Would taking risks do you any good?

Would taking risks do you any good?

Sean: Any advice when writing metadata?

Sean: Metadata is all about being found in the search results, and your listing would have the metadata, the title tag, the meta description. That’s it.

Sean: My advice for writing metadata is making sure that you get clicked. That’s it. Making sure you get clicked, which means that your metadata spoke to the target user. Make sure that when I speak to the target user, it speaks their language. It was saying what they wanted to hear. It was saying what they wanted to find. When you’re not saying things that people want to find, they will not look at you. They want that click at you. They will not listen. When your metadata speaks what they want to hear, then they’ll click on your search engine listing. Then that’s metadata that is well-written, that is good and that is recommended.

Sean: How can link building help my website?

Sean: Well, link building is an integral part of SEO. You have to build links or you can earn links from other websites, because you’re doing something spectacular, something different or you’re a thought leader, you’re an authority in that field.

Sean: And link building helps you by ranking better that way. It is like a vote of recommendation from another website to your website, much like how I would recommend a good dentist to you if you’re having a toothache. And I do have a dental client in SEO and I’d refer you to them right now. It might not be because you know who my dentist is, but I referred them to you because I know who they are and you trust me. That’s the power of referral. That’s also the power of links online.

Sean: All right, next question, what would you say are the most important factors to making a successful website?

Sean: Most important factors would be, the first thing that I look at because I’m an SEO guy would be, is the code SEO friendly. If the code is not SEO friendly, you’re building it wrong. And it’s much like how an architect and engineer would build your house where if the materials used, the cement is cheap, the wood is cheap, the steel is too thin for the support, the paint is cheap, so it chips off easily when rain and heat comes.

Sean: It’s like that when you’re building a website, you have to make sure that the coding is done right and done well. If it’s not, you’re going to have a website that’s flimsy and it’s not going to rank, and not going to be able to compete well on the search rankings. And search rankings are very, very important. Majority of your traffic should come from search traffic, because those are people already looking for your product and service.

Sean: I’d say one of the most important factors would be the code. Second would be the site speed, which is also, you know, coders a lot to do with site speed as well. Did you code it right? Are you using a CDN? Are you using caching, GZIP? All of these things that increase the site’s speed are very important. A lot of it has to do with code servers or serving the content from specific points or areas in the world or servers in the world. There’s just so many.

Sean: There’s so many, Site security is also very important. Making sure your website is secure. You don’t have malware inside. You have SSL or HTTPS. My gosh, UI and UX. There’s so many things that were very, very important factors to making a successful website, and I could go on and on and explain here and be and be technical about it. But I would rather not. You could do your homework. There’s over 200 publicly known factors for ranking in Google. Following those things would make for a really good website already. So I hope that helps. Again, that’s two hundred publicly known ranking factors by Google. You could go look for it online and you’ll find it. So study that. Definitely that’s going to make for a fantastic website.

Sean: From Viane, how should I or how do I go all-in with what I’ve started?

Sean: When you go all in, that means you’re sure you’re doubling down on what you have. That means, for example, with me, that’s when I resigned from HP and finally just went full time doing SEO Hacker because I was so sure that SEO was going to be big, because I was an avid user of Google before. Now I keep searching. I’m a very curious guy. How I learned stuff is by searching for it in Google and learning it on my own. That’s how I learn SEO on my own. That’s how I experimented on the ranking factors. That’s how I put up my first blog. That’s how I learned to do certain kinds of coding. That’s how I learned to edit some plugins and so on.

Sean: And curiosity. Google serves curiosity. Google serves desire. How can it go wrong? How can it not grow? So I doubled down on SEO because I saw how powerful Google is. In fact, today there are people asking Google, Where can I find God? How do I get a love life? Stuff that you usually ask your parents or a close friend, you know? So, you know, given that thought, which is not that, you know, when you think about it, it’s pretty sad that people are asking Google that.

Sean: But that shows you how powerful Google is, and that showed me how powerful SEO can be. And so during 2010, 2009-2010, no one knew what CEO was, but I was doubling down on it. I quit my job, which was my only job, and I was very fortunate to have that job because I feel 28 units college. I didn’t know why they hired me, but they did. They took a risk with me and I quit, you know, how bad that feels. But I doubled down on SEO and I knew this is the way to go.

Sean: And looking back, it’s now 2021. That was like over 10 years ago. I’d say it’s one of the best things I’ve ever decided on and I’ve ever doubled down on. And building the brand SEO Hacker up to this point. This, I believe, is the time for me to finally see how the seeds I planted are growing, because now I can see how many people are just saying, “SEO? If you need SEO, SEO-Hacker.” I don’t even know some of these people, but they keep referring SEO Hacker to people who are looking for  SEO, which is great and I love them, and I’m going to be forever grateful to these people, referring SEO Hacker to all of these clients that also, I don’t know, but that’s the power of word of mouth. That’s the power of doubling down on what you believe in. That’s the power of branding.

Sean: Invest in good branding. Make sure you do business ethically and with integrity. You take care of your clients and go the extra mile for them. They’ll love you. They will share who you are to the rest of the world who need your stuff as well.

Sean: Who do you follow on Twitter, email newsletters for SEO updates?

Sean: Search Engine Land, CEO Roundtable, Barry Schwartz, Rand Fishkin’s ideas sometimes are still really good, but right now he’s just knee deep. And Spark.org, which is a social media tool now that he’s founded, I also followed.

Sean: And I have a lot of people I follow on Twitter. Definitely SEO by the Sea. You could also follow them. That’s for Google patents: SEO by the Sea. It might get a little bit technical there, but SEO is technical. Google is technical. So if you want to learn their patents, how they’re applying for patents that protect their technology, it’s SEO by the Sea. Oh man! There’s a lot. There’s a huge number of stuff you can follow. Definitely Google’s blog. You can check that out once in a while. That’s also important. So those are some. Sara Shepherd as well. Dr. Peters, good to follow as well. There’s so many. There’s just so many. Yeah, I could. I could go on and on. I’ve read, followed, and heeded the advice of a lot of people on social media and blogs, and I hope that helps.