What is SEO in Simple Terms?
The term, search engine optimization, or SEO, may be familiar to you. You may even know it’s important. But many people are still a bit confused about WHAT it is, HOW it works, and WHY it’s important. This is why we created this easy guide to SEO for authors!
Because better understanding SEO allows you to create a solid SEO strategy(which translates to exposure online) we’re covering everything you need to know about it.
SEO is a set of actions and strategies that increase the chances of content being found online. Meaning, your content will appear in search results. Simply put, SEO helps those that are searching for you, your book, or your products and services(depending on what your goals are) find you online. And hopefully they become loyal fans. This of course, is the ultimate goal of your marketing journey!
We’ll demystify SEO for authors so you can make it work for YOU. To clarify, we’ll be discussing SEO and what it can do in terms of organic search results. This means your content can be found online organically, and not via ads.
The Foundation of Understanding SEO for Authors is Learning How Search Engines Work
Much of the confusion surrounding SEO likely comes from the belief that it is ONE thing. But SEO is many small things. These all contribute to your website, your content, and therefore you, being visible online. SEO for authors is no different than SEO for anything else.
You already know that search engines function to help us humans find the content we are looking for online. In order to do this though, they need to be able to understand and categorize this content based on its relevance to the search query. SEO is the process used to help search engines do just that.
Because there is so much content out there, search engines find and sort through content in order to index it before making it available to us. This process happens like this:
1- Search engine bots crawl the web(like little spiders) and find this content.
2-They then index( or organize) this content based on indicators within the content.
3- Algorithms decide the indexed content’s relevance to each particular search query and arrange it by relevance in the search results.
It’s important to know that these algorithms also rate relevance of content by how many times the results are clicked on and how long that user stays on the page.
This tells the algorithm: YES, this is what the user was looking for when they put in that search query!
That’s why it is so important to have quality content, good content structure, and relevant keywords!
If you implement SEO into your content creation and within your website, and you do it well, it is more likely that your content will turn up in search results. When you turn up in search results, you get discovered!
Search Engine Results Matter
DID YOU KNOW?
HubSpot’s research shows that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
And of those first page results, 50% of users choose from only the top three! But don’t be discouraged. Let this inspire you to see what you, yourself, can do to increase the search engine ranking of your content.
The better your SEO strategy is and the more relevant search engines believe your content to be, the higher up in the search results you will be found. In turn, the more people find your content on a results page and click on it, the more valuable and relevant your content becomes to search engines (as translated by algorithms).
Quality, relevant content is important for ranking high in search engine results because these algorithms also factor in:
- Time spent on your website or page
- Return users
- Engagement with content(aka clicking links, etc.)
This all tells the search engines that your content is quality and relevant! That’s why it is so important to:
- Be Consistent with your keywords and content
- Create fresh content regularly
- Always focus on quality—Make valuable, well-structured content
But there are also other aspects to SEO, called metadata, that contribute to the search engines ability to index, and therefore, retrieve this content for search engine users when they add a search query. We’ll go over this part of SEO for authors in detail in the following section.
SEO for Authors: The Parts You Can Use and Need to Know
There is work that goes into the very structure of a website’s design that contributes to SEO, such as site speed and functionality. But this type of SEO, known as technical SEO, isn’t relevant to those that aren’t web designers. The stuff you, as a content creator, and someone managing their own website need to know are listed and explained below.
Relevant Keywords
Keywords refer to the words and phrases used as search queries that someone types into a search bar.
They are still a major component of SEO and should be incorporated into your SEO strategy with focus. Back in the early days of the internet, content creators could basically game the system by adding keywords to their content. They didn’t have to be relevant, or really even make sense. This was called keyword stuffing, and now that these algorithms have gotten more savvy, this practice will actually have a negative effect on your SEO.
To use keywords properly, you need a strategy. You must do keyword research on your industry, topic, and your audience to find strong, relevant keywords. We’ll cover the details of this in an upcoming guide to creating an SEO strategy.
Content Structure and Copywriting
Believe it or not, even your content structure needs to be part of your SEO strategy. Not only do you need high quality, valuable content, and relevant keywords, you also need to structure your content properly.
Because search engines are meant to cater to the needs of humans and they factor our engagement into your search engine ranking, you need to make sure your content has good readability.
What does this mean? That there is a clear, concise structure and a logical flow. It’s also helpful to make your content simple. This doesn’t mean dumbed-down. It just means using succinct phrases as much as possible. Basically, the page should not look crowded with text. It also means using:
- Proper grammar
- Paragraphs when needed
- Easily scannable bullet points and lists
It’s good to note that when we read online, we tend to scan. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s been debate over content length and word counts, but algorithms are always changing and improving. Online user experience has become the focus recently and will likely continue in coming years. After all, we create content for people to read, right? The algorithms are just catching up and favoring content structures that are proven to keep people engaged!
The Metadata
Understanding SEO and how it works in all its parts help you form a solid strategy. This allows you to not miss out on the small details that can help you rank higher in search engine results. Beyond the data(all the content we mentioned above) search engines crawl for, there is the metadata. Metadata is just data that describes the data it references.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are those little clips you see in search results describing the content of a page. These descriptions are added in on the back end of a page and can be done by your web designer or by you.
Meta descriptions aren’t just important for users to understand your content, they’re significant to search engines as well. They should be between 160-165 characters in length and contain your keywords for that page or blog post.
Carefully craft your meta descriptions to:
- Summarize the content
- Make it enticing
- Contain your keywords
- Use 160-65 characters
Optimized Images
Sizing images
Using images in your content can boost your SEO in general but if they’re not optimized for size and the file is too large it can slow down your page load time. So while it’s important to include images in your content, they need to be properly sized to not be counterproductive.
You can find all the details on optimizing images HERE.
Alt text
Alt text is also used on the backend of your page or blog post. This describes the image because search engines cannot view and make sense of images. They need to be told what it is and why it is significant to the content.
Alt text is also used for those that use screen readers( those with visual impairments and others) to understand the purpose of an image. So make sure you try to describe what the image is if it’s significant to the content and add keywords here too.
Naming images
When you begin understanding SEO and how it works you’ll realize it really isn’t that complicated. It is a bit tedious, however. Optimizing your content for search engines isn’t difficult but it is about the details.
Even small things contribute to SEO, like how you name your image files. So you should name your image files much like you would for your alt text. Once again, search engines can’t make sense of images, just text. This text should be formatted in a specific way so it is readable to search engines, though.
When naming image files, try to:
- Incorporate your keywords
- Use a hyphen in between each word
- Keep the character count short
Other Small Things to Do
There are some other small things that can contribute to SEO and also make it easier for users (your website visitors and future fans) to find content on your site and help them understand that content.
Caption your images!
This is another chance to add keywords into an image description. Use an engaging and purposeful caption to make a bigger impact.
Make use of tags!
When you categorize your content in order to make it more searchable for your website users they may stay more engaged. You can tag each page or blog post based on the content within the larger category. These types of tags aren’t like tags on social media, but they work sort of the same way. Just make sure you separate each tag with a comma!
For example this post would be tagged with something like:
- SEO for beginners
- Making SEO work for you
- SEO basics
Now you’re on your way to fully understanding SEO! Your next step is creating an SEO strategy. This means you’ll use what you’ve learned here to implement some of these tactics in order to rank better in search engine results.
If you do this consistently, it becomes easier and you will absolutely start seeing the impact of your efforts.
You can find our post on Author’s SEO strategy for more details on exactly how, when and where you can use these strategies to your advantage, get discovered online, and show up in first page search results!
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