A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journey

How It Begins

A year ago, my dance instructor Wes Neese asked for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking help. He was ranked #30 in his local market for his desired keywords. His website was getting no organic search traffic. He is now ranked #1. Here are the steps on that journey.

1. Mobile-Friendly Website & Page Titles

Wes already had an attractive, mobile-friendly website. NOT being responsive or mobile-friendly is a strike against you in Google's eyes. However, he needed to tweak some of his page titles to better match the keywords for which he wanted to rank — a quick and easy fix.

2. Back Links from Authoritative Websites

Building back links from authoritative, well-ranking websites was the next step. The other websites in the local market were competitors, so there was no chance of getting links from them. However, one well-ranking national dance instruction website did agree to link to Wes' site — a valuable SEO win.

3. Google My Business Listing

Setting up a Google My Business profile was a crucial step in improving ranking. Since Wes was not the studio owner, we created a service area listing for his dance classes. This helps Google understand where he operates and more fully categorize what he does.

However, a My Business listing alone is not sufficient — you must also accumulate good reviews to strengthen your local ranking signals.

4. Social Media Presence

Although not strictly SEO, posting on social media plays a big role in overall visibility. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are not "open" to Google's search bots, so you need to post interesting, engaging content there to draw traffic directly from those platforms. For example, Wes created a Facebook Business page for his classes.

It's also worth noting that X (formerly Twitter) has recently opened up to Google's search bots, making it a more SEO-relevant platform than before.

5. YouTube — The Second Largest Search Engine

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet. If you have video content, you need it on YouTube — and that content needs well-optimized titles, descriptions, tags, cards, and end screens.

The SEO algorithm does not give the same ranking authority to a link in a YouTube description as it would to a link on another website. But YouTube is still a very important potential source of traffic. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, YouTube content is surfaced by Google Search.

6. Website Tagging & Analytics

Another important — though not strictly SEO — step is website tagging and analytics. Wes tagged his site with Google Analytics and claimed his Google Search Console property. From that data, I built Looker Studio (Google Data Studio) reports to help us measure and track the improvement in rankings and traffic over time.

[Insert Image: Screenshot of a Looker Studio / Google Data Studio dashboard showing SEO performance metrics and organic traffic growth for the website]

7. Persistence — The Most Important Factor

Last, but most importantly: persistence. This is not the local advertising of the 1970s, when you could buy a Yellow Pages ad and be done with it. SEO requires a continual effort to attract and engage a growing audience through quality content creation. It also requires patience — improved rankings don't happen overnight.

Stay consistent, keep creating valuable content, and the results will follow.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization, Google, Google Analytics, Google Search Console

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