Are you running a business or blog and want to promote it in Toronto? Are you looking for an SEO guide to boost your portfolio in Toronto? Wondering what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is? Why is it important? How can you do this? This and that? Well, I am here to address all your queries related to the concept of SEO. So, without wasting time, let’s jump into the details and conquer Toronto with effective SEO!
What is SEO?
On a simple note, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a technique to optimize certain content such as blogs, videos, ads, or podcasts etc. on any search engine like google, bing, youtube etc.
For your understanding, consider starting a new shop in Toronto’s main market. Now, if you want customers in your shop in a huge market where there are a lot of sellers already, you will need to show off your shop in an amazing way to attract the customers. Here comes optimization, you will optimize your shop by effectively displaying your products on the shop front and also keeping a stock in the shop’s back end. Similar is the case with SEO, the products displayed are your keywords and the technique is called as “On Page SEO” and the stock of products that you maintain in the back is “Off page SEO” in internet language.
Technically speaking, SEO is a technique to rank your content related to any niche better on any search engine so that potential readers, viewers, or buyers may reach your content and you may monetize your visitors and convert them to your clients.
Why Do You Need SEO?
As we all know, the internet market is very competitive. There are thousands of websites talking about almost every topic and it is impossible to beat all of them and appear on the first result page with effective SEO. SEO of your content decides where you would rank on a certain search engine, say Google.
Look, Google is a search engine that works on a bunch of programs known as ‘Algorithms’. These algorithms are automated programs that review your website content, find keywords, and after looking at some other things the algorithm eventually decides where your website or content should be ranked. It means you have to convince the Google algorithm that you have got skills and visitors are looking for the content that you are providing. How will you convince them? Well here comes the SEO! Effective SEO is the only tool you have to convince Google to rank your content on the first search result page and the same applies to other search engines.
How to do SEO?
Honestly speaking, doing SEO is not a very difficult thing and especially if you have a target area like Toronto etc. Yet you need to invest your time first in learning SEO and then implementing it on your content. So, you have 2 options here: 1st is, you can learn SEO yourself and start practicing it and the 2nd is, you can hire an SEO expert and he can implement SEO strategies on your content. The choice depends on you!
If you decide to do SEO on your own, then keep reading to learn the basics of SEO and get some understanding!
On-Page and Off-page SEO
So, let’s start with the 2 main types or elements of SEO i.e, on page and Off page SEO.
On page SEO refers to the process that you do on your content or website’s front end. This is an essential part of SEO because it will enable your content to be reached by the viewer.
So, how does it work?
On-page SEO starts with niche research (if you have not yet decided one), then comes keywords research, audience analysis, competitor analysis and at last the value of content.
Niche Research:
You can consider niche as the topic you are going to create content on. It can be Health and fitness, travel and tourism, food and nutrition and anything that you know about. Niche research is an important element before starting working on the content. If you want to rank your content, you need to keep 2 main factors in mind:
- The niche is less competitive (Micro niche)
- The niche has a high search volume
Less competition means that there is some gap for you to write content on. Like, you search something on google and google shows 8 results on the first page. What you find is that the 3 or 4 results are the exact match to your search item but the other results are just related to it but not exactly what you searched for. It means, there is not enough content available on that keyword that you wrote in the search bar hence there is a gap that you can fill!
Search volume means the people who search a certain keyword daily or monthly on a certain search engine. Let me give you a simple example to understand this. Imagine you open a shop in a jungle where no one comes regularly and only some strangers or farmers come now and then and they see your shop. Are you going to make any profit out of it? The answer is a big NO!
Similar is the case with your niche. If you choose a niche that no one is going to search on a search engine or a very few people may search it once a month, you are not choosing a profitable niche!
For niche research, there are some paid and free tools that you may consider using like Ahref, Ubersuggest etc. Or you can scroll our blog and find a complete guide on how to find a profitable niche.
Keywords Research:
So, now you have researched and finalized your niche, next comes content. You need to get some keywords to write content related to your niche. These keywords also play a part in SEO in the same way as the niche does. You need to analyze the competition on keywords and also have a look at the search volume. The ideal keywords are those that have high search volume (more than 200 to 300 per day) and low competition. You can avail free and paid tools such as Ubersuggest, buzzsumo, keywords.io and google keywords planner etc. to find out high volume and low competition keywords.
Off-Page SEO
After you have created your content by putting some low competition keywords and publishing it on a search engine, now is the time to manage your content in the back end.
Promoting blog on social media and other platforms, getting backlinks from other sites, inbound linking and outbound linking etc. all come under the umbrella of off page SEO. On page SEO is for Google algorithm, you do on page SEO effectively and Google ranks your content better and brings organic traffic to your content. But it is not enough for your content to be successful. So, to increase the sources of traffic to your blog, you need to do off page SEO as well. It helps in both i.e. bringing more traffic to your blog and building your authority as a matter expert in your niche and eventually Google or any other search engine starts recognizing you as an authority in your niche!
Effective ways to do off page SEO
When it comes to off page SEO, the best way is social media sharing. Look, you can consider it as building your community. Let’s say, you built a blog, Google brings traffic there and you get some piece of cake. But if you want to run it on a long term basis, you must have regular readers or a community where you can share everything you write or any product you sell. So, off page SEO is basically building your own community for your business or blog.
So, the first thing is social media sharing. Create a Facebook page or a group and start sharing your content over there.
Another effective way is Quora. Quora is a question answer platform and a lot of people post their questions over there. You can find questions according to your niche and give answers, somewhere in between your answers; you can invite the questioners to your blog or content by providing them a link.
Another option is guest posting. It is a paid method. You go to a blog or website that is already ranked and has a very good viewership and ask them to promote your content on their website. They will charge you a few bucks and their traffic will eventually come to your content due to that promotion!
So, we hope you have understood the basic concepts of SEO and now you are good to promote your content or products and eventually conquer the Toronto Market!
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