Blogging Success Tips from Tim Soulo

#1 Don’t get caught in the “infinite learning” loop

The best piece of advice to an SEO beginner would be: “Pick a few keywords and try to rank for them.”
I see that a lot of people get caught in the “infinite learning” loop and try to find that “new hot SEO strategy” that will help them outrank their competitors.
While in fact, the basic principles of SEO could not be more straightforward:

1. Pick a keyword/topic that has a nice search traffic potential
2. Create a page that would address that topic in a way that would satisfy potential searchers
3. Get other websites to link to that page.

That’s it!
But once you try to actually do it, you’ll find a lot of little things that you’ll need to learn and master before you’ll get your pages to the top of Google.

#2  Don’t rely on the search volume too much

My last “aha moment” was when I realized that the search volume of a single keyword isn’t really indicative of the total search traffic that you will get if you rank for it.

Think about it, when we do keyword research we look at search volumes of individual keywords, but when a page ranks at the top of Google, it doesn’t rank just for one single keyword – it will additionally rank for a ton of variations.

So these days I don’t rely on the search volume of keywords too much, I always study the top-ranking pages for my desired keywords and look at how much search traffic these pages are getting in total (from all the keywords that they rank for).

Robbie Richards

SEO Specialist, RobbieRichards.com

#1  Learn by doing and find a mentor

As a beginner in SEO, it’s easy to get bogged down by all the advice floating around online. You end up spending hours and hours reading, listening, and watching everything there is to know about SEO, instead of actually doing it.

I found myself in the same boat about 6 years ago when I got into SEO. It wasn’t until I bought a domain, set up a simple WordPress site, and start implementing that I began to quickly build my skillset.

Long story short, one of the best SEO tips I can give to a beginner is to set up a sandbox site and start applying as they learn to figure out for themselves what works and what doesn’t.

Another thing I strongly recommend is finding someone who has had a lot of success in SEO and asking them to be a mentor. This is something else that really helped me build confidence, and stay excited about what I was doing. Having an expert sound bound is invaluable when you are starting out.

#2 Work with existing assets

Always go back to the fundamentals. I’ve been able to generate some great results for clients recently just by going back and working on the “foundational” elements – internal linking, on-page etc.

On top of that, don’t jump straight into creating new content or building new links, always work with and leverage the assets you have on hand for the fastest gains.

One simple strategy is identifying all the existing content with decent rankings that with a simple relaunch could jump up several spots and generate an immediate uptick in traffic. I cover my process for this in great detail in this organic traffic guide.