Search Engine Optimization is a big deal with bloggers and businesses. If you don’t add SEO into your blogs, then your blogs may not rank well. If you don’t add SEO to your website, then your website may not rank well.

If you have been following me for quite some time, you know I am the Queen of Content Creation and Strategy. But when it comes to SEO, I know enough to get by, but not enough to feel confident teaching others.

That is why I decided to interview my good friend, Rahul Choudhary from Your Blog Mentor! He knows a lot more about SEO than I do! Over at Your Blog Mentor, he teaches bloggers how to turn their blogs into passion by teaching them the step-to-step process on how to do that.

I am going to hand it over to Rahul and let him answer all of my SEO questions, from what it is to how to use it effectively inside of my blog!

What is SEO and why should I care?

The process of optimizing your content or website in such a way that it ranks on the first page of search engines when someone makes a search is called SEO or search engine optimization.
You know, people nowadays, especially bloggers are more focused on creating content for the search engine bots or spiders instead of actual human readers. And, this is totally wrong.
You should always focus on creating content for the human users and then optimizing it for the search engines. Not the other way around!
SEO is really important and the most undervalued topic in the blogging industry. Like, who wants to spend countless hours in creating social media graphics, pins and then promoting their blog in multiple threads?
I’m sure you don’t!
The whole point of starting a blog and turning it into a business is freedom. Right?
Let me give you an overview of why SEO is really important:
> The traffic you get from search engines is highly targeted which means there are better chances of them converting into subscribers and paying customers
> Cost-effective – SEO gives a really high return on your investment
> You can’t trust social media platforms for traffic. If the platform goes down (or even if there’s a slight change), so does your traffic and your business.
You get it now?

Where should I begin with SEO? And where do I find keywords for my blog?

The very first thing you need to focus on when it comes to better SEO is your site architecture. How easy it is for users to navigate through your website and find content?
Everything else just follows.
Secondly, when it comes to finding the right keywords for your blog posts, you have tons of options.
The easiest way is going down the paid path i.e. using paid tools like SEMrush or Moz.
There are other cheaper tools like Keysearch or Keywords everywhere that I like.
You can also look for keywords from Google itself.
Quick tip: When you’re ready with a set of keywords, make sure to type them in Google and look at the results. Sometimes, a few keywords don’t actually mean what you expect from them.
Note: I talk about both these topics – Site architecture and Keywords in much detail in my signature course called SEO Simplified for Bloggers. 

I heard of backlinking and how it’s important, but why? And does it improve my SEO?

Backlinking or linking to other quality sites (often known as outgoing links) is really important for SEO.

When you link back to other websites, you’re telling search engines that you’re not selfish (We all know the truth!) and you care about providing the right and useful information to the users.

Since Internet is a network of data and information, search engines actually like it when you link back to quality websites because you’re helping in expanding this network.

Is there any changes to SEO that are coming in 2020 I should be aware of?

With the recent introduction of BERT update, Google is focusing more and more on the way users search and the words they use.
Search engines and being specific with the results they show in SERPs or Search Engine Result Pages. It’s going to get more and more difficult for people/websites to manipulate their way to the top rankings.
Quick tip: You could never predict Google.

SEO seems so overwhelming! I don’t have time for that! What is the bare minimum I should be doing with my blog?

SEO is actually pretty simple if you know what to do and how to do it. It just sounds hard!
The very basic things you need to do with your blog are:
> Focus on a niche and stay on the topic
> Have a great site structure – make it easy for your readers to locate the right content
> Focus on quality over quantity. You can’t and shouldn’t expect all your articles to rank on the first page of search engines.
> Optimise your content side-by-side when you’re writing your blog posts.
> Give priority to your audience over the bots

If I want to learn more about SEO so I can increase my traffic, where should I start or turn to?

Well, to be honest, there is a ton of information on the web for free to learn about anything. Same goes with SEO.
The main problem with that free information is that it could be outdated or wrong. And, trust me, you wouldn’t want to risk your website and get it penalized by Google (one of the topics that I talk about in detail in my course).
To prevent that from happening and save your time, I’ve created this SEO course called SEO Simplified for Bloggers that takes shares everything you need to do and that you don’t need to do to rank higher in search engines.

Keeping in mind that a beginner doesn’t have a lot of money to invest in the beginning, I made this affordable for everyone without holding anything back at all.
You’ll learn everything from the basics to Keyword research, on-page SEO, Off-Page SEO + backlinks, and how to prevent Google penalization.
Plus, there’s an on-page SEO checklist to keep track of everything you need to do in your blog posts to optimize them for search engines.
And a 12-week blueprint that’ll help you in building a solid SEO strategy for your blog.
And that’s not all, you also get access to a private email + Facebook group for accountability and support.
And all of this for just a one –time payment of $87 for lifetime access and regular updates.
So, make the decision and grab it right away.