You're so SEO and you don't even know it

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Do you worry about SEO? Cruise a few online marketing websites and you might think that there’s a mysterious SEO test out there and only the cool kids have the answers. At least that’s what SEO experts will tell you.

Stress not, business fame seeker! SEO can be simple.

SEO stands for search engine optimization, which simply means how to tweak your content – website pages, articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, etc. – so that it appears higher on the search engine’s results list.

Face it, there’s a lot of buzz in the marketing world about SEO…the latest Panda/Penguin/Poodle changes to Google’s SEO algorithms set off firestorms of articles and blog posts, but honestly, as a business professional, you can safely ignore most of the chatter.

Rather watch than read? Check out my quick video, How to write articles that rank well on Google:

Here’s the down and dirty. As long as you focus your content creating efforts on your prospects and clients, and make your content useful to those people, you can forget about ever-changing rules for keyword density.

Voila, the easy-as-pie approach to SEO:

Answer your ideal client’s questions.

It’s as simple as that.

Why is answering questions SEO magic?

Think about it: when people have a question or a problem, what do they type into a search engine like Google?

Usually it’s a question, like “how do I get my blog onto a Kindle?” The person might also type, “how to get blog on Kindle.”

Or, “what’s the difference between publicists and PR agents?” Or, “what do PR agencies do?” And often, “how much do PR agents cost?”

When you create content (whether it’s videos, articles, blog posts, web page verbiage) that answers the questions your clients are most likely to type into a search engine, you’ve mastered what you most need to know about SEO.

Tip: resist the urge to show off your smarts or sound clever. The goal is to crawl inside your client’s head and give them the answers to their most burning questions, using the exact words they would use. From the example above, title your article,  “The Difference Between Publicists and PR Agents.”

The surefire way to figure out the exact words (keywords!) is to do two things:

1. Ask them. Where ever you go, listen to the questions that people ask you about your service or business. Ask them, if you were looking for a resource to help you with x, what would you type into Google?

2. Use Google Adwords’ Keywords Tool. This totally free tool is great for finding popular keywords for topics related to your business or service. It even suggests related keywords.

Your fame boosting assignment:

This week, brainstorm about your ideal clients and the service you provide. What do they want to know?  What do they need to know?  What possible questions do they have about your service or your industry. Think about the sales conversations you have with clients and make note of the 25 most common questions. Now you’ve got 25 article/video/blog post topics!