“Finding myself in the SEO jungle” is a great topic! Let’s dive in. It’s all about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It is also about knowing who you are.

Having your own website and a blog, is a responsibility and at the same time can be exciting!

Today, I found my site on page 3 of Google. That it means my site is deep in the SEO jungle. We have to hack it out!

I have many dreams of what I would like PG, to do with my website. So yes, there is a personal element to this article. But when we go beyond the egocentricity of writing one’s own blog, then we can discover more.

I hope we will discover what a blog can do for the sites ratings!

 

Blog Discoveries

What can a person discover when writing their own blog:

• Big players in the SEO jungle rule the roost i.e. the search engines
• The little guys use their wit and charm somehow make it to the clearing (page one of Google)
• There is always more knowledge in the world that a one human can comprehend
• An individual’s understanding is limited, but a team can reach further
• Individuals have to struggle to move beyond where they are currently
• In order for a blog to become popular, you have to be willing to give, at least initially

 

When I was Young….

Many of us are trying to find ourselves. The confidence a person feels as a tiny child is lost when they realize that the world really is quite big.

A little kid believes that he controls the world. He does, to some extent. He controls his world.

At fist his world is just comprised of his mother. Easy enough to control one person, isn’t it? Especially when she’s doting on you!

As the infant’s circle widens, he has less and less control.

Contemporaneously, as the level of control he has over his world decreases, his own independence increases too.

That means by the time we are fully-developed adults, we realize we have pretty little control on the great big world. Yet, we have a tremendous amount of independence.

 

Independence and Guidance

Parenting skills, either your parents had them, or they didn’t. That makes no difference now, in the world of WWW. You need to develop these skills yourself.

Why?

You need to raise your website. If you give it boundaries, it can succeed. Just like a kid. Parents who give a child a good upbringing and apply boundaries, raise a confident child.

As long as visitors to your site do not know exactly what the site is about and who it is for, then there is too much independence. The search engines can’t decide which topic to emphasize and, you end up not being on page one.

When you set boundaries for your site, define its purpose and so on, then your site can fly. It can fly right out of the jungle and onto page one of Google.

 

Baby Steps in SEO

Ironically, the first exposure I had to SEO was after I finished studying my courses in web design.

I mean that we learnt about SEO and the plugins. But actually doing it, actually making my articles conform to SEO standards, came later. I have been writing articles for a number of websites in the States. Apart from making sure the articles met my standards, they had to be agreeable to Yoast.

That meant articles had to be:

• Original and not copied
• True and not misleading
• Interesting
• Optimized for Yoast

 

Yoast – Best Tools to Help you Hack through the Jungle!

Yoast SEO is one of the plugins for WordPress sites. There are others, but Yoast is the SEO gold standard. From all the SEO plugins  in WordPress, Yoast has been installed by the most people.

Yoast demands many things, among them:

• Sentences no longer than 20 words
• Links from within the site and to outside pages
• Using an active voice
• Not using to many “difficult words”

In case you were wondering, Yoast is free. There is a premium version, but the free version is generally good enough for most people.

 

Before You Get the Most Out of SEO Plugins

Your site should come after:

• you have decided what you are building it for
• your strengths are apparent
• the market has been defined
• the keywords have been set

Finding myself in the SEO jungle now, on page 3 of Google, happened because I did not do all that!

 

Plugins Galore

Okay, so today, I installed and activated a bunch of plugins. This was thanks to a great webinar from Bluehost. Once you order service from Bluehost, you can benefit from their webinars and other things too.

 

It is still early days. I still need to learn how to use those plugins. They were easy to install, I sure hope I will find it easy to learn how to make the best use of them.

 

To paraphrase Sarah Shapiro’s first book title — to an extent, I will be Growing with My Website!

So, from the mild surprise of finding myself in the SEO jungle, hope abounds. I hope to find my site on page one of Google. And you are welcome to join me on my journey! Please, bookmark my site, as it may take time to get a mailing list set up!

 

 

 

 

Photo by Melanie Medina on Unsplash