Learn the Basics of SEO for your start-up company website.

Have you just got your new company up and running, and are now looking for a website to accompany it?

Or are you thinking of starting a new online business?

Whatever your reason for beginning your online experience, you are going to have to learn a little about SEO to succeed online. So here is a easy to follow guide to get you up and running.

Step 1 – Research what is going to be your main keyphrase

How are people going to find your business on the web? They are going to go to a Search engine and type in a few words, then click on a search result link that they think matches what they are looking for. So your job is first of all to work out what will be the most used phrase that people will type into the search engines.

A good free tool for doing this is Google Adwords Keyword Planner. It allows you to search for related words and lets you know search volume associated with the keyphrases. The higher the search volume, the more popular the keyphrase, but also the more difficult to rank highly for in the search results. So pick your keyphrases wisely and have some less popular versions included.

You can access the key word planner here https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner . You just need a Google account and a free Adwords account.

Click the link “Search for new keywords using a phrase”, type in your phrase and click “Get Ideas”. The page will reload with lots of keyword ideas for you to think about, each one tells you the search volume.

Step 2 - Register a domain name

Your Domain name is very important for SEO. When searching for a domain, there are quite a few considerations to take into account. How easy is it for people to remember your domain name, so they can type it into a browser? It is good to keep your domain name short and possibly consist of only a couple of words. Try not to use any symbols in the name. Both these two factors will  make the name easy to remember and also it will look good to the search engines.

Domain name extensions:
Which domain extension should you choose? .com or a country level TLD, e.g. .co.uk - If your domain is for your new company, then you should try to get the domain name with a .com extension. If you website is going to be focused on your own country only, then you can get a domain with the country extension instead.

For SEO, try to get your main keyword into your domain name, it will help with ranking in the search results. Exact match web searches to domain names, as long as they do not look spammy and are short enough in text length, can be a huge advantage in SEO.

Step 3 - Create your website text content

Now that you have your keywords researched and your domain name registered, it is time to start putting together the content for your website. Your home page is the most important page on your website in terms of SEO. It is also easier to rank a home page than any other page, as it has more weight. So the content here has to be well written for your audience, and secondly for the search engines to make sure they can index your website correctly and rank you high for your main key phrase.

For the search engines to take your home page seriously, you need to write at least 500 words of text, but more is always better. Write your text for your customers first and foremost, so make sure it reads well and gets your product or service over in an easy to read format.

Your content should be written around your main keyphrase, with similar sub phrases written in as well. You want to naturally repeat your keywords a few times throughout the text, which will give them prominence within the overall text, helping you rank for those phrases.

To be continued next time, covering the following topics.

• Building your website
• Hosting your website
• Grab your social media accounts and set them up
• Create more content and blog it
• Start building citation links with local and niche directories
• Start to build authority backlinks to your website