SEO is easy, really

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the science of getting the content of your website in front of people doing searches on Search Engines such as Google and Bing.

SEO is less about technology and much more about content

SEO used to be very technical, you needed to have an SEO expert to find the right keywords, to optimize your site and use a whole bunch of technical tricks to rank your web pages higher in search engines. While there still is a certain amount of technology involved in SEO, the bulk of the effort is now rewarded through the content of the articles or the pages of a website. In the past couple years, Google (the most used search engine in the world) has changed its ranking algorithm at least three times (code name Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird) to focus on rewarding websites that publish original and relevant content on a regular basis.

A blog where you publish relevant content regularly is basically all you need for SEO

So how easy is it to do SEO if you already have a website ranked in Google or Bing. In other words, do you find your website when you Google or Bing it? 1. Add a blog to your website, or if you already have one do a better job of using the one you have 2. Figure out all the question you think your clients or audiences might have about your products and services or about your industry. Think utility content first. You must solve problems. If in doubt, ask your customer service (they hear questions all day), or your sales reps (they answer questions all day). 3. Answer the questions with blog posts and publish them on a regular basis (once a week at least). 4. Publish the link to those articles on Social Media to share the wealth. If you’re starting from scratch, it will be a little bit more technical as you need to setup a domain name, choose a design template, get your website or blog setup, and then tell search engines that you exist (using their free Webmaster tools). You’ll also need to setup accounts on the mainstream social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn (if you have a B2B focus).

Is SEO really that simple?

Yes if you’re applying the Pareto principle of the 80/20. By simply publishing relevant & utility content on a regular basis on your website, and sharing it on Social Media, you’ll get that 80% reward right of the bat (give it a few weeks for Search Engines to pick up the pace). I really like this illustration from Mashable’s article: The New SEO Rules in a Content Marketing World

Going the extra mile to optimize your SEO

To get the extra 20% efficiency, you could spend more time understanding what your audience needs and precisely what keywords they’re typing in search engines (using Google Trends or Google AdWords KeyWords Planner for example). You could add photos to your articles, and you could add hashtags to your tweets and Google+ shares. You could also make sure you have a few technical features such as automatic submission of your XML sitemap to search engines and giving titles with relevant keywords to your photos, etc. But other than that, it’s pretty straight forward. Think utility. Write in short format. Publish to your website/blog. Share on Social Media. And they will come. Need proof? Read this analysis based on a HubSpot’s 2014 State of Inbound Marketing on how content drives traffic (see illustration here below).