Unschoolers Guild
SEO for Beginners
A guide prepared by Dr. Jessica Simpkins
Key Terminology
SEO = search engine optimization
Query = request for information (made using a search engine)
Search engine = aka virtual library; software system that searches the Internet to provide
information based on a query (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing, AskJeeves)
SERP = search engine results page (i.e. the search results that pop up on Google after entering
a query)
Keyword = words or phrases that people type into search engines as part of their query
(e.g. Arabica coffee beans)
Seed keyword = broad keyword related to your niche (E.g. if your business sells body care
products, seed keywords for you might be lotion, moisturizer, etc.)
Search Intent = what the searcher wants and hopes to achieve based on what they type into the
search engine; this is not just based on the words they type into the search bar
Crawling = process by which a search engine gathers information that is publicly available on
the Internet
Indexing = process by which a search engine stores and organizes the content found during the
crawling process.
Ranking = process by which a search engine orders and displays content that will best answer a
searcher's query, ordered from most relevant to least relevant
Domain name = a website (www.drjessicasimpkins.com is my domain)
URL = specific web page or web address (www.drjessicasimpkins.com/contact-us is my contact
page)
Backlink = hyperlinks from a page on one website that links to another page
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What is SEO, why do I care, and what do I do with it?
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is a framework used to create new web content and modify existing
web content so that search engines like Google will have an easier time crawling, ranking, and
indexing your information.
The overall goal is to improve the likelihood of your web content being displayed on the first
page of Google’s search page, making it easy for people to find you.
Why should I care about SEO?
1) Search traffic is FREE. Understanding how to use SEO will drive people to your
website. This is relevant for any business, non-profit, blog, organizational group, etc.
If you can optimize your content and rank highly on search results, you will have free
advertising that directs people in your target audience directly to your website.
It can help you save you time and money on your marketing and ad campaigns.
2) The number of searches remains fairly consistent from month to month, or has a
predictable cyclical pattern (e.g. searches for winter gear will spike over the colder
months)
3) Because your website is on the World Wide Web, you can reach people you wouldn’t
otherwise be able to reach with your local advertisements.
Ok great, but how do I actually use this?
1) Understand the basics of how Google ranks information.
2) Keep search intent in mind at all times (i.e. what your target audience wants).
3) Perform keyword research.
4) Create content based on keyword research and elements of SEO.
5) Increase your authority (and likelihood of visibility on search results) by building enough
high-quality links.
6) Perform routine website maintenance so search engines can crawl and index your
content more efficiently.
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1. Understanding Google (and other search engines)
Google’s mission statement: “Organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful.”
Purpose of Google
To provide users with the most relevant results for their query by:
1) Gathering as much publicly available information as possible
AND
2) Ranking this information systematically based on authority and relevance
How Google Works
To gather this data, Google uses “crawlers” or “spiders” that scan data starting from a list of
known URLs and then branch out along hyperlinks to other pages. Recall that the Internet is
also referred to as the World Wide Web.
Google uses a ranking algorithm to prioritize information based on relevance and authority.
Even though this algorithm is updated 500-600x per year, Google tells us a few important tips.
Google’s ranking algorithm favors information that:
1) Most closely matches search intent
2) Has a higher number of backlinks from other authoritative or high-traffic websites
3) Best answers the query (which is related to content depth, NOT length)
You can get more information about Google’s process of finding, indexing, and ranking websites
by reading Google’s Webmaster guidelines.
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2. All About Search Intent
What is Search Intent?
Search intent is the rationale behind why a person enters a query into a search engine. What
information are they really hoping to find?
Four Categories of Search Intent
Informational
Navigational
Transactional
Commercial
Investigation
Looking for information.
May or may not be
formulated as a
question.
Looking for a specific
website.
Looking to make a
purchase. Likely
already know what
they want to buy, but
looking at where to
buy it.
Gathering info and
weighing options for a
specific product or
service they have in
mind.
●
●
●
●
Examples
“What is SEO?”
“How to tile”
“Existentialism”
“Cameron Diaz”
●
●
●
Examples
“Trusted
Housesitters”
“Pinterest”
“AirBnb”
●
●
●
Examples
“Coupon for
Masterclass”
“Cheap apple
watch”
“Buy Fitbit
Versa 3.”
●
●
●
Examples
“iphone vs
android”
“Best
waterproof
mascara”
“Home
inspectors near
me”
Why Search Intent Matters
As already mentioned, ranking higher on Google = free search traffic directed to your website.
Why should Google put your page above someone else’s in your same niche?
To rank highly on search engines for specific keywords, you have to show them your page will
fulfill their goal of delivering the most relevant results for related queries.
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3. Performing Effective Keyword Research
5 elements to consider when picking keywords to rank for:
1) Search intent: Defined above– will describe 3 content characteristics below.
2) Search Demand: volume of searches made for a keyword on a monthly basis
3) Traffic Potential: the total search traffic your website could get if you rank at the top of
Google’s results page for that keyword (not the same as search demand)
4) Ranking Difficulty: how challenging it is to rank for this keyword
5) Business Potential: the value this keyword has to your business (unique to your niche
and business model)
How to Perform Effective Keyword Research
For the following steps we will pretend we own a bodycare business doing keyword
research. I will include screenshots from Ahrefs free tools.
1) Start by brainstorming a few seed keywords in your niche (e.g. bath bomb, lotion,
moisturizer).
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2) Use an SEO tool like those provided by Ahrefs or Semrush to search for a seed keyword in
your niche you want to rank for. We will use the key word “bath bomb”.
You will see something called KD (keyword difficulty) and volume (aka search demand).
Looking at the list above, we can see our keyword bath bomb and other related keywords. Let’s
explore “rainbow bath bomb”, which has a search demand of 1.6K/month and a keyword
difficulty score of 0.
According to their website, the Ahrefs keyword difficulty (KD) score “is calculated by taking a
trimmed mean of the number of linking domains to the current top-10 ranking pages and then
plotting the result on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100”. In other words, a KD of 0 should be
pretty easy to rank for and KD of 100 would be almost impossible to rank for.
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3) Next let’s enter our keyword into the SERP (search engine results page) checker tool to look
at the traffic potential of the top three ranking sites for this keyword.
Using the free Ahrefs SERP tool, we can only see data for the top three ranking websites. You
can get more data with a paid account.
The traffic for each of the top 3 ranking websites is much less than the 1.6K in search demand
we saw earlier. However 500+ visits per month in organic, unpaid traffic is not bad!
Let’s look at the number of backlinks (links from other websites pointing to this content) for
each site. The top two results have fewer than 20 backlinks, and the third has ZERO backlinks.
It’s looking like it could be fairly easy to rank for this keyword!
We also notice each of these top ranking websites are ranking for more keywords than just the
one seed keyword “rainbow bath bomb”. Oftentimes highly ranking websites rank for other
keywords that are related to the seed keyword you are searching, which contributes to overall
traffic potential.
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4) Now that we know we have a keyword that has high search demand, fairly high traffic
potential, and a low ranking difficulty, let’s head over to Google to get a closer look at the top
ranking websites for the keyword “rainbow bath bomb”. Here we will evaluate the 3 aspects of
content that relate to search intent.
Content Type
What type of content are you seeing?
E.g. blog posts, videos, product pages, category pages, landing pages
In our example, the first website is Amazon. Next we see commonly asked questions
related to our keyword. The second website shows us Bella Grace Bath Co, an
ecommerce website. Next are videos. The third website is Etsy.
Amazon and Etsy might be considered outliers because they are very broad, general
ecommerce platforms. For more competitor info, we could look at results further down
the list.
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Content Format
How is the content formatted?
Blog posts may be formatted as how to guides, “listicles” or opinion editorials.
Landing pages may show either a tool or calculator.
Our top three websites are all product pages. Looking at the video descriptions, we see
a demonstration, a review (similar to a blog post but in video form), and an instructional
video. The visual appeal of the rainbow bath bomb is obviously an important draw for
searchers!
Content Angle
● This is the value-driven hook that entices searchers to click on and visit your
page.
● Who is it geared toward? What benefit does the searcher receive?
We see in all of the top results a visual depiction of a white cloud-shaped bath bomb that
turns rainbow colors when wet. This implies a wow factor or element of surprise. We also
notice it is geared towards children rather than adults since the first and third result
specifically include “for kids” in their description.
Lastly, I want to point out that the second website title says “rainbow bath fizzy” rather
than the keyword we typed in: rainbow bath bomb. Google is an expert at matching
search intent and knows that these things are in the same category and will satisfy the
searcher’s query. Your title doesn’t have to match perfectly to rank well!
5) As part of assessing ranking difficulty, you need to determine if your authority is comparable
(or higher) than the other websites ranking for this keyword.
Website authority is based on domain rating (DR) and overall strength of a website’s backlink
profile.
We will define DR and cover authority in much greater depth in our next Unschoolers Guild
guide on how to gain authority through link building.
6) Finally, the keywords you choose MUST have value to your business!! If you don’t have a
beauty blog, kid’s store,bodycare store, etc., it is useless for you to try to rank for “rainbow bath
bomb”! Even if a keyword is related to your expertise and business, if it isn’t valuable to your
business, it probably isn’t worth ranking for.
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4. Create content using on-page SEO
Now that we have one or more keywords we want to rank for, we need to create optimized
content for Google to notice us. On-page SEO means optimizing the content we have on our
web pages for search engines to more effectively categorize and rank us.
I will mention there are some really cool artificial intelligence (AI) SEO writing tools you can pay
for to help you write optimized content in a fraction of the time it takes you to write it yourself.
We won’t cover those tools here today.
When generating content ideas, you can add on keyword modifiers to your seed keyword.
Again, your content should be of a similar type, format, and have a similar angle to those of your
competitors that you researched earlier.
(taken from Complete SEO Course for Beginners: Learn to Rank #1 in Google)
Practical Considerations for on-page SEO
1) To meet the search intent of your target audience, your content needs to match the content
type, format, and angle of your competitors that are currently ranking in the top 10 on the SERP.
2) Your content must leave the searchers feeling satisfied. Google will punish you for creating
click bait, so don’t do it!
3) Look for gaps related to your niche that your ranking competitors are not addressing and try
to fill those gaps.
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Best practices for on-page SEO
As we write our content, we need to keep some best practices in mind to help Google’s
“spiders” or “crawlers” have an easier time reading and indexing our website.
1) Include your target keyword in your title when it makes sense.
We need to keep the experience of our searchers in mind at all times. If it makes sense to
include our target keyword in the title, do it. But if it is too cumbersome or awkward, choose a
title that is more natural.
2) Use a short and descriptive URL slug.
The URL slug is what we see after the domain name (just after .com) that describes the content
on that page. We want the URL slug to be short and concise. As an example, I wrote an article
“Writing Your Medical School Personal Statement in 2022: 10 Best Tips.” I shortened the URL
slug to /medical-school-personal-statement/.
3) Meta description
This is HTML code meant to briefly describe your page, and we often see this on a SERP below
the page title. While Google says it doesn’t use this in its ranking process, it can influence
clickthrough rates.
You want to write something descriptive and concise to fit in this space, and ideally spark
interest in searchers (but without being click bait!)
4) Add internal links to and from your pages
An internal link is a link you include on one of your web pages that links to another
page of your domain. A simple example is having a link to your contact page on your home
page.
Internal links can pass link authority to other relevant pages and help search engines to better
understand a page’s content.
Again, moderation is key! Don’t annoy your target audience with too many internal links. It
should look natural and add value to their interaction with your website.
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5) Optimize your images
Optimizing your images can improve your on-page SEO and it is often overlooked.
Be sure to name your image files appropriately. For example, if an image has a generic file
name like DSC0045.jpg, make sure to change it to update it with a name that makes sense!
It is also helpful to write a brief description of what the image shows in the alt text section. Alt
text stands for alternative text. Although it is normally invisible as an HTML attribute, it will be
shown to viewers in the event that your image fails to load.
Lastly, be sure to compress your image to make the file size smaller, allowing for faster loading
times. You can use software like Shortpixel to optimize your image files for you.
6) Optimize content for readability
You want to create content that is easy to read. Use short sentences in short paragraphs. Write
as you would speak, avoid using big words, and consider gearing your writing towards a 6th
grade reading level to make it more digestible.
Use descriptive subheadings to make your content easy to skim. Your font size should be large
enough it can be easily read on a desktop and mobile device.
5. Gain Authority with Link Building
This will be covered extensively in the next guide.
In essence, the more relevant backlinks you have from other websites pointing to your content,
the higher authority you will have.
To rank for most keywords, you must have backlinks. If only someone could tell us how to build
these links!!! Stay tuned…
6. Basic Website Maintenance
This last section is more technical, but it covers a few backend tips to maintain a healthy
website and make it easier for search engines to index your content. In the eyes of Google, if
your content isn’t indexed, it doesn’t exist.
1) Make sure your pages don’t have a noindex metatag.
If someone helped build your website, they may have forgotten to remove noindex tags from
your pages. Noindex tags are helpful if your website is under development and you don’t want it
to be public yet. But if you want to be visible on Google, your pages need to be indexed!
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2) Sitemaps
These are XML files that list important URLs on your website, including pages, images, videos,
and other files.
Sitemaps help search engines more intelligently crawl your website. You can use plug-ins like
Yoast or Rankmath to generate sitemaps for you.
3) Cache your website’s content for faster loading times
Caching is a way to temporarily store copies of files so they can be delivered to your visitors in a
more efficient way. There are plug-ins to help you with this– I use WP Rocket.
4) Run scheduled audits on your website to check for SEO errors using Site Audit tools. Ahrefs
and Semrush both offer these tools.
Summary
Congratulations!! You just learned the basics of SEO and search
intent, keyword research, and ideas for maintaining site health.
Remember to keep search intent at the center of your content,
and balance the 5 elements of SEO when researching keywords.
If you haven’t already, sign up for a subscription to the
Unschoolers Guild for more high-yield, tactical guides on relevant
and timely skills.
You won’t want to miss our next guide on link building and how to
gain the authority you need to rank.
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