Becoming More Serious About SEO

Articles, Technology

I’m off to a very late start but, I am finally going to become more serious about SEO. I’ve pretty much avoided it, to this point, due to two factors …

  • I don’t really understand it
  • This type of task definitely does not fall under my preferred list of things to do

However, as I have a limited budget ($0.00) … I had best get to work. The good news is that I do have a great plugin for my sites, Yoast, and I have developed some level of comfort with it. I am not expecting miracles but, I can certainly do better than what I have now. In other words, anything will be a huge improvement!

My reluctance to do this has exposed two glaring deficiencies. While I have performed SEO on this site’s posts, I have not done the same for my pages. My other site, NetWorks! Boise … I haven’t done it on any posts or pages. Here I am, with a projected 5 years left in my professional shelf-life and … I’m an idiot.

Shoulda’ coulda’ woulda’. Time to doda’. While I have plenty on my plate, I’m making this my #1 priority. In fact, I’m starting today, Sunday February 4, 2018, and I will publish this post likely in May. By that time, I should be able to see some improved results. At least, hopefully.

The first thing I did was to take a look at, and read about, my website titles and taglines and made some minor changes to each. I remembered something from when I first set these sites up years ago about having Google index each site. After some research, I went to Google’s Webmaster Tools and asked it to crawl both.

Honestly, I’m not even sure if that was the best way, or even a way, to accomplish what I wanted to do but, we’ll just have to wait and see. Please remember, I hate all of this crap to the point that the thought of eating worms sounds more appealing.

Next I went through the pages on both sites and optimized each the best that I could. Some pages were easier than others, however, one thing that I really like about Yoast is that they give you a colored indicator as to how well you have optimized that post or page.

Black = not configured, red = bad, yellow = o.k., and green = good. I had to settle for less than green on some pages. Additionally, Yoast will also make suggestions on how to improve your SEO for each individual post or page. It’s pretty interesting when you perform one small suggestion and the indicator changes color. #Reward

Yoast also provides you with a readability index. For the most part, it doesn’t much care for the way that I write. Go figure. I don’t even care much for the way that I write but, neither of us have to read it. You do. Please don’t answer that question. Funny thing … it actually likes this post.

Fast forward to today, March 28. 2018 – There were two specific keyword searches that I was attempting to first address. One for each site and did not show up on search for either, Now, I am first page on both. Maybe I’m not quite as stupid as first thought but, then again ….

Craig M. Jamieson

Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!
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