How I Got Started with SEO

My first introduction into SEO was with blogging on Digital Bounds. I wrote about technology and gadgets and started to research why some blog posts were getting more traffic than others. Most of the posts that were getting traffic spikes were pulling in a substantial amount of traffic from Google. As I discovered how users were finding my blog posts, I started using the Yoast SEO plugin with WordPress.

Yoast was a great starting point for me. I started learning the basic on on-page SEO. I had tons of practice writing meta titles, meta descriptions, and internal linking. Yoast provided me with the basis of including keywords, a subheading like an H1, and an internal/external link per blog post. I progressed with learning more about longer form, cornerstone content. I also learned the importance of technical SEO. I have greatly mastered:

1. The importance of SSL

In 2014, Google announced “HTTPS everywhere” which was a significant change in the way the internet worked. It made sense, but I had to implement it onto a WordPress blog that was around since early 2011. Nowadays, everywhere uses SSL and the ones that don’t are far and few in-between.

2. The importance of Page Speed on Ranking

Search Engines prefer sites that load quickly. Page speed is more important than ever, but I started speeding up around 2016. I switched to faster hosting on Digital Ocean, added CloudFlare to the site for caching and a global CDN.

3. The importance of AMP for blog posts

AMP is a Google-backed standard for severing a speedy site that’s optimized for mobile devices through the uses of special code. AMP pages are extremely quick on mobile devices by stripping down the code, removing CSS and leaving just the text and images. Everything from scripts, comments and forms are stripped away.

4. The importance of fixing duplicate content issues

Duplicate content can compete against either other and confuse users. I used the canonical link element to let search engines know where the main content resides. I was able to prune content over the years as other content became outdated and duplicate content of newer posts.

Conclusion

Technical SEO is essential for setting the foundation for the website. I spent years working on the technical side of on-page SEO, which benefited in more ways then I could have imagined. Now, you may know there is more to SEO then the technical portion. I wasn’t introduced to off page SEO until I started at an agency that focuses on digital marketing, WordPress development, and app development. If it weren’t for the knowledge of on-page SEO, I wouldn’t have the skills to expand my skills into digital marketing beyond SEO. I now lead the digital marketing strategy for small businesses and startups.

My first experience with SEO lead me to a career in digital marketing. I hope to expand my knowledge of SEO as I work with more problems from various websites.