might wind up down there.
timmyfish001 No worries man! Even if it's just a call. SEO is a rabbit hole that goes verrrrry deep.
IONaut Is it a WordPress site. If so install Yoast SEO plugin and set up the site in Google webmaster tools. You probably want a schema plugin as well. Yoast SEO will allow you to see the problems per page and tell you how to fix them. Webmaster tools will let you see it as Google does and submit it for crawling. Schema and structured data let's Google know what all the info actually is (like hours of operation or prices ) . And don't forget a sitemap.xml and robot.txt. Also note that AdWords is not Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It's just straight-up advertising. It does not help your search ranking in the least. This should be considered a separate marketing effort. The only place they crossover is that you can use AdWords Keyword Planner to scope out keywords for your a SEO. Really, if your organic SEO is good enough you don't need adwords and you can save yourself a ton of money. Usually you need to spend thousands of dollars on AdWords over a course of about 8 months before you start seeing any results at all. thehandsomegenius Years ago, I used to do a bit of work for a web designer who would bring me Moonfruit websites to optimise. Maybe it's gotten a lot better since.. but dude, that Content Management System (cms) always SUCKED for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And also just generally. Tell your dad, building flash based websites is like getting a mullet haircut and wearing a hypercolor t-shirt
el4z ✍️ What were some of the issues you ran into using moonfruit? I think I'd have to show my dad a big list of reasons to switch to a different sitebuilder because they've spent a lot of resources building on moonfruit. Great analogy btw, I think mullets should make a comeback though.
constructivworks Mullets are back in Canada. Don't know about Moonfruit but… Go to MOZ, SEMrush, there's tons of other sites out there. Plus there's an inexpensive writing tool called Zerys. Some writers are ok and others suck but you get what you pay for. You can spend anywhere from .05 to .15 /word at Zerys to get your content marketing rolling. The other thing to do is to reach out to geographically different internet marketing companies. As much as the internet has made the world a smaller place, people still like to deal with people who are in their areas. So to get a link from another site, like Canada would be good. I'd be happy to share one of your articles on my site and link to you. My Domain isn't strong, it was a 20 but I've since dropped to a 14. I'm guessing it's because I just moved all my sites of a GoDaddy Virtual Private Server (VPS) to a Linode VPS. All the best. I'm sure you're going to rock it. smiley44 You didn't say what your father's business is, but remember you are (probably) now in the lead generation business. All the online traffic/rankings in the world don't mean a damn thing if you do not bring QUALIFIED LEADS through your website. So do your market research and buyer persona; figure out your audience and their needs. All the work you do should be based on these things, not necessarily SEO "best practices." good luck!
