Funny You Should Ask: How to Do Search Engine Optimization

By Lori Culwell

Learn the secrets of search engine optimization from an insider SEO specialist in this practical, engaging guide. Walk through the exact steps to get your website ranking to the top of Google, driving hordes of targeted traffic to your site or online business.

In this latest book in the "Funny You Should Ask" series, Culwell boils down her two decades of corporate SEO experience into an accessible, enjoyable read. With humor and plenty of real-world examples, she makes SEO concepts simple to grasp for beginners while sharing the latest advanced tactics for ranking pros.

In this book, you'll learn how to research high-value keywords, optimize on-page elements for search spiders, generate authority backlinks, track website progress, and more. From conducting a competitive analysis to leveraging AI tools to avoiding tricks that might anger Google, this guide details every aspect of ethical, sustainable search optimization. The author's proven organic strategy lifted a major healthcare website to #1 in its industry for 17,000+ keywords.

Now she levels the playing field, empowering individuals and small companies to get big results by optimizing for the world's largest search engine. If you are ready to send targeted traffic to your online destination and watch your rankings and revenue grow, this is the complete SEO education you need to make it happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Dec 8, 2023

Lori Culwell

Lori Culwell is the founder and president of Get Creative, an internet consulting firm whose clients include Johnson & Johnson and Apple among others. She has contributed to Salon.com and the San Francisco Bay Guardian and divides her time between New York and Los Angeles.  

Book preview

1

WHAT’S ALL THIS? WHO AM I? WHAT WILL YOU LEARN HERE?

Hello! Welcome to the exciting world of SEO! Whether you’re here looking for industry secrets, or you just want to increase traffic to your website so you can start making more money, you’re in the right place! Over the following chapters, I’m going to walk you through the process of building and optimizing a website from beginning to end. And while I’m going to be very thorough, I will try to present all of it in a way that’s a little more palatable than your standard, boring guide.

Wait… What Exactly is SEO?

Let’s start at the beginning of the beginning. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the art and science of optimizing your website’s performance for search engines (but mostly for Google, if we’re being honest). By optimizing, we mean doing what it takes to make your website more attractive to search engine robots so they will return it in their results. 

Basically, you’re trying to impress Google so it will bring up your website when their users enter specific words and phrases. When your website blows Google’s algorithm robots away, they will reward you (literally) by ranking your site for keywords, which will ideally result in thousands of dollars worth of free organic search engine traffic.

SEO has been around in some form since the mid-1990s, just after the first search engines were launched. In the beginning, the primary goal of SEO was to manipulate search engine algorithms to increase website rankings and traffic. People started using crazier and more nefarious techniques to get their websites to rank, and so naturally, in the early 2000s, search engines began to crack down on these manipulative practices and started to prioritize quality content and user experience. This led to the development of new SEO techniques that emphasize creating valuable content around specific keywords, optimizing for mobile devices, and building high-quality backlinks. These are the sorts of approaches we’ll be focusing on in this book.

We’ll also work to improve both the user experience and usability of your website, both of which can increase the chances that users will stay on your site longer, make purchases, or take other desired actions. All of this will help you better understand the needs of your target audience so that you can create content tailored to them.

All of this makes sense, right? Let’s say you have a website about cheese. You’re going to want Google to show that website when people Google the word cheese (or other cheese-related words and topics). That’s because you want people who are searching for cheese to find your website and buy your cheese, read your cheese book, or be impressed with your cheese knowledge and get on your cheese email list.

Great, now I’ve said the word cheese too many times and it no longer has any meaning. Starting strong here.

The goal of SEO is to increase the amount of organic (free) traffic to a site by improving its ranking in the search engine results for a variety of keywords. This is done through various techniques, starting with keyword research and including on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and link building, all of which we will talk about at length in this guide. 

Who am I? Why would you listen to me?

Good question! You should know who you’re taking advice from.

I have spent the majority of my 20-plus year career working on content strategy and SEO for major corporations, including Johnson & Johnson, where I developed the strategy for the Campaign for Nursing’s Future, the website for which ranked for over 17,000 keywords. This is the organic search equivalent of paying about $500,000 per month for traffic!

During my years of experience, I have developed a solid SEO strategy, and I’ve created this guide to teach it to you so that you can make your website’s SEO strategy competitive with those big companies. I believe that if you have the proper tools and strategies, you actually don’t need big corporate money to get great results.

What are you going to learn here?

Just so, so much. Ideally, by the end of this guide, you’ll be able to:

• Speak search engine jargon and lingo with the best of them

• Know when to use AI to help with your SEO (and when to avoid it)

• Fix your website so it doesn’t anger Google’s search algorithm

• Create solid benchmarks and goals for your website (like sign-ups or sales)

• Measure your website’s progress

• Research which keywords to focus on

• Research those keywords from another angle

• Research those keywords from yet another angle, until you have the most killer keyword list of all time

• Do a competitive analysis to form a content strategy based on those keywords

• Create amazing content search engines love

• Format that content correctly so the search engines will notice it faster

• Fix or repurpose existing website content created before you knew all of this SEO stuff

• Understand what backlinks are and why they are so important to your site’s SEO rankings

• Determine the best backlink strategy for you, your personality, and your website

• Conduct regular measurement and maintenance to keep your website at the top of the search engines

Doesn’t that all just sound SO EXCITING?!

It actually *is* exciting to me, and it's my hope that this book will get you excited about it, too. Before we jump in, let me offer a little caveat so you start off with the right expectations: your personal SEO journey is going to vary depending on a number of factors, such as the complexity of your website’s subject, the competitiveness of your industry, and the current state of your website. For some websites, basic SEO techniques like researching and employing keywords and optimizing the site’s content and meta tags may be sufficient to improve its search engine rankings. However, for more complex or competitive websites, your SEO may require a more in-depth and comprehensive approach and will take more time for the results to show. 

In general, SEO can be a challenging and time-consuming process, but it can also be highly rewarding, providing countless benefits for your website and your business.

With all of this in mind, are you ready to embark on this adventure? Let's get started!

2

DUMB LINGO AND MUMBO JUMBO

Let me just get this out of the way right now and offer an apology on behalf of my industry. SEO is a field that uses a ton of acronyms and confusing words and phrases, and it’s very easy to get lost, especially when you’re new. Don’t quote me on this, but I think it has something to do with wanting to make people feel dumb and like they can’t do SEO themselves, so that they then wind up paying an expert for expensive services or programs. It’s a vicious cycle based on insider knowledge, and I don’t like it.

Because I’m trying to counteract all that with this guide, I’m going to empower you by introducing you to all of these words and terms right off the bat. I promise I will try not to overuse them (especially without telling you what they mean), but trust me when I say that the further you get into SEO, the more you’ll need to know them. That’s why I’m making the rather unconventional choice of putting what is essentially a glossary right in the beginning of this guide, rather than at the end. I also wanted to give you something to search for in the electronic version of the book, so when in doubt, Control +F it!

By the way, don’t worry if you don’t totally get everything I’m about to talk about here. We’ll get there! The point of this chapter is just to introduce these terms and concepts so you don’t feel like you’re already underwater. Cool? Okay, let’s get started!

1. SEO. We just defined SEO in Chapter 1, and  you’ve purchased a book on the subject, so I’m pretty sure you already know what SEO is, but just in case: SEO (or search-engine optimization) is the practice of optimizing your website for certain words and phrases so it will appear when someone types those words and phrases into a search engine. Also, a fun little fact: SEO is both what we are called as professionals, as well as what we do. That means I am an SEO and I do SEO. And because now that you are learning SEO, you are also an SEO.

That’s deep.

While we’re on the subject, I also have a little industry-related pet peeve I’m going to interject here: Never take advice from, or hire anyone, who calls it SEO Optimization.

I’m serious. If you learn nothing else from this guide, please take away this important lesson: the phrase SEO Optimization is both redundant and grammatically incorrect, and using the term in this way is actually considered a red flag in the industry. SEO already stands for Search Engine Optimization, so saying SEO Optimization is essentially saying Search Engine Optimization Optimization, which drives me up and over the wall. But more importantly, it’s a tell that the person using it has no idea what they’re talking about. 

Okay, rant over. By the way, not all of the definitions are going to be this long (or this opinionated). I promise.

2. Technical SEO is where you look under the hood of your website to identify and fix anything that might be ticking off both the search engines and your users. This includes stuff like slow site speed, broken links, poor navigation, errors, or your site not displaying properly on mobile. The technical SEO step forces you to make sure your website has a solid foundation and is easily accessible, fast, and user-friendly.

We’ll be getting your technical audit completed nice and early because all your other stellar SEO efforts simply won’t work if there are technical issues or problems lurking on your site. The search engines reward websites that offer an excellent experience for visitors, so having your technical SEO ducks in a row gives you a big leg up.

3. Keyword(s). This refers to the word or words entered into a search engine to find information on a particular subject or product (e.g., shoes). If a keyword is two or three words, it’s then referred to as a key phrase (e.g., best running shoes),  and if it gets any longer than that, it becomes a long-tail keyword, which I agree is confusing and dumb.

That said, let’s define it anyway:

4. Long-tail keywords are