fundamentals of SEO
Rachel Moffett

#ContentWritingChat Recap: Fundamentals of SEO (Doing it The Right Way) with Nicholas Coriano

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is pretty essential for anyone who is creating and publishing content online. After all, if you want your content to be discovered by your target audience, you need to do a little optimization. That’s why SEO was the focus of our most recent #ContentWritingChat. We talked all about the fundamentals of SEO, a great way to get back to the basics.

#ContentWritingChat Recap: Fundamentals of SEO (Doing it The Right Way) with Nicholas Coriano


For this week’s chat, Nicholas Coriano popped in to be our guest host. He’s an entrepreneur, motivator, and the CEO of Homescape LLC. He joined the chat to talk all about the fundamentals of doing SEO the right way and shared plenty of great tips with everyone.

Q1: What is SEO?

To kick off the chat, we asked the all-important question… What is SEO? It’s important to know what exactly what SEO is before you dive in and start implementing the strategies you’ve learned about. Here’s how some of our chat participants defined SEO:

As Nick said, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of getting traffic from organic search results via search engines like Google.

Annaliese defined SEO as how you acquire attention and action of search engines.

Our CEO, Julia, said SEO is naturally optimizing your site for organic rankings. Something we focus on here at Express Writers!

SEO helps to make your content easily discovered and readable by the Google robots.

By taking the time to optimize your content, it will become easier for search engines to find. As Pamela said, you just need house the keywords you want to be known for.

Do you want your content to be seen by your audience? You need it to rank highly in search engine results. That’s what a little SEO helps you do!

Remember that you have to work with the search engines in order to get results. There’s no need for black hat tactics or anything like that!

Q2: Why is SEO important?

Now that you know what SEO is, you need to understand why it’s so important. These reasons are all great examples of why SEO is crucial for online content creators:

As Nick said, people turn to search engines to look for things. If you want your content to show up in those search results (and to rank high), you need to take the time to implement some SEO tactics.

Ryan said SEO helps Google understand what your web page is about and why it will help users.

SEO ensures search engines can craw and assess the content on your website, then present it for relevant search queries.

Do you want your website to be crawled, indexed, and then highly ranked? Of course! Debi said this is why SEO is a must.

Jessica knows SEO is important because it helps your content get to your audience.

Your ranking in the search engines will determine whether or not your content is found. And you want it to be found, right?

SEO increases the likelihood your audience will find you through content, keywords, and links.

Cheryl’s answer is a great way to look at it. If you want your content to be easier to find, SEO is very worthwhile.

Q3: What are keywords?

One of the fundamentals of doing SEO is choosing the keywords you want to rank for. They need to be relevant to your content and your audience so the right people find your work. Here’s how our chat participants defined keywords:

Keywords are how search engines what your content is about and who they should direct to your blog or website.

Varuna said keywords are the search teams people use to find content via Google and other search engines.

Keywords hone in on what your target audience is searching for. Ryan said you should use them naturally to improve your rankings.

Leah said keyword are the words and phrases people use to search. You then need to use these keywords to target the right people and draw them to your website.

Keywords are commonly search words and phrases that bring traffic to your site. The Web Themes Plus team said keywords are based on relevance, intent, and purpose.

Q4: What tools and tactics do you use to find keywords?

The goods news is, there are plenty of tools today that help you find the right keywords for your content. Check out this advice from people in Tuesday’s chat:

Google Adwords, Moz, and reverse engineering are the tools and tactics Nick relies on.

Google has plenty of great tools to help you find the right keywords. You can use their Keyword Planner, Google Trends, or just do a few searches. Moz is great as well!

Annaliese relies on SEMrush and Google to find the right keywords for her content and her audience.

Maureen takes advantage of the handy list of suggestions that come up when you type something into a search engine.

For Jacob, BuzzSumo is a must. It’s a great tool to find out what your audience is interested in and what they’re sharing online.

Nate said Moz’s Keyword Explorer is a must!

One great tip is to study your competitors. You can learn a lot from them!

Rebecca likes to put herself in the shoes of her buyer. Think about what your audience is looking for. That’s a great place to start.

Q5: What can I do on my website to improve SEO?

There are plenty of tactics you can implement ON your website to improve SEO. Here are some tips you can try out:

Great advice from Nick! Review, review, and provide value to your readers. You should never be spammy. Focus on becoming an authority in your field by consistently sharing great content.

Ryan said to answer the questions your audience has. Be relevant and add value to them.

Use keywords within your website’s content, but don’t overdo it. Keywords should be used strategically and in a way that is natural and human.

Sprinkle keywords throughout your copy, but make sure readability is high. No keyword stuffing!

Crappy content is a huge don’t! Focus on producing content of value that answers the questions your audience has.

Skip the jargon and use simple language that your audience is searching for. They’re more likely to find it this way.

Don’t forget to add those alt tags on your images! It’s a great way to boost your rankings.

Yoast is a great tool to use on your website!

Q6: What can I do off my website to improve SEO?

Just as you can do things on your website to improve SEO, you can do things OFF your site as well. Try implementing these tips in order to see results:

Gain links or mentions on other platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other blogs and websites.

Guest blogging is perfect for building brand awareness and positioning yourself as an authority. It also helps you generate links back to your website.

You can even go beyond guest blogging by doing podcast interviews, video interviews, and more.

Julia said to serve your customers well. Building offline word-of-mouth is a great way to grow your brand and to establish trust and increase your rankings online.

Make sure you’re sharing your content on social media. It’s a great way to send traffic back to your site.

Q7: How do I test to see if SEO is working?

Testing is one of the fundamentals of doing SEO. Once you have started optimizing your content, you need to do some tests to see if it’s actually working for you. Here’s how to do that:

Check your analytics regularly to see how things are going.

You need to start by setting goals for your SEO campaign. Without goals, you won’t have an idea of which metrics to track.

Ryan recommends setting up Google Analytics, then monitoring your traffic to see how much is organic. You can also use various tools to see your rankings.

Cristy’s advice is to have detailed reports of your activity before implementing any changes. This will give you something to compare new results to.

Q8: How does different content impact SEO?

So, how does different content impact your SEO? Here’s what some of our chat participants said:

Incorporate a variety of content formats, but make sure you are authentic in everything you create.

Annaliese said creating a value-rich content variety will help you reach large audience. This can ten improve your search rankings.

As Jacob said, well-written and relevant content leads to good SEO. Focus on providing value to your audience with everything you write. Learn about SEO so you can write better content.

Kristen recommends tapping into audiences you didn’t realize you had. Just make sure you still focus on your core audience.

Evergreen and long-form content are essential! Social media is also great to be using to improve SEO.

We look forward to seeing you at the next #ContentWritingChat! Mark your calendars weekly for Tuesday at 10 AM Central Time for great chats centered around content writing and marketing. Follow @ExpWriters to stay updated on our new topics and guests!

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