Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

What I Learned about SEO in the Last Year

Ryo Shibasaki MBA’19

The following post is from Ryo Shibasaki MBA’19, founder of Path to Success. Path to Success provides the most competent and reliable English learning service in Japan.

I started my website almost one year ago. In the first month, the page view was 800, but now it’s 2,000 views every day and keeps increasing. It’s still not a satisfying number yet, but page views can generate stable revenue and bring more potential customers. Do you want to know the magic of SEO?

There is no big jump.

There are a lot of myths and legends you may hear on the internet or from SEO experts. The view doubles in one month or getting 1 million views in three months. You may be fascinated by those rumors and follow their way or buy something from them. Do not do that. It can happen but it’s very rare, like winning a lottery which means it will never happen to you (including me).

Like learning a new language, SEO works very slowly, it needs time and patience. But if you follow basic rules of SEO, I am sure every website can have a certain amount of views. Once your website is trusted by Google, it will work as a free advertisement in the long run.

Don’t believe information on the internet.

You may find a lot of website or blogs written by some SEO experts. However, they are doing a website to earn money, not to provide accurate information. Sometimes, a website hires writers like college students who do not know about SEO. Also, Google updates its algorithm every year and some information which is accurate three years ago can be harmful to your website now.

When I started my website, I did not have experience with SEO so I believed some information on the internet. It was like putting more keyword in your article. More keywords show Google that your website is relevant to a specific topic. Do not do that.

Some bloggers shared their experience in SEO and suggest that keyword is a significant factor for improving their views. However, keyword is just one aspect of SEO and there are a lot of other factors. Maybe other factors work well for his/her website, not only keywords. So be careful of these kinds of tips.

Most SEO experts are just selling concepts; they cannot all teach you practical action.

If you have money, you may be interested in hiring an SEO expert. There is too much SEO expert out there and it is quite hard to find a right person. They may say Google values authority, relevance, and trust. But what are those concepts? How can you improve your authority? Most of the time, SEO experts are just talking about something from books or website, do not have real experience. They cannot teach you what you should do for your website.

Write blogs continuously 

If you have your company’s website and want to improve your views, one simple advice you can do from today is to write blogs. If you have the organic food business, talk about organic food, how you can choose good organic food or which store is the best to buy organic food. If you have a bike business, talk about bikes, which is the best store to buy a bike or explaining specific bike’s feature etc.

Read books

I will introduce one book which changed my SEO journey. I read more than 10 SEO books but most of them are waste of money and time. Most SEO authors/experts are interested in earning money, saying that you can be an SEO expert in one week!

My recommendation:

SEO 2018: Learn search engine optimization with smart internet marketing strategies by Adam Clarke

Read this book, learn theory and follow practical actions the book suggest. Your SEO journey can be much easier. Hope every entrepreneur who wants to start your website find this post.