My friend asked me how to get into SEO and I told him to forget everything he learned in school

Last week, a buddy from college hit me up asking for SEO advice for his new blog. I told him straight up that the 'write good content and people will come' stuff they teach is mostly wrong now. Three years ago when I started my own site, I spent a month just making what I thought was great stuff and got zero traffic. The real work started when I tracked down 50 specific long-tail keywords people actually search for in my niche. I built my first 10 posts around those, and that's when Google finally started sending people my way. Has anyone else had to completely unlearn the basic advice to actually see results?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly_coleman611mo ago

Exactly, school teaches theory but real SEO is finding what people actually search for. Start with keyword tools to see the exact phrases in your niche.

gavine411mo agoTop Commenter

I get what you mean about keyword tools, but honestly I've seen people get stuck just chasing search volume. Real SEO is also about understanding why someone types that phrase, not just what they type. If you don't know the intent behind the search, you can rank for the wrong thing. You need to read forums and comments to see the real problems people have. Then you can match your content to what they actually need, not just the words they use.