All right. In today's episode of the simple SEO content podcast, we are going to answer the question. Is SEO search engine optimization. Easy to learn on your own. Long story short. No. So yes, you can learn SEO on your own. Absolutely. The problem is when you're trying to learn it on your own. You don't know. What you don't know, because you don't have someone there to help you to break it down, to answer your questions to. Share insights and strategies and things that are going to make a difference. So yes, you can learn SEO on your own. You can Google, you can YouTube. You can listen to podcasts like this. You can learn as much as possible. But if you want to make it easier. And you want to know that you're going to get results, then it's better to either work with a coach. One-on-one. Hire a professional and verify that you know, that they're a professional and they truly do know what they're talking about. Or take a class like simple SEO content, which is my class that teaches you. Everything you need to know to do SEO search engine optimization and content marketing, and why you need to do the two together. So now that you understand that. Yes, you can learn it on your own, but it's a little bit harder that way. Let's at least go into some of the basics though, that you get some benefit out of this lesson. Okay. So search engine optimization. That's what SEO stands for. That is a process that you take it's things that you do on your website to make it easier for Google to understand what your site is about. So that they're more likely to show you two people who are searching for things that are related to your business, your products, your services, without doing SEO on your website. You're not going to get the amount of traffic that you could potentially get. If you did SEO. Now where it gets hard to learn on your own is because there are some mistakes that people make. They're super common. And they impact your website's ability to rank. So when you do search engine optimization, let's start with three easy things that everybody can do. You can choose a keyword. You want to choose one keyword for each page or blog post only one. And you want to use that keyword in all of your core SEO elements, all of the places that Google is going to look for the information as to what this page or post is about. That means you're going to want to use it in your title, tag, your meta description. Your image file name. You're going to want to use it in your header tags. You're going to want to use it in your URL. You're also going to want to make sure you use it in your copy. Now, I'm not going to tell you how many times to use your keyword, because that's not what Google wants you to do. You're going to use your keyword naturally because the content that you're creating is about that keyword. So what the heck does that mean? That means, write your blog post, write your page. I do not worry about how many times you've used your keyword. Just write and provide the value that your ideal customer needs. You will naturally use your keyword. You can go back through afterwards and reread your post or your page to yourself. Even reading it out loud is really good. That'll help you. To hear if you've used your keyword too many times. Or potentially not enough and you can edit it and add it in. Now, as far as what keyword you're choosing, this is truly the most important part. And that is that you choose a keyword, that one, your ideal customer uses they care about. They want. Information on and to your website can rank for. If you use a keyword that your ideal customer doesn't use or doesn't search, then there's going to be no demand for it. And if nobody's searching for it, there's nobody to find you. Number two. If you use a keyword that your website can't rank for. Nobody's going to find you because you're not going to show up in the search results. Because your website can't rank for that word. So now you may be wondering how the heck do I figure out if my website can rank for the keyword that I want to target? That's where I want you to do a little bit of research. So if you've used your keyword research tool, you've identified a key word. You see that there's some search demand. It feels like you might be able to rank for it. I want you to go to Google and I want you to plug that keyword in. And ideally use an incognito browser window. That way your, your personal search results do not impact what you see. So you as an incognito window and now search that keyword. And I want you to see who shows up on page one. Most importantly in positions, one, two, and three. Are they really similar websites to yours? Or are they really big? Are they ones that have stores at the mall? Are, is it Amazon Zillow, realtor, depending on what market you're in is Etsy showing up. If, so you probably have chosen a keyword. That's not going to be a possibility for you to rank well, and you need to look for something else. Now if the keywords, or if the website, sorry. If the websites that are showing up there at the top of page, one are really relevant to you. They're very similar. There may be competitors. They look a lot like your site or they feel like they're a similar size business and you're probably on the right track. And you probably should go ahead and use that key word. So those are some of the most important things to do when you're getting started with SEO. Make sure you're choosing a keyword that you can rank for and make sure you're using that keyword in the places that Google is looking for. Because if you don't optimize your content, Google's not going to be as likely to show your website to people who are searching for information, because Google doesn't understand it as well. Google looks for specific things on your website and they look for the keyword in those areas or those elements, because that helps Google to understand what the website page is about. Like we talked about that's your title tag, your meta description, your image file name. It's your copy. Your header tags, your URL. All of those are places that Google is going to look for you to use a keyword. You want to make sure you're using the same keyword and you're following your SEO best practices. Now, if you want to learn exactly what those are, go ahead and request my SEO content. Quick start guide. I'll put that link in the notes for you. That's going to walk you through exactly how to do this, to get started so that you can start learning. If you want to make it easier to learn SEO, you want to know that you're doing what you need to do to get results. Join me in simple SEO content. You can learn more about that by taking my free class. It'll give you an opportunity to join, live, to join our session. That's live right now. In the interim before we open it to the public. Again, you only get that opportunity by taking the free class, which will start to introduce you to the concepts that you learn in there. And that course meets once a week. We have a Q and a session you get not only the training, but you have the opportunity to ask questions and get the clarity, because I promise you, there are a lot of questions that come up when you're learning SEO, because it's not easy to learn on your own. It's a lot easier to do it with a teacher by your side to show you how to do it and what to do. I hope you found this episode of the simple SEO content podcast. Helpful. Do me a favor. If you do find it helpful. Leave a review, share it with a friend who also wants to learn more about it. Help me get the word out and spread the word that this podcast is here and is a resource for you. And then DME on Insta. Let me know what your thoughts are. If you're trying to learn SEO, how easy is it? How hard is it? What questions have you had pop-up and most importantly, if you're ready, join me in simple SEO content so that you can speed this process up and start getting results even faster. I'll see you there. Bye.