SEO Traffic Generation – Stephen Christopher

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Summary-icon

SUMMARY


For your website to be found on Google and across the internet, you need to rank high on search engines and create SEO traffic generation.

Stephen Christopher, the owner, and CEO of Seequs Digital Marketing Company shares valuable information on how you can create SEO traffic generation simply and more efficiently.

key-takeaways-icon

KEY TAKEAWAYS


arrow-iconWhen you click on a result when searching on Google for something, that’s SEO.

arrow-iconSEO traffic generation is still crucial for people to find your website.

arrow-iconGetting started with SEO traffic generation:

  • First, you need to start with the end in mind.
  • Know what terms you want your website to show up for in search engines.
  • Know what words people are searching for.
  • Find keywords that have volume around them.

arrow-iconOnce you have a list of keywords

  • You need to optimize your site for it.
  • Take one to two keywords and make that the focus of each page.

arrow-iconThe mistake people make spraying the keyword everywhere. It is called “keyword stuffing.”

arrow-iconGoogle will not rank a page for a particular keyword when you’re spreading it across all of your pages.

arrow-iconIt doesn’t matter how many monthly searches your keyword gets.

arrow-iconMake sure the keyword has some form of search volume.

arrow-iconIt’s good to niche down who you talk to so you can have a higher conversion rate.

arrow-iconIf you don’t have the main keywords you would search for your business, start looking at phrases stating the problems you’re solving for people.

arrow-iconGoogle Keyword Planner Tool or SEMrush will tell you how competitive a keyword is based on its estimated bid price.

arrow-iconStick around things that are medium to low competition.

arrow-iconMeta-data is these little strings of words and phrases that Google uses to technically determine what a page on a website is or what a website is about.

arrow-iconMeta-title is the short blue description that comes up the link you would click on when you search a result.

arrow-iconMeta-description is the sentence below the meta-title.

arrow-iconMake sure the meta-data is specific to what the page is about.

arrow-iconBe very focused about how you write the meta-data. Focus on what problems you’re trying to solve for people or what you want people to see when they search.

arrow-iconGoogle doesn’t like a selfish website. They want websites that are creating a good user experience.

arrow-iconLinking within your blog article out to other sites gives people good user experience, and that’s what Google wants to create within the internet.

arrow-iconWhy having a lengthy article is important for SEO traffic generation:

  • Statistics show longer blog posts will help you rank higher compared to shorter blog posts.
  • People are going to stay longer on your site, so that sends a signal to Google to rank you higher.
  • You’re able to write a better and more top quality piece.

arrow-iconPeople learn in different ways. Some learn by listening, others through reading.

arrow-iconBacklinks are crucial because it’s a signal to Google that people use your site.

arrow-iconGoing on podcasts is an excellent way to have links pointing back to your site.

arrow-iconLinking practices:

  • Take what you can get.
  • Have the link within the content of an article.
  • Have the link be the word that’s relevant to the user.
  • Ideally, the link is also one of your primary keywords you’re focused on

arrow-iconWhen people are following you and talking about you, Google will pick up on that, trace you back on your website, and give you a little SEO bump.

arrow-iconGet good at one social media platform before trying to become a master of all the platforms.

arrow-iconA Follow link gives you credibility. It’s a vote of confidence.

arrow-iconA No Follow link means the sites don’t know if they trust you.

Summary-icon

TRANSCRIPTION: SEO TRAFFIC GENERATION – STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER


kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

How do you get found online? How do you get more exposure with SEO traffic generation?

Today, we’re going to talk about SEO traffic generation, Search Engine Optimization.

luis-head

Luis Congdon

Today, we’re going to be talking with Stephen Christopher about SEO traffic generation: online presence.

He is the owner and CEO of Seequs Digital Marketing Company. The guy’s a rock star when it comes to online presence, and we’re excited to have his presence here on Thriving Launch today talking about SEO traffic generation.

All right. We are here with Stephen. Are you ready to launch into SEO traffic generation?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Luis, I am ready man.

luis-head

Luis Congdon

Fantastic.

Let’s dive in. SEO traffic generation, Search Engine Optimization is the thing back in the 90’s. It was the thing early 2000’s. Some people are saying it’s dead. For you guys that don’t know what that means, real briefly, when people start typing on Google, and they’re looking for something, Google is scanning websites, and it’s getting you results. Search engine optimization is making it, so you’re easy to find on the internet.

Some people say that this is dead, that social media has changed SEO traffic generation of it, and SEO traffic generation isn’t important. Is that true? Is SEO traffic generation something that we still need to know?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Yeah. Absolutely.

Think about it this way. When you go to Google and search for something, do you click on a result? Well, most of us do, and that is SEO traffic generation. We’re still using Google, so SEO traffic generation is still critical.

luis-head

Luis Congdon

So all those social media marketers, there you have it. SEO traffic generation is not dead.

I know we have a question here about keywords. Kamala, why don’t you lead us here?

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

Yeah. I’d love to hear where do we start with this process of getting our websites optimized?

Where To Start With SEO Traffic Generation

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

That’s a great question.

We need to start with the end in mind. What do you want people to find you for? What do you want to be relevant for in the eyes of a search engine like Google? As much as I hate the phrase “Keyword” and “Key phrase,” that’s the easiest way to describe it.

Stephen Christopher SEO Traffic Generation Thriving Launch Podcast
Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

There are couples of tools out there that are free and easy to use. Google has their tool. It’s Google Keyword Planner. You do have to sign up for an Adwords account now, but you don’t have to just launch any campaign. Another one that’s free and pretty easy is SEMrush.com.

When you start looking for keywords, you want to find words that people are searching for.

You want to find keywords that have volume around them. It means that multiple people are typing them in.

If you optimize a website for words that get no search volume, it won’t have any effect.

You might have the best-optimized site in the world. You might show up number one in Google for it. But, if nobody’s typing in that keyword that gets not search volume, it doesn’t do you any good.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

Absolutely.

Using those tools, what we found is you go to those sites, put in some potential keywords and then, how would you apply those to your WordPress site?

Tools For SEO Traffic Generation

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Yes.

So, once you find some keywords that are going to work for you,

Going back to keywords, you don’t have to have a list of 50 or 100. Just pick a couple of basic ones that work for now at least to get started. Once you have those, you need to optimize your site for it.

WordPress is super simple. Within our company, we use Yoast SEO as a plug-in, which is very easy to use. You want to make sure that you have a strategy in your on-site optimization. These are things that you do actually on your WordPress website to rank for these keywords.

There’s one of the biggest mistakes we see people doing is. Let’s just say that somebody has five main keywords that they’re using. They’ll take those five keywords, and they’ll put them within the SEO traffic generation plug-in. They’ll put them as their meta description, their meta keywords, their meta title, and then they’ll use them all throughout the content and the text on their website. We’ve all been to those websites. It’s just like sprayed with those keywords everywhere also known as keyword stuffing, and that’s a mistake.

We want to be very clear and concise how we organize the SEO traffic generation strategy on a website. What you want to do is you want to take one or two keywords and make that the focus of each page. If you have five words that are your main topics of your business, ideally you’d want to have five pages, and each page talks about that keyword individually so that it’s very specific about that keyword or key phrase.

Whatever your keyword is, you want it to be very particular on that page and not have all of your keywords spread across all of your pages.

How Many Monthly Searches For SEO Traffic Generation

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

What happens is called cannibalization. Google says, “All right. You don’t know which page you want to rank for this keyword, so we’re just not going to rank you for any of them.”

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

I think that’s a fantastic tip right there and one that’s going to save a lot of people a lot of trouble.

I’d love to hear from you. When you’re doing your keyword research, how many monthly searches do you try to aim?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

We don’t care.

What I mean by that is we work with industries that get thousands and thousands of searches for a keyword per month, and then we work with clients and industries that might get 50 or 90. It doesn’t matter exactly how many it gets. You just wanted to be one of the top ones in your industry or your marketplace.

Don’t be disheartened if you go to Google or use one of these other tools and it says “A hundred keyword searches per month” or “A hundred searches for that word per month.” That’s okay.

As we’ve learned in business, it’s good to be specific. It’s good to niche down who we talk to because we can have a higher conversion rate. Just make sure it has some form of search volume.

If you’re not looking out on the main keywords that you would search for your business, start looking at phrases like what are the problems that you’re solving for people as oppose to an example of like “weight loss pills.” You would maybe want to rank for a word that’s like “how to lose weight.”

Just think about that when you’re doing your keyword research and not so much on the particular volume of searches per month.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

Yeah.

What’s The Right Search Volume For SEO Traffic Generation

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

Is there any volume that’s too high to aim for, though?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

It depends on your budget and how much time you have.

Nothing is out of reach, but if you have limited time and budget, the search volume is going to be more about the competitiveness of the keyword. –Stephen Christopher

That will show up in the Google Keyword Planner than the actual search volume.

You might get a word that gets a thousand searches per month but is relatively low in competition, and then you might have a keyword that gets a hundred searches a month and is extremely high in competition.

When you use the service like Google Keyword Planner tool or SEMrush, it’ll tell you how competitive that word is, and a lot of times, it’ll tell you how competitive it is based on the estimated bid price of that keyword if you were purchasing it for like an AdWord.

Stick around things that are medium competition to low. Look for those that low hanging fruit where it’s going to be easier to rank for that keyword.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

That’s awesome. I know we kind of maybe went too far into keywords, but I think it’s crucial.

Let’s talk about meta-data. What is it and what do we do with it?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Yeah, cool. I kind of mention it a little bit talking about on sites stuff.

Meta-data is these little strings of words and phrases that Google uses to technically determine what a page on a website is or what a website is about.

Meta-Data For SEO Traffic Generation

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

When you go to Google and do a search, most often, the short blue description that comes up the actual length that you would click on in the result, that’s most likely the meta-title. That’s what people will see. Then the one to two sentences below that is the meta-description most of the time because Google will sometimes pull from different pieces of your content to display in search. So it’s not always going to be accurately what your meta-data is.

Essentially like I said meta-data is information that Google uses to determine what a page is about. So, you want to make sure that it’s very specific to what that page is about that you’re writing it for, and you want to make sure that it’s unique.

You don’t want to use the same metadata on every single page for every title and every description. You want to make it very accurate like one to two keywords per page and be very focused about how you write that meta-data.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

What do you mean by that very focused?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

You want to stay focused on what problems are you trying to solve for people or what do you want people to see when they search. That’s how you want to write your meta-data.

Stephen Christopher SEO Traffic Generation Thriving Launch Podcast
Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

You also want to make sure that it’s focus just for that one or two keywords on the page.

Back to the previous example, if you have five keywords that you are trying to rank your site for, you wouldn’t want to put all five keywords in the meta-data for a page. You would just want to put one of those in that very specific page.

Article Length For SEO Traffic Generation

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

You want to be focused on what that meta-data says, and then it’s in alignment with everything else that’s on the page. You want to send a clear signal to Google of exactly what that page is about so that it knows what you want that page to rank for.

luis-head

Luis Congdon

It makes a lot of sense.

The next thing we want to talk about is links. I know that when I was reading some of the work of Tim Ferris, he likes long blog posts that are 15,000 words or more and he requires a minimum of 10 links that link out to other websites.

Why is the length of an article so important and why would having links that go to other websites, and ultimately even make people leave your website? Why is that important?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Great question and so few people ever asked this. It’s cool.

Google has a huge business persona now. They grew up with that hippy mentality. They want everybody to win, and so, Google doesn’t like selfish websites. They want websites that are creating a excellent user experience.

Stephen Christopher SEO Traffic Generation Thriving Launch Podcast
Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

That’s like the 30,000-foot view of why the outbound links work.

Outbound links create a better user experience, and that’s what Google wants to create within the internet.

And so, that’s the sites that they want to show higher.

3 SEO Traffic Generation Reasons For Longer Articles

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

As far as length of content goes, there are couple different reasons why Tim, for example, wants that.

  1. Statistics are showing that those longer blog posts will help you rank higher compared to shorter blog posts.

The average person or the average website writes short blog posts, so the content isn’t that excellent. By writing a 1,000 – 12,000 – 15,000-word blog post, you’re going to stand out. You have more room to add more value, and Google’s going to pick up on that.

  1. You’re going to have a longer time on site because people are going to stay on that site longer to read it.

That sends a signal to Google that they use in their ranking algorithm to rank you higher. Because now, you’re proving that your site is more relevant than a lot of your competition since your readers stay on that page for longer.

  1. Also, you’re able just to write a better, higher quality piece.

You’re going to be more likely get people to link back to your article as a resource when you have a much better-rounded, well written, longer article.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

I love that.

One thing that we do to make it easier to get those articles out is we have our podcast episodes transcribed which create a lot of information for websites, so we don’t have to sit down and write all that stuff out ourselves.

luis-head

Luis Congdon

It also makes it easy for the listeners. For you guys, if you head on over to thrivinglaunch.com, you can read this whole thing. If you’re somebody that learns in an auditory way, you’re learning by listening, if you’re someone that learns better if you have the input of writing and could track it, you can do that.

Why Backlink For SEO Traffic Generation

luis-head

Luis Congdon

You can go to the website. Then, we backlink to all the different resources.

The reasons we do that are:

  1. SEO traffic generation
  2. We want you to come to our website, have an excellent experience and find everything you need neatly wrapped up within our website.

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

I love that.

Marketing could be a whole different topic, but I love that you talked about the way that people learn. We have auditory. They want to hear it. We have kinesthetic, people that want to feel it, and all the different ways that we can communicate with those people.

A lot of people don’t pay attention to that.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

Yeah.

This is great. I love how clear you’re laying this out for us.

Is there anything else that you want to share with us about links and how they’re important for SEO traffic generation?

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Yeah.

The whole backlink thing got a bad name because spammers took advantage of it and now, back links have a negative connotation. Because it’s like “Oh my gosh. I got to get backlinks.”

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

Let me just say. Backlinks are when someone links your website from another website, right?

Backlinks And SEO Traffic Generation

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for clarifying.

Backlinks are crucial because it’s a signal to Google.

Again, going back to the relevance of your website, if 15 or 20 or 30 websites are pointing back to a page on your site, Google looks at that and says “Wow. Okay.” These other sites are voting for you because they believe you’re an excellent resource.

It’s still important to have links pointing back to your site, back to interior pages of your site and then, to your blog post, and podcaster, whatever it is that you’re using for marketing. It’s critical that you have that.

Going on a podcast is an excellent way to do that. Luis, like you just mentioned, you’ll put links to whatever resources we talked about today. By adding value on a podcast, now, you’re sharing a link back with the audience, and now, that will help any of my sites or all of the other guest’s SEO traffic generation.

Writing excellent articles and good blogs like Tim Ferris does very consistently. Writing that excellent information and then sharing that so that hopefully, people will link back to it. But, get creative in the way that you look at it and find ways to create valuable content that people will want to link to as a resource.

Don’t think of it as, “Okay, I’m going to write this little thing so that I can get a bunch of links.” Think, “I’m going to write something or create something of massive value and then now, I’m going to share it with people,” and the links will happen somewhat naturally.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

I just have a quick question about that.

Is there a best way to use those links? Do they need to be embedded like within a sentence and then, hyperlink it out? Just love to hear about linking practice.

Linking For SEO Traffic Generation

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Witt linking practices, you take what you can get. Anything is better than nothing at all.

If you write an article and they say, “Okay. We’ll only allow you to link to your website in the author comments.” Great. Take it. That’s still valuable.

You can also get a blog post written that has two or three links that are words, we call it Anchor Text. For example, you write an article on weight loss and then within the article when you use the word “weight loss,” that’s a link back to that page on your site. That’s an ideal situation. If you can get it to be a link as the primary keyword that you’re focused on but only if that page is truly about whatever that keyword is because it goes back to creating a good user experience. Google will know if you’re trying to trick the system.

Ideally, you would want the link to be within the content of an article. You would want it to be the word that’s relevant to the user, and hopefully, also one of your primary keywords are focused on.

Like I said, take what you can get right now because people aren’t giving out links like they used to.

luis-head

Luis Congdon

I’m just curious about social signals and social media because I do a lot of stuff on social media. One of the websites that I love and I encourage you to check out this website, Quora. It ranks high in Alexa’s ranking.

I’ve heard this thing about links when you post them inside of social media that they don’t count well. They don’t do that great, and then there’s something about social signals. I’m not sure how all of that place together, but I’m curious about all of that.

How SEO Traffic Generation Is Like High School

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Yeah. Awesome.

I like to think of SEO traffic generation like high school. When you’re in high school, if you’re hanging out with that one different guy or girl that hangs out behind the school and smoke cigarettes, all alone, and nobody knows who they are, then nobody’s going to know who you are either.

If you’re hanging out with all the popular kids, and they all give you their vote of confidence, all of a sudden, the whole school knows who you are. That’s the same thing or the way that I like to look at it when we started talking about social signals, links, and all that.

If you hang out with “cool people,” then you naturally also become cool and social signals operate in a very similar way.

Let’s use Facebook as an example. If you’re on Facebook and you have all kinds of people following you, talking about you, and all this other stuff, there are some instances where Google will pick up on that and now, tracing back to your site and give you a little bit of a bump when it comes to SEO traffic generation.

You also mentioned links in social and you were right that they don’t technically count as links, but what it does do if you have a good social presence and you’re putting links to a blog article on your Facebook, you’re sending people to your site.

Now, that’s one more person that’s going to be on your site as a visitor, one more person that are going to read an article. They’re going to spend a couple of minutes on your site, and all of those signals are going to play into SEO traffic generation.

SEO Traffic Generation And Social Media

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

When you start talking about social media, I would much rather see somebody get good at one platform before they start trying to become a master of all the platforms.

A lot of people come to us and say, “I need to keep up with all the social media.” As Kamala mentioned, Luis, you’re incredible at it. Guys like Gary V are amazing at it, but most of us don’t have time to do all that.

Putting in effort on one social platform that we’re good at or getting traction on is going to hold a lot more weight in the eyes of search engines and social signals than if we’re spread thin across a ton of platforms.

And we can’t add a lot of value to other people on those networks unless we’re capable of spending a lot of time on them.

luis-head

Luis Congdon

The last thing I’m curious about is I was reading about Quora and that you can link out to other websites, but there are no trackback links.

I know it’s a little esoteric question, but for me, I’m kind of curious about that.

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Like a follow versus a no follow link?

luis-head

Luis Congdon

Exactly.

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Cool.

SEO Traffic Generation And No Follow Links

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

There are two different types of links that you can get back from another site. There’s a Follow link, and a No Follow link. The follow link basically, says this website gives you credibility, or it’s endorsing you. It’s saying, “We know who this site is and so, we’re giving them a follow link.” It’s a vote of confidence.

A No Follow link says, “Look, we’re going link to it because it’s relevant to whatever they might be saying, but we don’t know anything about that site. We don’t know if we trust it. We don’t know if it’s spam. We don’t know anything about it, so we’re going to give it a No Follow link.”

What Google does is Google will look at both of those links. If you have a lot of follow links, you now have kind of a high school scenario. You got a lot of votes from the popular kids, so you’re going to be more relevant, and you’re going to show up higher in search.

If you have a lot of No Follow links, it’s kind of like all right. You have a lot of links, but these sites aren’t saying that they truly trust you. So they’re not going to hold near as much weight in the eyes of a search engine as a follow link would.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

Before we close out, is there anything else that you want make sure that people know about SEO traffic generation?

Keep SEO Traffic Generation Easy

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Keep it basic.

The biggest thing that we see with people trying to get a handle on their SEO or do their SEO traffic generation is they try to do everything all at once.

Just keep it basic.

  • Get a nice little list of keywords that you’re focused on.
  • Talk about them consistently throughout your website.
  • Focus on putting out excellent, valuable information.
  • Work on maybe one or two ways to get links whether it’s just going on podcast, getting links that way, working on becoming a guest blogger on a couple of sites.

Just keep the SEO traffic generation simple and do a lot of things that add value to your potential audience.

A lot of the SEO traffic generation portions of that will come if you stay clear, concise, focused, and simple.

kamala-head

Kamala Chambers

We’ve been here with Stephen Christopher, who has blown us out of the water with these SEO traffic generation teachings.

It’s been fantastic to have Stephen here. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about SEO traffic generation. I’m lost for words because it was just such a great interview.

Stephen-Christopher

Stephen Christopher

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on guys talking about SEO traffic generation. I appreciate it.

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