I’m sure you’ve often heard the term SEO discussed, especially if you’re getting into the online marketing space.
Therefore, we thought it would be worthwhile to explain a little about it. SEO, of course, stands for Search Engine Optimization.
What does that mean, you might ask. What is SEO marketing?
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. So, the answer to “what is SEO marketing” is actually that the website you build should be effective in achieving recognition by search engines. This is done through the use of keywords, both long-tail and short, within the content of your blog posts. It is important because without keywords your website will never be found by search engines.
Search Engine Optimization Explained.
When building a website for either information purposes or to start a business, we need to attract visitors (traffic) to our website. One of the main methods used is SEO. This attracts organic traffic.
To understand this better, remember what happens when people search on the internet. I do it all the time and I’m sure you do, too.
When you search the internet for something, the search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. – will present you with a list of options in answer your query.
Paid advertisements are at the top of the list. The advertiser pays the search engine every time a consumer clicks on the ad.
Below this will be the organic search results. These appear because the website owner has used the right keywords to answer the query and encourage the visitor to click on the link. (More about keywords later.)
As an online business owner, you want to attract both good quality and a good quantity of traffic organically rather than paying per click. You do this through effective SEO marketing.
Why Do You Need To Know What Is SEO Marketing?
Most online marketers will tell you that it is important to understand your audience – who do you want to attract to your website? Therefore, coming to grips with people’s search activities is vital.
It’s about developing a consciousness around what they are searching for, what queries they seek to answer. Then, providing the solutions to those problems through what you have to offer.
Every phrase that is used to search for something on the internet is a keyword. Some are great and some not so much. Once you have an understanding of keywords, you will know the answer to “what is SEO marketing?”
It is a known fact that more traffic is generated to a website through organic search than through paid advertisements.
In addition, SEO marketing is the best channel to give you a regular stream of quality organic traffic that will increase over time. Alternatively, if you place advertisements, you will need to continue spending money to gather traffic to your website. This can become expensive and disadvantageous over time
Keywords – Both Short and Long-tail.
A short-tail keyword will use one, two or maybe three words, whereas a long-tail keyword will consist of between five and ten words.
No matter how many actual words are contained in the phrase, it is still called a keyword.
In an earlier paragraph, we explained how keywords are important to SEO.
One vital thing to remember, though, is that the content of your article must be worthwhile and compelling.
It must deal with and give solutions to the problems your customers may be encountering.
It is no good choosing great keywords and then just stuffing them into an article with the hope that they will be found by search engines.
Some great tools are available that you can use to make sure you do not have too many or too few keywords, such as Yoast.
There are also a great number of keywords research tools. See our #1 Recommendation here.
Start Your Search On Google.
One of the many ways of beginning your search for keywords is through Google, itself, which is a great source.
I have a website that is focused upon women’s golf. So, if I was to search for “best golf balls” on Google it brings back 105 million searches in just over one second.
We generally only concern ourselves with pages 1 or 2 when searching. On the first page you will find a heading from Google that says “People Also Ask”. By checking there you will find some long-tail keywords:
In addition to this, if you scroll down to the bottom of the first page, you will find a heading called “Related Searches”. Here there are even more long-tail keywords:
And so the list goes on. So, when writing such an article, there are many choices for keywords, and you can certainly use several of them throughout your article.
Whatever your niche, you will get similar results when searching on Google. An important step in the process is to, then, plug them in to your keywords research tool.
This will give you information on how many times this term is searched each month, how much competition there is for it and whether it has good SEO value.
Thus, your keyword search is brought to a conclusion.
How To Build An SEO-friendly Website.
It is important to realize that no amount of keywords research will be of benefit unless you have a website.
So, the short answer to “what is SEO marketing”, is for you to have a website with keyword-rich content promoting products that you love.
With this in mind, we know the best place for building websites. Even more impressive is that it can all be done almost instantly once you join as a member.
The image below will take you to a video I have made demonstrating how easy it is to build a website with Wealthy Affiliate.
The most exciting aspect is that Wealthy Affiliate University gives you the opportunity to build and host your website FREE on its siterubix sub-domain.
Starter Membership Is a FREE TRIAL.
You can become a Starter Member of Weathy Affiliate totally free of charge. With a Starter Membership, you can build a FREE website and it will be hosted by Wealthy Affiliate as part of your membership.
In addition to this, you will have access to some basic training in online marketing so that you can decide if this is the right pathway for you to build a successful online business.
If you decide that you do wish to continue down this path and build an online business, you can upgrade to Premium Membership.
Premium Membership costs $49 per month or Premium Plus Membership costs $99 per month. By taking this path you will gain access to all the training you will ever need on the Wealthy Affiliate platform.
This contains extensive training modules for affiliate marketing. In addition, the Wealthy Affiliate Community is second to none!
There is a huge community of online entrepreneurs all willing to communicate and assist you along the way. You only have to ask and the support will be there.
No need to struggle with problems – there is always someone in the community who can help.
The WA Community alone is worth the price of membership.
When you then consider that you can build and host up to 3 websites on your own domains, it becomes even more worthwhile.
The extensive training courses comprise 72 video plus text lessons with tasks to complete with each lesson.
Added to this are hundreds of video and text trainings compiled by members of the WA community. Everything you need to know to become a successful affiliate marketer.
Final Thoughts On What Is SEO Marketing?
If you have reached this point in my article, I hope you have a much better understanding of SEO marketing. We cannot overstate the Importance of SEO marketing to running an online business.
I welcome your comments and suggestions. Please leave them below and I will be sure to answer them to the best of my ability.
I totally agree! SEO marketing is so important. I love Jaaxy and it’s my top pick when it comes to doing research for my blog posts and YouTube videos. KeywordTool.io is also pretty good, but you have to pay to get access to whether the keywords provided are good or bad. Great article!
Thanks for your comment, Alicia. I’m glad you enjoyed reading it and that you agree with me that SEO marketing is really important to online businesses. Jenni.
Excellent tips! I am also still learning about SEO. Do you recommend finding keywords doing a Google search or using a keyword search tool or a combination of both? What would be the best?
Is it recommendable to upgrade your Wealthy Affiliate membership after the free trial or can you be successful even with the free membership?
Do you share more info about SEO and affiliate marketing tips in your newsletters?
Hello Christine, Thanks for your comment and questions. I certainly recommend doing a combination of Google and a keyword research tool. The reason being that the information you get from Google are the actual searches that people enter. You can then fine tune this with your keyword tool for search volume and competition.
You can definitely continue with the free membership of Wealthy Affiliate and achieve some success. To get the best benefit from all the affiliate marketing training and the help of the community, though, you will need to upgrade.
I will certainly be sharing more info on affiliate marketing with my subscribers.
I appreciate your interest, Christine. Best wishes, Jenni
Hi and thanks for sharing this post on SEO marketing. I have a question regarding approaches to using SEO marketing under different circumstances. Is it best to use the same approaches to SEO marketing for local businesses that provide only local services as you would use for an affiliate marketing business that has a worldwide audience? And can the keyword tools like Jaaxy also be used to find long tail and short tail keyword phrases for marketing local businesses? Thanks, Andy
Hi Andy, you have posed an interesting question. When you do a Google search you will notice that directly underneath your search box are: Shopping, Videos, News, Images, More. If you click on the word “More”, directly beneath will be “Maps”. When this opens, it will show all the local retailers for that product in your particular area.
Also, if you use the words “near me” in conjunction with your search term, it will show up your local businesses.
If you have a local business, you should go to “Google My Business” and enter your details so that you will show up in searches.
So, you can definitely use SEO marketing for local businesses and it would be more beneficial to add your business to Google.
Most keyword research tools, like Jaaxy, are directly linked into Google, but I don’t think that they can fine tune down to the local business level.
Thanks for your questions,
Best wishes, Jenni.
I like the way you use google for SEO. It makes me wonder if there is any need for keyword tools. Maybe they give a good starting point?
I have used Jaaxy at times it gives about 30 free searches (I must be close to having used 30), but still when I look for a title I will probably use one from google and adjust it to suit my topic.
With all the blogs being posted on a daily basis, it does make sense though to dig deep and fine tune your article so that it does attract readers interested in your topic.
Thanks for putting this out there.
Hi Michael, Google is a good starting point. While it tells you what people are asking and searching for, there are no statistics. Therefore, you won’t know whether the keyword has a really high or low search rate, and you won’t know what sort of competition there is for that particular keyword. A tool like Jaaxy will give you the additional information you need to decide. Hope this helps. Jenni.