NoHat 101 – Introduction

Learning SEO is like trying to catch a wild animal hunting it’s own prey.

It knows the terrain better than you, knows when to switch speed to its advantage, and will always keep you on your toes.

Unless you have been following this animal’s behavior and know its patterns,  there’s a really good chance that you are always going to be guessing it’s next move.

The only way to outsmart it is by having some sort of advantage.

Staying true to NoHatDigital’s mission statement, what we want to do is give you an edge that 99% of people starting out in SEO don’t have – access to the inner minds of proven SEO experts…for FREE.

What we’ve done is put together an thorough (yet simple) guide for beginners that will arm you with easy to understand information and steps that you can take that will help you understand the basics of how SEO works and what you can do to get your chips in the middle and play instead of watching on the sidelines.

Consider this guide as a road-map to start your journey with understanding SEO and niche sites.

What This Guide is Not

We all want to be on the first page of Google, however this is not a gimmicky sales pitch that guarantees you a #1 spot on Google every single time.

There are no guarantees in anything, let alone SEO.

The best way to look at this guide is a way to capitalize on proven methods that have ranked hundreds of websites in the current SEO landscape. If you fully understand this then this will increase your chances exponentially when being compared to the competition and you will have a much better chance at ranking.

After all, SEO is a chase.

At best, we can only have strong assumptions as to how the Google algorithm works, and if we’re being honest, Google themselves doesn’t even know 100% – it’s just one really long equation run by tons of computers.

While this may sound all technical and intimidating, when you can break it down the basics, it’s really not.

That being said, let’s get to the business.

What it Takes to Be Good at SEO

The first thing you need to know is that you don’t need any technical skills to be good at SEO.

It could certainly help, but it’s not necessary.

There are tons of folks that have done extremely well for themselves in SEO and they have never touched a single line of code in their life.

What you will need, however, is to be smart enough to understand how Google does things and why it decides that a website is good enough to rank.

Nobody wakes up being an expert at spotting these patterns, it simply just happens through time, experience, and observation.

The more you practice, the better you will be able to identify the things that matter, and the things that don’t.

Once you get a feel for this, the rest is just setting processes in place to automate.

So without further adieu, let’s get started!

First Step: Learn How Keyword Research Works