My startup, Flexiple, grew from $1mn to $2mn revenue in 4 months – the major driver was SEO.

I absolutely love it, yet, it intimidates so many!

So, in 9 tweets, I’ll explain SEO using the analogy of a LIBRARY – guarantee you’ll understand it like never before

Thread

1/ The characters involved

Librarian = Google Books = All websites Person searching for a book = Your potential customer

I’ll connect it all in the end!

2/ Potential customer searches Google

This is equivalent to the person coming to the librarian and asking her to suggest the most relevant book on say “Photosynthesis”

(’cause I’m a nerd :P).

3/ Google prepares the search results

The librarian now has to decide which books to recommend from a sea of books.

So, she does this by setting certain parameters to rank the various books.

Which parameters?

4/ Google prepares results (contd.)

The first set of parameters will be:

1. Does “photosynthesis” appear in the title of the book ?

2. Does it appear in the chapter titles ?

3. How many times is it mentioned across the content ?

5/ Google prepares results (contd.)

The second set of parameters are:

1. How many people have borrowed those books?

2. Did those people recommend the respective books?

3. Are those people credible?

6/ Google shows the results

Attaching various weights to these parameters, the librarian shares a list of 10 books that the person should consider.

She has a longer list, but the person doesn’t care about the books beyond the top 10!

7/ Connecting it all!

“Photosynthesis”: Is what we call a “Keyword”

A) First parameter set:

1.”Book title”: Is the Page Title of your webpage

2.”Chapter titles”: Are H1, H2… tags

3.”Mentions in book content”: Mentions in body content

These are called the “on-page” factors

8/ Connecting it all (Part 2)

B) Second parameters set:

1.”People borrowing the book”: Are “Backlinks”

2.”Their recommendations”: Are “Do-follow backlinks”

3.”Their credibility”: An unofficial factor called “Domain Authority or (DA)”

These are called the “off-page” factors.

9/ So, how do you appear in Google’s results?

1. Choose a keyword your customer likely searches

2. Write an article & infuse it per “on-page factors”

3. Distribute it so that websites link back to it

4. Preferably credible ones that give a do-follow backlink

That’s it!