Search Engine Optimization: Advertising with Google for Free!
Search engine optimization (SEO) has been growing rapidly in the past decades. However, many businesses still don’t know anything about it. But what exactly is it? In a nutshell, it’s free or organic marketing on search engines, with Google being the biggest search engine – dominating more than 80% of the ‘Search’ industry. Basically, it’s when you search something in Google and the algorithm tries to pull back the best matching web pages in order of relevance. And this list of sites comes after the adverts, if there are any.
In this article, we will talk about how the SEO industry is growing, the importance of SEO, and how to get started using free resources and tools available online.
Since its very beginning, there are always people who insist that SEO is just a passing trend or that it’s dying. But the truth is, SEO is thriving, and it isn’t going anywhere soon. It has become a billion-dollar industry, and it’s only getting bigger every year. In 2016, Borrell Associates made a prediction that by 2020, businesses in the United States would spend an estimated $80 billion on SEO services. This number is significantly higher than in 2016 and 2018 when companies were spending $65.26 billion and $79.27 billion on SEO services, respectively. Of course, estimates and predictions can be fallible and the official number for 2020 has not come out yet, but this does suggest that SEO has grown significantly.
It doesn’t matter precisely how big the industry is, but we can all agree that SEO plays a significant role in the online world. In fact, a more recent survey of 317 respondents validates the importance of SEO, particularly during a global pandemic, with 34% of the respondents saying they would invest more in SEO and 63% saying SEO would become more important throughout all the mayhem.
When the coronavirus pandemic started early this year, the world shut down nearly overnight. Our lives were upheaved by the changes that COVID-19 brought. With all of the chaos and sudden change, traditional business planning in most areas does not work anymore. As everyone is forced to live in the “new normal” and numerous physical businesses had to close down, the online marketplace becomes essential for many companies to survive. Even before the global coronavirus pandemic, SEO is already an essential digital marketing strategy, but the recent crisis has made it more critical than ever.
With so many companies committed to conducting business online all at the same time, the e-commerce industry is becoming super busy, which makes SEO a vital part of any company’s marketing tactic. In short, if you want your business to be found online, you need SEO to help you beat your competitors. With SEO, small businesses can compete with bigger companies.
Yet, a lot of businesses still don’t know much about the importance and value of SEO and do not have any SEO professional.
A survey of 394 business owners found that the majority of them do not feel they had a good understanding of SEO. 55% of these business owners believed that SEO is important, but they are not sure just how important it is. Another survey of 501 small businesses in the United States found that only 30% use SEO to improve their online visibility.
Here’s the thing, SEO can be expensive. Many small businesses don’t have the money to funnel into a substantial online marketing budget to pay for the tools or get help from professionals. Some are also reluctant to pursue SEO because they don’t often see immediate results. Others may feel doubtful when it comes to investing in SEO since they are afraid that they will partner with the wrong type of SEO agency and waste their money.
Google provides free SEO resources and tools
The good news is, SEO doesn’t always have to be unaffordable. If you look around closely, you can find many free resources and tools to help you get started on SEO. These tools and resources may even help you achieve significant gains without having to spend a dime. You don’t need to be an expert to start an SEO strategy. In fact, 62% of small businesses rely on their in-house employees to manage SEO.
Suppose you are just starting in SEO or you are a business owner who wants to try SEO yourself. In that case, Google is giving away so many resources and tools totally for free. Not only beginners but those with advanced knowledge of SEO can also learn tons of stuff from these free resources and tools. Take Google Search Central (formerly Google Webmasters), for example. It offers beginners starter guide for businesses or marketers who are new to SEO, a guide for developers, and even a guide for SEO professionals.
Google Search Central aims to help people improve the visibility of their website on Google Search. It is filled with useful information about how Google Search works, Search guidelines, crawling and indexing, and other Search-related topics.
When you read the beginners guide in Google Search Central, you will find sign up for Search Console as one of the tips. Google Search Console is an exceptionally powerful tool for beginners. It is all about one thing: the overall health of your website. It is helpful to see any indexing issues, alerts, and bugs.
Another free and fantastic tool from Google to start you off on your endeavors in SEO is Google Analytics. Even for professionals who make SEO a full-time job, this is often considered the most important tool. It can track your website’s traffic and show numerous keyword insights about which terms people use to land on your pages. You can also use Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends. Google Keyword Planner is a research tool that you can use to generate keyword ideas from an URL or website, while Google Trends show the popularity of a topic over time, which you can use to catch and capitalize on trending topics.
Many SEO professionals are more than willing to share their knowledge and help others.
Learning from the top SEO professionals is the best way to get started. There is no better resource as a starting place to learn SEO than from the experts. Many SEO professionals love to share their knowledge and help others. They share tips, tactics, strategies, data, tools, and much more useful information in research, articles, blog posts, as well as at conferences and on social media.
SEO Pros you should know
Dixon Jones is an international SEO Speaker and Internet Marketing advisor who has been working in the SEO industry for 20 years. He works as a business coach to founders of internet technologies. Dixon has talked about Internet Marketing all around the world. He is a TEDx past speaker and has spoken about search, strategy, and online link building all around Europe and the USA. He has also built several successful start-ups, including a world-leading search engine called Majestic, which specializes in web cartography and backlink analysis. You can read some of his articles on Majestic’s blog, such as How PageRank Really Works: Understanding Google.
Dr. Marie Haynes is a leader in the SEO industry. She has been helping businesses of all sizes improve their site quality for more than ten years. She is obsessed with understanding how business owners can produce high-quality pages that Google loves and how Google’s algorithms work. Marie is a regular speaker at Pubcon and SMX, as well as a frequent contributor to Search Engine Watch and Moz.Com. She shares various SEO resources on her website, including Guide to E-A-T. This complete guide is regularly updated and shares information about E-A-T and Marie’s webinar series on the three components of E-A-T: Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
Olga Zarzeczna is an SEO professional from SEOSLY. She specializes in doing advanced technical SEO audits that examine all technical aspects of a website. With over eight years of experience in the field, she has done more than 100 SEO audits so far. She mostly works with big brands and huge complex websites, but she has been doing SEO for small businesses as well. With her passion and love for SEO, Olga created an incredibly useful website called SEOSLY to share her knowledge and experience with everyone who is interested in SEO. This website provides in-depth, step-by-step guides, materials, and articles about SEO for free. She hopes that SEOSLY can enrich as many people interested in SEO as possible.
For those who are just getting into SEO, check out Olga’s Beginner SEO Guide, which discusses SEO from different angles and covers everything a beginner should know to start their SEO Journey – from basic SEO terms and different SEO types to SEO tools and career in SEO. Since Olga is also a Google Product Expert, her Guide to Google Search Operators is also a must-read.
Brian Dean is the founder of the award-winning SEO training company, Backlinko, which is where professional marketers turn for proven SEO advice. Backlinko was listed as a top “blog to follow” in 2017 by Forbes. Brian has been called a “brilliant entrepreneur” by Inc Magazine and an “SEO genius” by Entrepreneur.com. He also shares his knowledge on his Youtube Channel, which has 389,000 subscribers so far.
Cyrus Shepard is the founder of Zyppy, an SEO consultation, software, and content company. With nine years of experience, he has worked for MOZ intermittently from 2012 to 2015 before launching and running Zippy in 2018. Now, he helps teach people SEO and connect those in need of SEO services with expert consultants. Cyrus loves SEO because it is an area where hard and smart work can pay off in huge ways. One of his best articles that we recommend you to read is SEO Success Factors.
Bill Slawski is the Director of SEO Research in Go Fish Digital, an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in SEO, online reputation management, web design and development, content marketing, search engine marketing, and conversion rate optimization. He is an Editor in SEO by the Sea, which is a leading SEO blog, where he has writer over 1,300 posts. Working in the SEO industry for more than 20 years, Bill is regarded as the top expert on Google’s patents related to SEO. His experience includes some of the largest websites in the world, as well as Fortune 500 brands. One of his posts that you should absolutely read is Five Years of Google Ranking Signals.
Aleyda Solis is an International SEO consultant, author, blogger, and speaker who has been working in the SEO industry for 11 years. She is the founder of Orainti, a boutique digital marketing consultancy that offers highly-personalized and results-driven SEO consultancy. Aleyda was included by Forbes in the list of 10 Digital Marketing specialists you need to follow in 2015 and was awarded the European Search Personality of the Year in 2018. You can read some of her guides on Search Engine Journal, including How to Achieve an SEO-Friendly Website Rebrand.
Google guys should know
Besides SEO professionals, you should also keep an eye on employees or spokespeople from significant search engines to catch up with the latest update and maybe get some beneficial advice:
John Mueller is the Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google. Before joining Google in 2007, he owned a software company in Switzerland for more than 12 years. He is known to connect webmasters and SEO professionals to the engineers within Google and is exceptionally giving his knowledge to help others solve their website and SEO issues. He enjoys answering questions about SEO on either Twitter, a Google Webster Hangout, Reddit, or his #AskGoogleWebmasters video series.
Gary Illyes is a webmaster trends analyst at Google. He is one of the most influential SEO experts in the world who is dedicated to creating a better search experience for users by helping webmasters make great websites. He is a significant contributor to the Webmasters Central Blog. Through the Google Webmaster Forums, he also helps users debug their websites.
Hopefully, this article can help you understand more about the importance of SEO and help you find the resources you need to get started.
