When you first start learning about SEO, it can be overwhelming to hear about all the different elements that can come into play and have an impact on your site’s ranking and searchability.
When you feel like you're being bombarded with all.the.things, only half of which actually make sense to you, it’s easy to start feeling like you have to optimize all of these myriad different elements all at the same time, and you feel like you have no idea where to start.
Some people get stuck in analysis paralysis and never get started with SEO, which of course doesn’t work.
And some people default to researching the tech stuff, because at least with that there’s clear actions to take.
But the fastest way to results isn’t necessarily in the tech.
The fastest way to SEO results is in taking action that moves the needle and matches where you’re at in your business.
There are 5 stages of “SEOing” that come into play at different stages in an online business’s life cycle.
And when you’re a solopreneur with limited resources wearing all the hats in your business, it’s good to know what you need to focus on for now as opposed to worrying about all the things, the wrong things, or no things at all.
So let’s get into it:
1. You’re just getting started — initial setup of your site
When you’re first setting up your site, the main concern, in my book, is to just get started.
Because you can’t get traffic if you don’t have a site, ammirite?
Buy your domain. Get set up on Squarespace or WordPress. Figure out your message and offer and brand. Be messy. Screw it up and figure it out and take pride in the thing you built.
Don’t overthink this stage when it comes to SEO.
You’re not going to start getting SEO traffic right off the bat (unless you’re, like, Daniel Radcliffe or something, in which case I think you might have people doing this for you), so SEO isn’t the number one thing you’ll be focused on.
But there are still a few choices you’ll be making that will have an impact on your site’s SEO potential in the future, aka your SEO foundations (and even most of those you’ll be able to change down the road, so again, don’t overthink it), and other things you should be aware of at this stage.
Here are the main things I want you to be aware of at this stage:
- It doesn’t matter what website builder you choose to go with. WordPress, Squarespace, Wix — they’re all perfectly capable of ranking on the first page of Google and bringing in SEO traffic.
- If you choose to go with WordPress, don’t bog your site down with a super slow theme or a million heavy plugins. Maintaining decent pagespeed is just a good habit to get in from the get go.
- If some hosting company or tool is trying to sell you an SEO upgrade, odds are it’s a waste of money. Usually they’re just SEO tools, which is great if you know how to use them. It’s different from them actually doing anything SEO-y to your site. A hammer won’t build a house for you. Don’t fall for any marketing that tries to tell you otherwise.
2. Your biz is running and you want to start getting SEO traffic—publishing SEOtastic content
The first stage is just about setting up the foundations. This stage right here is where the magic happens.
Publishing SEOtastic content is the #1 most needle-moving thing you can do for SEO.
You can have the most technically optimized site in the world, but if there’s no content and no keywords, you won’t see any traffic.
Because the key here is this:
The content is what brings in the SEO traffic. The site is what converts them.
If you don’t have the traffic, there’s no one for the site to convert.
This is also the stage of SEOing that you will continue to implement. Even when you’re moving in on stages 3, 4, or even 5, publishing SEOtastic content will continue to be important for you.
Here’s how it works at this stage:
- You write a blog post or article that you know your target audience needs and is in search of.
- Do some keyword research to find a strong, achievable keyword that works for your content and that real live humans are typing into real live searchbars.
- Optimize the content to the keyword.
- Upload the content to your site and optimize the on-page experience.
- Publish and promote.
Now, not all the content you write will be SEOtastic. Maybe you can’t find a keyword that matches your content, or can’t find one that’s achievable for your site.
That’s perfectly okay. Still write and publish that content. It will serve a different strategic purpose than SEO.
Just make sure that you’re occasionally publishing SEOtastic content, if you want those SEO results.
| Helpful Resource: Killer Keyword Research Course |
3. You’re getting some traffic and want to give it an oomph — clean up your site’s SEO foundations
Now, at this stage, you’ve been publishing SEOtastic content, your business has been chugging along, and you’re starting to see some SEO traffic coming in.
Keep publishing that sweet SEOtastic content, of course. That will never stop being a priority.
But also, at this stage you’re ready to give the results you’re already getting a bit of an oomph.
At this stage, we’re re-visiting some of the things we set up in stage 1, and giving them a polish.
The thing to remember about tech when it comes to SEO is this:
The tech isn’t what brings in SEO results, but bad tech can hold back SEO results.
So we’re just going to take what we have, and polish the tech to a shine so it’s not holding back any SEO results that you should be getting but aren’t.
What you actually do at this stage can vary based on the state of your tech or setup.
Some tasks you might do could include:
- Replacing heavyweight plugins that are slowing down your site with lightweight alternative solutions
- Improving your site’s architecture and navigation so that Robots (and Humans) can have an easier time finding your awesome content
- Compressing all your site’s images to improve pagespeed
- If you’ve got hundreds or thousands of old posts that no one is reading and don’t provide any value (this is common for a lot of long-time blogger-bloggers), maybe you do a major purge and delete or de-index them to remove the dead weight (yes, SEO dead weight is a thing)
| Helpful Resource: Improve Your Pagespeed (without crazy tech skills) Course |
4. You have the resources to level up your SEO efforts even more — get strategic about building backlinks
This stage of SEO is where things start getting advanced.
Backlinks are links from other sites pointing to your site.
They’re also one of the top two most important factors in SEO (the other is content).
^This is confirmed by Google, which is a big deal, since they don’t often confirm stuff.
Now, for most solopreneurs, I don’t tell them to stress too much about backlinks because 1) it takes a lot of work to try to actively build backlinks, and the tactics that most SEOs use (not me) are kinda sleazy, and 2) the backlinks you get when you’re not trying to get backlinks are usually more impactful for your SEO anyway.
But there are things you can do to build backlinks in a way that doesn’t feel gross, fits in with other biz-building activities you were doing anyway, and can bring other types of results for your business besides SEO.
I always love a good multi-purpose thing.
Some of these multi-purpose ways to build strong backlinks to your site could be:
- Appearing on podcasts as a guest
- Guest posting on another site in your niche or industry
- Speaking at a summit
- Providing a supplementary masterclass in someone else’s course, mastermind, or membership
5. You have enough traffic that your tech can’t support your goals — level up your hosting & tech
Now we get to stage 5. This is the stage that a lot of people try to skip to when they’re researching SEO.
Here’s the thing:
A lot of tools, software, and tech market themselves as “SEO-friendly” or “SEO-optimized” or “good for SEO” or even “the best ___ for SEO” or whatever.
And that’s great.
But for most of us online entrepreneurs that are operating solo or mayyyybe with a small team, that’s not what you need to focus on to get SEO results.
BUT
Eventually, after doing all the other 4 stages, you may get to a point where you’re getting enough traffic that your current tech isn’t quite cutting it.
Maybe your server is getting bogged down and and slowing down your site, so you need to level up your hosting to the more premium option.
Maybe you’re at the point where you’re trying to eke out every last click and keep them on the page as long as you can.
Maybe you need a functionality for the next stage of your business growth that your current tech setup can’t support.
That’s when it’s time to level up the deep tech — the kind of tech that takes a lot of effort to replace and change, like hosting, servers, and maybe even which website platform you built on.
For this stage, you definitely don’t want to DIY it. You want to invest in an expert who knows what they’re doing, because it can be a real dumpster fire if things go sideways.
(For the record, I’m not saying that to promote my services because I can’t actually help with this. So you know I’m really just saying this because it really does matter that much.)
And as always, at this stage, you’re still creating and publishing SEOtastic content.
Because the tech doesn’t matter if you’re not bringing in that sweet sweet traffic, and content is what does that.
As you can see, with SEO, it’s really not about doing all.the.things. so you can say goodby to your analysis paralysis!
It’s about doing what you can with the resources you have, and prioritizing the things that move the needle.
Most of the time, the needle-mover is publishing SEOtastic content.
Everything else is whatever you can do with the resources you have to reach the goals that match your current stage of business.
Free SEOtastic Flowchart & Checklist
