These are my notes of the talk given by Jordan O'Connor in the Small Bets community, created by Daniel Vasallo.
Jordan defines himself as a generalist, introvert.
His website https://jdnoc.com.
I have barely edited these comments, I made them on the fly, while listening to Jordan.
Mikel Sagardia, 2022.05.17
No guarantees.
Table of contents
- Jordan O'Connor - Intro to SEO
- Introduction
- What is SEO?
- How people use search engines
- How Google analyzes the pages
- The value of SEO
- Types of SEO
- What matters in SEO rankings
- Over 200 Ranking Factors
- SEO Checklist
- Google Search Console
- Ahrefs Demo
- Producing SEO Content
- Generating Backlinks
- Building and audience & selling
- Outranking Incumbents
- Links & Personal Notes
Jordan, his Product/Business: Closet Tools
- SaaS product that automates tasks for sellers on poshmark.com.
- He published a blog post on poshmark automation scripts and people wrote to him.
- The key is that you publish key blog posts and people find you through google - it's perfect for introverts.
- He wrote few blog posts, but the key ones.
His sources, mentors:
- Brian Dean: backlinko.com; Many of his learning come from him.
- Also Glenn:
@viperchill.
Doing things to rank higher in google searches. We need to increase trust:
- to Google: Fast, accurate, good content; we need to produce high quality content
- to clients: does the website look trustworthy, people want to click, good content; and when clicking, is it secure to buy here?
Figure out what people are searching for. What are they typing?
Generating content: posts, videos.
Figure out untapped low-competition niches. Bigger companies can only provide generic value. But we can provide specific value!
SEO allows to reach out people that are not on social media or who want to be private.
As the number of keywords increases, the search is more specific and there is less competition in the ranking.
Thus, don't target phrases with few keywords.
We want to target the long tail: very specific, longer phrases. The majority of the searches is happening actually here (> 70%)
You submit your sitemap to Google:
search.google.com/search-console
Google crawls and analyzes the website. Then, they index it; they determine the uniqueness and quality, relevancy, etc.
If we write anew blog post, they track it. They track links to our website, whenever we write something new, etc.
If we create great content, and Google recognizes it, it compounds: older posts start ranking higher.
It is possible to pay google to appear at the top. However, the idea is to manage to do it without paying!
Take into account that 30% of people click on the first result.
Very good example: Flavio Copes. Blog & Newsletter; one post per day: https://flaviocopes.com.
- Volume-based
- Intent-based
- Programmatic
- Local
Optimize for more traffic, not more customers. The goal is to attract traffic for selling adds.
For that, the idea would be to target more general keywords, more general and shorter phrases.
They often target the current thing, the current topic.
Tabloids do that: they write gossip news that change the content every day; thus, they appear in the ranking due to relevancy. And they put adds!
Optimize for quality of traffic, not volume.
Intent modifiers: buy, how to, best, cheap, etc.
For that, create content & product pages. Educational & helpful. Create great, high quality content!
Be specific:
- not that good: running shoes
- better: best running shoes for running marathons
Ahrefs: great tool for SEO (not free): https://ahrefs.com.
Example: size 9.5 marathon running shoes black
Very few people look for those phrases, but we can program modifiers to vary so we have many phrases: size, type, color, etc.
So the idea is to create many URLs programatically which point to the same page, the product.
He hasn't done it, but people so it. Apparently, there is no risk of Google tagging the websites as duplicates.
The goal is to get people to go to our business physically.
We want to be to the map pack: the map that appears in the Google search. The business options with the highest reviews appear, with more info, etc.
NAP = name, address, phone number. We need to have consistency in the Internet; all NAPs related to our business must be the same, otherwise Google starts to miss-trust us. This is very important. Thus: update the content info in Yelp, the Yellow Pages, etc.
The most important: trust
- with Google
- with searchers
- with visitors
For that, we need to be legitimate and we need to create great high quality content that will help people.
On-site SEO (we can control it): Google prefers fast loading websites, mobile friendly, rich meta-data. Look at the metadata of his website when looking at the source. This is very important.
Off-site SEO (we can't control it): backlinks (other sites linking to me), mentions, reviews, etc. Also the domain authority of the backlinks is taken into account.
The type of content is important: which type would rank more for a keyword? A blog post? A video?
From backlinko.com.
The most important ones:
- Content quality. Google checks:
- keywords in the content
- length
- titles; sections
- structure: easy navigation (add a table of contents)
- Content uniqueness
- Content type
- Fully crawlable: valid URL, fast, metadata, etc.
- Mobile optimized
- Number of backlinks; length tends to increase backlinks
- Domain authority
- Anchor text: don't use many
/:example.com/your-keyword - Site loading speed
- Keywords in content
- Content freshness: How recent is it? We can always update the content.
- Reputation: how people perceive you on the Internet.
From: https://backlinko.com
Use it!
He showed the utilities.
Also look this Google tool: https://pagespeed.web.dev
He looked this phrase of keywords and showed the analysis of Ahrefs: camping gear. Suggestions are shown of ranking difficulty. The idea is to find the correct keywords that would show our site in the first 10 pages. Then, we create the content accordingly.
Important indicators: keyword difficulty, volume (searches/month), traffic potential.
He derives the phrase to how to organize camping gear, which has
- Difficulty 8/100: we'll appear in the top!
- Volume 150: 100 people will find it per month!
Heuristic for beginners:
- `< 30 difficulty
> 200Clicks per month (CPM)
- The keyword should be in the URL!
- The keyword should be in the title!
- The keywords should be in the content!
- Look at type of content that is most desired
- Consider creating a content that summarizes and enriches other similar contents, referencing them
- Numbers are attractive: 10 ways to do...
- Structure
- Titles should be like search phrases; we should have variation like in the programmatic SEO!
We want to have people naturally linking to our content.
Consider creating great content for people that would link our content!
Types of formats that are often linked:
- Definitive guides
- Step by step guides
- Detailed checklists
- Extensive researches
- Curated lists
- Content hubs
- Annual guides
- Promoting the content on other channels
- Affiliate links: links to our products
CTA = Call to Action: What we want people to do; banner / form asking to join / buy something.
- Join to newsletter
- Sell product
- Collect email
For building and audience and sell, we should:
- Create great content
- Provide lead magnets for CTAs: a PDF, a free chapter, etc.
- We can consider putting a Facebook Pixel. From Google: "The Facebook pixel is a piece of code that you place on your website. It collects data that helps you track conversions from Facebook ads, optimize ads, build targeted audiences for future ads and re-market to people who have already taken some kind of action on your website."
- Make buying/selling as seamless as possible, automatic
- Always produce excellence
- Educate newcomers to the niche; that builds trust
- Get more specific
- Build a reputation
- Do it for the long run
- Iterate & improve
https://blog.webjeda.com/optimize-jekyll-seo/
Look: follow / no-follow; nofollow tags in the href are used to tell Google not to count the link; they are used to avoid spamming. They are typical in Wikipedia references, blog comments, twitter, etc.