Have you ever caught yourself wondering about SEO key words?

It feels like a mystery, but it’s not. There are a handful of simple guidelines. It’s mostly just a lot of work.

What are SEO key words?

SEO keywords are exact word combinations that people are searching for.

The search engine is trying to teach you to fill empty space rather than pile on more of the same.

High-quality information that works and that people are looking for, rather than a bunch of robot bullshit or duds.

I started my SEO journey in the spring after an old friend said, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore.” I’m not going into details, but I was bummed. I could easily have gone on a month-long journey through therapy or overshare on the podcast I was planning to make, but I just sorta shut down instead.

Do you ever shut down when things feel overwhelming?

Sometimes I’ll just jump into a new thing. Like blogging. At the beginning, I like to marinade in my new subject matter so I even started wondering what blogging is, what’s a longform blog? … and what is a trypophobia wasp nest?

Why Look for SEO Key words?

SEO key words help the people find the information. The internet is so cool because you can find so much information. Right at your fingertips. But what about when you can’t find any information? It means the information isn’t getting to the people. The information can be better optimized to be found. At some point, we have to agree to agree what time it is, or what color blue is, or what color the ocean is. we need a point of reference. For the internet, we’ve agreed to call that “search engine optimization.”

With my head out of the clouds, I focused back on the basics. A year ago, I started a Shopify store. In the course I took, there were not many conversations about optimizing for search. The model of marketing they teach depends heavily on outreach. But I was feeling like a hermit.

I knew SEO was something I had to work on eventually; even Amy Porterfield says she wished she had worked on that sooner. (She also said she wished she tracked her forms earlier, so that’s one of the things I track in Notion.)

Where do I begin doing search engine optimization?

You start with a keyword research tool. You can install the keywords everywhere extension on Chrome, or just use Google’s built in optimizer for searchers to start. Type some ideas into he white google search box and see what pops up. Other people are searching for those things.

I purchased a lifetime membership to Ubersuggest and got to work SEO-ing. I went on vacation this 4th of July and am proud to say 14 people visited my store while I was on vacation without a laptop. So cute. It’s working.

When I started, I had 133 SEO Issues.

That feels like a lot.

Forty-three of them were low word count, and I learned you need about 200 – 300 words to ditch the low word count.

Check out this itty bitty transformation. I’m so excited. It’s nothing. **blushes**

Ahh!

It was so much work. I’d like to thank my finger muscles, my typing skills, and my robot, Jasper.

Here are my first SEO accomplishments —>>

• Raised my SEO Score by 11 points
• 3X my Organic Monthly Traffic
• 3X my Organic Keywords
• Fixed 90 SEO Issues
• Wrote 19 new pages

What you don’t see are the obstacles.

The agony over missing H1s. Discovering that zero, I mean exactly ZERO, people search for your cute little product name every month. The internal debate over the I can do this //What am I thinking?!.

I’ve developed a habit of paying attention to SEO on the weekends.

My SEO keyword research tool (Ubersuggest) updates Monday Evenings, and I like to make tweaks and improvements on Saturday and Sunday. Though I actually went really hard this week because it’s working, and I was on vacation last week. I’m so proud that a few people made it to the store while was making memories in the pool with the nieces. Really keeps me going.

What I’m doing next for SEO key words

I’m looking forward to making more connections between the pages of my store.

Ya know when you look at a spider web and it’s so intricate? That’s the goal. We want all the intersections.

Want more info?

Check out my blog writing for SEO post —>> there’s a video!

SEO Key Word Sprint

Did another SEO sprint in the second half of September an dI saw updates on October 1st. I ranked for a keyword that has a gold star SEO difficulty rating of 3! How cool?

I like to stay on my sprints as long as the momentum is up. A recent SEO keyword research session set me up with another gold stay keyword that has 1300 searchers and a 3 SEO difficulty.

There’s already a post on my blog that could easily link to this one as I can just at the title, the actual h1 (and the slug) has an appropriate place as an h2 on another blog post.

Lovely!

Also proud to say that I got Google Search Console set up, and I created a blog post master tracker in notion, and it’s going great. Related databases? I could write a whole blog about how much I love them.

90 Days of SEO went well. I’m intrigued to see where the next 90 Days take me— now that I’ve laid a little groundwork and, dare I say … have created a few habits around “doing SEO.”

See ya.