Maybe you’re heavily considering SEO but you don’t know exactly how it affects your position in the serps.

It can be difficult to really grasp the concept of SEO, especially with all of the information available online.

Google’s search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites.

So you can imagine how difficult it can be to try and learn exactly how Google ranks websites.

It may even be difficult when hiring someone because you’re not completely sure what your ROI is or how much you need to spend in order to achieve significant results.

We’ve consulted with countless business owners who have all had the same underlying question, “what effect does SEO have on your search?”

We are going to give you a breakdown of how SEO affects how potential customers will find you in the search engines.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know how you can change your SEO to start attracting more clients into your business.

So What Does SEO Do For Your Site?

The process of SEO on a website can accurately help Google understand the information that is on your webpage.

46% of product searches begin on Google. This means that whatever product or service your company is selling, there’s someone searching either products or services that your business sells directly or they are asking questions that need to be answered before moving forward with a purchase.

Having proper SEO done to your website will put you right in front of your target customer. You need to make sure your business shows up front and center whenever they have a related question.

Despite all the ranking factors that Google has, there are a few key important ones that you should do to maximize your ranking potential as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Proper Keyword Selection

SEO all starts with choosing the correct keywords.

So when it comes to keyword research, you should look for long-tail phrases that are directly serving the need or answering the question of potential customers.

(Source:Backlinko)

Long-tail keywords are phrases that have 4 or more words included in the search string. Although these phrases are longer, they are much more targeted and produce a higher ROI due to them being so specific.

How To Find Long-Tail Keywords

Our keyword research tool of choice is Ahrefs.

For this example we will use ppc management as the service that a company is offering.

We first start off by typing in a broad phrase of our service. In this example it would be “PPC”.

From this screenshot, you can see the broad term “ppc” is “super hard” to rank for according to Ahrefs. If you are a brand new blog, it may take you years to rank for a term like this.

Who wants to wait years to rank in Google? Not you, we know that for sure.

The next step would be to click on the “questions” tab.

Once you see all the keywords in the “questions” tab. You can start grabbing ideas that you could possibly start creating topics around.

The next step would be to start choosing relevant topics to create content around.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is nothing how it used to be. Back in the day you could get away with keyword stuffing and still rank in Google.

Those days are long gone.

On-page SEO now requires a strategy. If you are new to SEO and you need help coming up with a great on-page strategy, using a tool like SurferSEO.com, they also have a free 7 day trial.

Once in the dashboard, choose the “content editor” feature

Once in the “content editor” search your keyword and you will see the top 10 results.

Surfer SEO analyzes each result ranked in the top 10 for your targeted keyword.

You can also get an overview of the terms that are most used between all the top 10 results.

There is an option to use their own content editor which displays the targeted keywords that you should use to the right, which makes it easy to keep track of and make sure that you target most of the keywords in your content, in order to have excellent on-page SEO for your target keyword.

If you would like to use a free option for your on-page SEO needs, SEO Quake is an excellent alternative.

Start by installing the SEO Quake extension.

Once installed, you can view the info that is one the current webpage of whichever site you’re looking at.

We recommend that you take the first 5 results and see which terms are used the most and the keyword density of each term.

This method does take a lot longer, but it’s free and effective.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is similar to on-page SEO, the difference is that all of the optimization to rank higher in search is done off of the actual website.

While there are hundreds of different off-page factors that affect where you rank in Google, one of the most important is backlinks.

55.24% of pages don’t have a single backlink, this means if you can start building targeted and high-authority backlinks to your site, you can rank much quicker than your competitors.

There are a few ways that you can secure some high-quality backlinks to your site. One method would be to reach out to other blogs in your niche and ask to write an in-depth guest post for them.

If your topic idea is good enough, they may accept your submission and once they publish your post on their site, you will have a backlink from another relevant site linking to yours.

Pro Tip: Always make sure to include a link in your guest post back to your website.

If you do enough guest posts, over time Google will start to pick them up and begin ranking you for your targeted terms.

SEO can take anywhere from 4-6 months to begin working. During this time period, you should be publishing daily or weekly content and having SEO performed on your website continuously during this period.

If you are publishing blog posts, you should be publishing a few times per week. This will not only increase your chances of ranking but will also help build your email list and keep your current readers and subscribers engaged in your content.

Take This Knowledge And Start Ranking

This guide is intended to give you a quick rundown of what SEO you should be doing to rank in Google. While other guides may complicate SEO (not difficult to do) we like to keep things simple.

SEO really just consists of two components and that is:

On-page SEO

Off-page SEO

Once you master these two components, you will be well on your way to ranking in Google and getting found by your customers.

There are a lot of business owners that do not have the time to master these skills. If you are one of those business owners, who would like to begin SEO, but you just don’t have time to learn the skills that are involved, hiring a reputable SEO company would be the next best step.

When it comes to hiring a company, they should have a track record of proven results and the knowledge to produce your company an ROI.

DanMatt Media has worked with hundreds of business owners and we know how to execute a plan for you to reach your target audience.

We take the time to learn your business and properly perform both on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

If you’re ready to start taking control of your SEO efforts, reach out to us and let us create a high-growth plan for your business.