Are you an aspiring blogger, small business owner, or freelance writer eager to land your content on Google’s first page? You might be wondering, is SEO hard to learn? Well, fear not! Mastering the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) won’t take much time and can yield quick results.
In a crowded online arena where websites compete for attention, learning SEO has become crucial. It’s the secret sauce that can catapult your blog, business, or freelance career to greater heights.
Whether you’re a novice blogger seeking to attract more readers, a small business owner aiming to reach a wider customer base, or a freelance writer looking to enhance your value, SEO can be your guiding light.
We’ll explore the factors that contribute to the perceived difficulty of SEO. The path to SEO mastery starts here, and the possibilities are endless.
Are you ready to conquer SEO? Let’s prove that it’s not just another hurdle—it’s an opportunity waiting to be seized!
Table of Contents
What is SEO?
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, encompasses a range of techniques and practices that can enhance your ranking on Google and other search engines.
Google’s mission is to deliver the most helpful, informative, and relevant content to searchers. Through a complex algorithm, it identifies the best content. By understanding the factors Google takes into consideration you can boost your potential to rank highly.
It’s important to prioritize content for people, ensuring it answers the search query and the search intent. Then, you can optimize for search engines.
What are the benefits of good SEO?
Higher rankings. It’s that simple. The more you can optimize your content for search engines the more likely you can improve your content visibility and receive more organic search traffic.
Again, as stated above, your content must be primarily aimed at your audience not search engines. SEO is just to enhance already high quality, engaging, helpful and relevant content.
Factors that Influence SEO Difficulty
What makes SEO hard to learn? There are 3 main factors that can make SEO difficult to master, especially for non-technical people.
Let’s briefly go over these factors and how to address them.
Complexity of Search Engine Algorithms
Search ranking algorithms used by Google and other search engines are constantly changing. Every quarter, Google rolls out “core updates” that can significantly impact your ranking positions or even result in a complete loss of traffic to your site (trust me, I’ve experienced this firsthand).
When it comes to SEO, you’re aiming at a moving target. The best advice is to understand Google’s optimization goals. Instead of creating content solely for search engines, prioritize people-first content.
By dedicating your efforts to delivering high-quality content that is helpful, informative, and relevant to your audience’s queries, you maximize your chances of achieving a high ranking.
Technical Aspects of SEO
When it comes to optimizing your content for search engines, some level of technical knowledge is unavoidable.
It’s necessary to understand the structure of a web page and how each element can be leveraged for SEO purposes. Specifically:
- URL (web site link)
- Page Title (H1)
- Subheadings (H2 and H3, other headings are less relevant for SEO)
- Images (optimize images to speed up page loading)
- Alternative text for images
- Table of Contents
- Meta Description (important to boost click through rates)
For more on where to place keywords within your content you can read this article: How do you add keywords to your website
Competitiveness of the Online Landscape
There is no avoiding competition online. Unless you have a very unique niche you will face competition from other websites.
For new or low-traffic websites, I recommend focusing on targeting low competition keywords. These keywords are relatively easier to rank for (assuming your content is good) and face less competition.
Avoid targeting short keywords (1-2 words) unless you already have substantial traffic and backlinks to your site. These keywords are highly competitive and challenging to rank for.
On the other hand, longer-tail keywords not only have a higher chance of ranking but also tend to convert better. Their extended length provides more context, making them easier to incorporate into your writing.
Learning SEO as a Novice Blogger
As novice blogger you don’t need to master SEO. Learn a few simple SEO practises and start putting them into practice.
For example, read this 29 tips and tricks for SEO article.
Create and practise a standard process for creating content. As an example I’ve written how to do a web audit on your existing content.
An analogy I sometimes use is that SEO can be like gardening. This analogy can help you understand the tasks you need to perform, here is the article: How using SEO to improve your content is similar to gardening
Start with basic SEO practises and gradually expand your knowledge and skills
Overcoming SEO Challenges for Small Business Owners
The typical problem small business owners have is lack of time to learn SEO. There is always alternative, and usually more immediate, tasks that need to be completed. SEO gets put to the back of the list and never gets actioned.
I would recommend for small business owners to invest in an SEO tool to help audit your website and content for you automatically. These tools will highlight any SEO issues found, categorize and prioritize them for you and give you suggestions on how to fix problems found.
SEO can be a time consuming activity, if you can’t dedicate time for this task you might want to hire someone to do this task for you.
Hire freelance writers and copywriters who know SEO so they can generate publish-ready content. This saves you time and effort.
Consider using AI to help you generate, proofread and optimize your content.
I use AI to proofread and edit my content. It’s great for picking up spelling or grammar mistakes, it can also help rewrite sections of text for improved readability and clarity.
If you are comfortable writing AI prompts consider using ChatGPT, I’ve written about it previously:
If you prefer using AI with a nice user interface then suggestions are Copy.ai (Review: Is Copy.ai the best AI copywriting software?) and ArticleForge (Review: Article Forge Review).
For WordPress website owners I recommend using an SEO plugin. These plugins will score your content for SEO as your type and can help with headlines, keywords and meta descriptions.
Three well known SEO plugins are:
SEO for Freelance Writers
SEO is a crucial aspect of freelance writing. As a freelance writer, understanding SEO can help you attract more clients, increase your visibility, and improve your online reputation.
Small business owners, frequently pressed for time, often delegate content creation to freelancers. Freelance writers that understand SEO can provide content that is publication-ready thus eliminating the need for an SEO expert or the website owner to double-check for SEO problems.
Basic SEO Tips for Content Optimization
For freelance writers optimizing your content is a crucial aspect of SEO. Here are some basic SEO tips that can help freelance writers improve their output and get your more clients:
- Conduct keyword research: Keyword research is the process of identifying the keywords and phrases that people use to search for information online. Use a keyword discovery tool to identify keywords to target. You can research competitor websites for inspiration.
- Use catchy headlines: Your headlines are the first thing that readers see when they come across your content. Make sure your headlines are clear, concise, and include your target keywords.
- Use your keywords strategically: Once you have identified your target keywords, use them strategically throughout your content. Include them in your headlines, subheadings and throughout your content. Don’t overuse keywords though, as this can lead to keyword stuffing and hurt your rankings. Read more here: How do you add keywords to your website
- Write high-quality content: High-quality content is essential for SEO. Make sure your content is well-written, informative, and engaging. You are not limited to text, check out the different types of digital content you can produce.
- Optimize your meta descriptions: Meta descriptions are the short descriptions that appear below your headlines in search results. Make sure your meta descriptions are clear, concise, and include your target keywords. Good meta descriptions are important to improve click through rates.
- Use internal and external links: Internal links are links that point to other pages on the website, while external links point to other websites.
- Optimize for mobile: More and more people are accessing the internet on their mobile devices, so it’s essential to optimize your content for mobile. Don’t use large, uncropped images in your content. Use an image optimization service to compress images.
Final Thoughts
Remember, success may not come overnight, but with perseverance, dedication, and the right tools at your disposal, you’ll soon find yourself navigating the SEO landscape with confidence and reaping the rewards of increased visibility, engagement, and growth.
So, is SEO hard to learn? No, not basic SEO techniques. Once you have the fundamentals you can start writing content that ranks well.
Good luck on your exciting journey to learn SEO and with practice, determination and consistency you can reap the benefits!
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