Frequently Asked Questions About SEO
Hey I’m Tanya, I own Lucky 44 an SEO Agency located on the Sunshine Coast. I believe everyone can do their own SEO. My mission is to help as many business owners and website creators understand SEO.
I have tried to keep things easy to understand and used as many images, graphics and examples to help explain! If you have any more SEO questions, I would love to answer them for you - shoot me a message via my contact page.
What does SEO stand for?
Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process of making your website better for search engines. SEO is not one thing, it's many things.
It’s a long list of tasks that can be quite easy & straight forward, to being a little more technical and difficult.
I believe you can do your own SEO!
What is a Meta Description?
It’s a brief summary of what your webpage is about. You find it on the backend of every webpage.
This is the snippet of information that shows underneath Page Title in search results.
Google wants you to write your own, she hates missing meta descriptions. Keep them short, sweet and get straight to the important information. Make them appeal to humans, this needs to appeal to humans! We want them to click!
What’s the best website platform for SEO?
In my opinion, the best platform for SEO is the one you can log into yourself and know your way around the backend. If you can make your own changes & updates, write blogs, upload images, create products etc then that is better than having a platform that is “meant” to be the best, but you can’t use it.
One way to see it is it’s kinda like having a Lamborghini and not being able to change gears or drive fast.
I work with clients who have websites made with Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, Square, Wordpress (just to name a few) and all of them have successful businesses.
I can do SEO on their websites.
Should I do Google Ads or FB ads or SEO?
There is no right or wrong answer here, it just depends on your $$ and website/computer skill level and personal preference
I love SEO, once you get Googles attention, you can have a constant stream of clients & enquiries. One well written strategic SEO sprinkled blog page can drive traffic to your website for years and years.
Marketing can be expensive and complex, I encourage you to get a good understanding of all three types of marketing and experiment for your business and industry. Choose marketing that suits you, your personality and skills.
How long does it take to rank #1 on Google?
SEO is not a quick fix, and can take months and months. There are so many bloody variables that I cannot confidently give anyone a precise answer. Google is a complex woman and only she knows. :)
The best way to answer this is with another question, how long is a piece of string? Okay joking, but not really.
Why isn’t my website showing in Google Searches?
Google is probably not sure what you do and where you do it. Websites without SEO tend to live at the back end of Google’s filing cabinet. Maybe your website looks good but has not been built with any SEO.
It could be things like missing keywords, low word count, 404 page errors. For your website to “rank well” with Google, you need to do a few things to get her attention and to make sure she understands who you are, what you do and where you do it.
Should I do an SEO course before I build my website?
Yes. Understanding how Google works and what SEO is will dramatically change how you build it and what words you put on your website.
If you want your website to show up in Google Searches, learn SEO.
If you want to sell online, you need to learn SEO.
And you should do an SEO course after you’ve built it too. Don’t ever stop improving your SEO skills, keep learning and practising SEO.
What are some SEO Best Practices in 2024?
There's a bunch of stuff you can do to improve your website's SEO. The real SEO secret is simply consistently making changes and improvements. Keep making changes, updates & improvements to your website in lots of different ways.
Create content for humans. Google has continuously said that she likes “helpful, reliable, people-first content.”
Use words that we know people use then they want to find something on Google. Sprinkle these keywords in your website through the title, heading, meta description, page content etc. Don't forget to sneak them into other key spots too, like the alt text for images and the text in your links.
Links are important for Google to finds other pages on your website, so make sure your links are crawlable.
Drive people to your website on other platforms like Facebook and Pinterest.
Make your website readable and interesting. Use formatting & design & layout to create a good experience for the reader.
Why do I need to write content and blog for SEO?
Google wants unique, fresh, trustworthy, helpful information. So do humans. Google’s job is to provide searchers the best answers, solutions & relevant search results she can find.
Your job is to write & provide those best answers and solutions on your website.
Google wants our websites, products & services to be trustworthy, helpful and of service. Writing fresh up to date content on a blog post is easier than writing or creating new website pages and content.
This is what Google has to say in 2024:
“Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Google's automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that's primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results.
People-first content means content that's created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings.”
Which SEO tasks are most important?
I love starting with creating helpful information on the homepage & improving footer, Image SEO, Page Titles & Headings on pages.
In my SEO For Beginners Workshop, I explain that each SEO task is worth 1%, and you do enough of them the way google wants, you are going to have these layers of amazing SEO!
Making small & consistent updates and SEO improvements is the most important advice I can give you.
What are SEO keywords?
Google explains it beautifully…
“Use words that people would use to look for your content, and place those words in prominent locations on the page, such as the title and main heading of a page, and other descriptive locations such as alt text and link text.”
- source Google herself
Keywords are the words we think people use when they type in a Google Search.
How much does SEO cost?
My hourly rate starts at $150. I have a unique set of skills which includes 26 years in small business, a very practical and honest approach to SEO.
Lucky 44 has a small team that offers high quality work and customer service.
What Types of SEO are there?
On page SEO relates to our website, an example might be having keywords in your Headings and Subheadings on your homepage.
Off page SEO are the things we do online that relate to our business. One example of off page SEO is having a Google Business Profile.
Technical SEO is more the Doogie Howsers of the world. Technical SEO refers to the process of optimising your website for the crawling and indexing phase. It's called "technical" because it has nothing to do with the actual content of the website or with website promotion. The main goal of technical SEO is to optimize the infrastructure of a website. According to Neil Patel, some of the areas covered under technical SEO include XML sitemaps, site architecture, URL structure, and structured data markup.
What is a backlink?
It’s when one website or domain points to another website.
Example
The New York Times writes a blog post about this lovely, funny SEO lady and how she is determined to teach as many business owners about SEO as possible. In their blog post they mention Lucky 44 SEO Coaching Services, they then create a link to my services page that people can click.
www.newyorktimes.com/seo-lady-blog-post
👉🏼
How long does SEO take?
It can take months and even years.
What is a sitemap?
It is a map and breakdown of every single page & url on your website.
