World Class Marketing Consultant Myke Metzger Explains Search Engine Optimization For Beginners

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are many articles that discuss nuanced or advanced strategies but fail to address the basics of what SEO is and how it can help you.

We’ve asked Myke Metzger, one of the countries leading marketing consultants for big brands, influencers, and local businesses to provide a basic explanation of SEO which you can use as a foundation for further learning. Myke is an author, speaker, and the founder of RVA Social, a full stack marketing agency in Virginia.

If you wish to improve or understand Search Engine Optimization, Myke shares a few basic, initial steps that can make a big difference in the visibility of your website or e-commerce store.

Myke, what Is SEO?

“SEO is a set of strategies that you can use to help your web page achieve greater visibility in search engine results. If you have limitless marketing funds, you can obtain tremendous visibility through paid advertising. However, a good SEO strategy can provide your web page with a huge amount of free visibility. If your page is one of the top two or three results from an internet search, you’re likely to get a lot of organic traffic to your page. SEO is the process by which you can ensure your web page is attractive to search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo.”

Myke, what are the basic components of SEO?

“It’s easy to become confused by all the SEO articles and bs proliferating the internet. If you’re just beginning with SEO, you get the greatest benefit by implementing the basics. SEO is a long term strategy, and sometimes your results don’t start to become apparent until months or in advanced cases, years after you’ve begun your strategy. You should always begin with the basic components of SEO and then build on those with advanced strategies when you feel you are ready.”

The basic components are:

• Keywords
• Formatting
• High-speed pages

Myke breaks down each component for us newbies:

Keywords

“Keywords or key phrases are the words you use to declare the intention of your article. When you think about selecting your keywords, you should consider what topics people are likely to type into a search engine. The closer the search topic is to your set of keywords, the more likely you are to generate organic traffic. Keywords need to appear in your URL title, the article title, the meta tag, and within the article itself.”

Formatting

“The formatting of your article helps the search engines properly evaluate your page and feature it in search results. There are millions of web pages on the internet, and they are all machine evaluated. Therefore, if you make a concerted effort to apply the cues, the machine algorithm is searching for, your page will receive a better search engine result. Keep your writing simple and your sentences short, and aim for a keyword density of about 1 to 3 percent. If you saturate your article with keywords, your page might be designated as spam which would be detrimental to your SEO results.”

High-Speed Pages

“Your page must load quickly both for desktop searches and mobile searches or search engines are going to bury your page on the back pages of their result list. Slow loading speeds discourage visitors who lose patience with a page very quickly. Search engines take note of a page’s load speed and give preferential rankings to the faster loading pages.”

Myke, where do I start?

Planning Search Engine Optimization Campaigns

“One of the first things you should decide when planning your SEO strategy is whether you want to have a global or a localized impact. A global SEO strategy can bring you a lot of visits, but if you’re in a business that requires interpersonal interaction, global web traffic will not translate into higher profits. To improve your Search Engine Optimization, for example, you must pick localized topics, interact with local businesses, and have your address and phone number featured in text from somewhere on your website.”

Okay, Myke, this is a bit overwhelming…

Myke shares with us to not be overwhelmed by the constant chatter you hear about search engine optimization.

“SEO can be broken down to a few basic concepts that will be implemented no matter what your business or your marketing strategy happens to be. Most of the SEO discussion that you hear revolves around new strategies that are reaching the market that is only beneficial when built upon a foundation of basic SEO knowledge.”

My conversation with Myke was a loaded one, but as a conclusion just remember:

If you start with keywords, formatting, and good page load speed, you will receive the majority of the benefits of Search Engine Optimization.