SEO for Beginners: A Creator’s Guide to Attracting Free Traffic

I’ve been running this blog for 10 years, and 95% of my traffic comes from search engines. 

Over the past year, the site has been visited by 270,000 people.

The screenshot shows that on January 3, 2024, there were only 74 clicks from search, but by December 18, 2024, the number grew to 2,700.

This happened despite moving from Tilda to Webflow, adding new languages, and experiencing a temporary drop in traffic.

SEO has helped me attract readers who find my articles and generate income through affiliate marketing.

Right now, a lot is changing due to artificial intelligence.

In this article, I’ll share my experience and ideas on how to start getting traffic through SEO.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way to make your content more visible online.

Thanks to SEO, you can attract free visitors without spending money on ads.

If people search for something, SEO helps make sure they find your content more often.

How Does Search Engine Optimization Work?

You need to choose the right keywords for titles and descriptions, create attractive visuals, and ensure your site is free of technical errors.

It’s also important to have other quality resources link to your site—this shows search engines that your content is trustworthy.

Whether you’re optimizing for search engines, social media, or marketplaces, the steps are generally the same:

1. Analyze User Intent

People search for information with different goals: to learn something new, compare products or services, or find a specific product to buy.

It’s important to determine what task your content solves and adapt it to the user’s intent.

For example, if you’re comparing donation platforms like Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee, don’t optimize your article for keywords like “patreon site” or “patreon support.”

These queries are made by people who already know about the platform and are looking for official resources.

Your content won’t be helpful for them.

Instead, focus on keywords reflecting comparison or choice: “best donation platforms” or “Patreon vs. Buy Me a Coffee.”

How to Analyze Intent

1. Study search queries: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to understand what phrases people type into search engines.
2. Review search results: Look at what types of content (articles, videos, reviews) Google displays for a given query.
3. Analyze competitors: Check how competitors solve users’ problems in their materials.

How to Determine Intent Type

Search queries can be divided into:

1. Informational: The user wants to learn something new (“what are donations”).
2. Navigational: The user looks for a specific resource (“login to Buy Me a Coffee”).
3. Transactional: The user is ready to buy or register for something (“how to create a Patreon account”).

Understanding user intent helps create content that precisely meets their needs and increases your chances of success.

2. Keyword Research

Once you’ve identified user intent, it’s important to find out which keywords they use to search for content.

At the beginning, it’s better to target long-tail keywords because they have less competition.

For example, creating a popular article for the query “how to set up a Patreon subscription for artists” is easier than targeting a broader keyword like “Patreon registration.”

How to Analyze Keywords

There are paid services like SE Ranking, Ahrefs, and Semrush.

These tools allow you to:

1. Enter a keyword, select a country, and see how often it’s searched.
2. Determine the level of competition and the quality of existing content on the topic.
3. See which websites rank at the top.
4. Discover additional questions users ask related to that keyword.

In the bottom-right corner, you can see that the difficulty of the keyword “what is Patreon” is 66, while “what's Patreon” is only 17.

This internal metric shows how hard it is to rank at the top for these queries.

Although higher-volume keywords can drive more traffic, it’s better to start with niche queries.

If your content is high-quality, you can eventually compete in more popular topics.

How to Identify Topic Popularity for Free

In our article on finding content ideas for affiliate marketing, we’ve already mentioned AnswerThePublic and ChatGPT.

Let’s also consider Google Trends:

1. Google Trends: Allows you to select a topic, country, and time frame to see how popular it is. It also highlights related topics that might interest your audience and inspire new content ideas.
2. AnswerThePublic: Provides deeper insights into user interests. Enter a keyword, select a country and language, and you’ll get a list of questions people are asking in search engines.
3. ChatGPT: Helps brainstorm and analyze content ideas. It’s a tool I use daily. Learn more about working with ChatGPT here.

These tools can help you create a content plan and decide which topics to cover.

These tools can help you create a content plan and decide which topics to cover.

How to Start SEO?

The specifics of optimization depend on the platform you’re publishing on.

The main rule is to create content for people, not search engines. It should be clear, engaging, and easy to consume.

In the past, getting to the top could be achieved by using tricks like keyword stuffing and placement.

Today, this approach no longer works.

Here are some basic recommendations:

1. For Search Engines (Google, Bing, Perplexity)

To make your website more discoverable:

1. Use keywords naturally: Add them to titles, descriptions, and text as part of natural speech. Instead of repeating “Patreon registration”, use variations like “register on Patreon” or “create a Patreon account.”
2. Create useful content: Write articles or make videos that directly answer users’ queries. Start with narrow topics that have low competition.
3. Focus on technical aspects: If you have your own site, check its loading speed, fix errors, and ensure it’s mobile-friendly.
4. Build trust: Aim to get links to your site from other quality resources.

These steps will help your site rank higher in search results.

2. For Social Media (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest)

To make your social media content appear in recommendations more often:

1. Create precise and clear titles.
2. Add descriptions and quality thumbnails.

With the advancement of AI, hashtags are becoming less important: platforms now analyze video content themselves and show it to interested audiences.

This reduces the need for technical optimization and frees up time for creating quality content.

Many platforms have their own tools for finding trends and analyzing keywords.

For example, on YouTube, you can type a keyword and see what else interests users.

3. For Marketplaces (Etsy, Shutterstock, Gumroad)

To make your products or work more discoverable:

1. Write accurate and detailed descriptions, including keywords users might type.
2. Use quality images to catch attention.
3. Adapt to the platform’s specifics: for example, on Etsy, unique details matter, while on Shutterstock, precise keywords for photos are key.

I’m working on detailed guides for SEO on each platform.

4. Technical Optimization

Technical optimization ensures your site is user-friendly and attractive to search engines.

Here are the key aspects:

1. Loading speed: Ensure your site loads quickly. Slow pages deter visitors and hurt your search rankings.
2. Mobile version: Make sure your site is mobile-friendly, as most users browse on their phones.
3. URL structure: Use short and clear URLs with keywords. For example, instead of “site.com/page123,” use “site.com/how-to-optimize-seo.”
4. Fix errors: Check for broken links (404 errors) and other issues. Free tools like Screaming Frog can help diagnose problems.
5. Security: Install an SSL certificate to ensure your site uses HTTPS, which increases trust from both users and search engines.

Good website builders like Webflow or Weblium handle most of these tasks automatically.

To analyze technical issues, you can use the Lighthouse tool in Google Chrome.

Open it by right-clicking on a page, selecting “Inspect → Lighthouse → Analyze page load.”

When I was working on the illustrations for this article, I discovered a small bug on the website.

5. Analysis and Adaptation

Analyzing results and adapting is a crucial step in SEO.

Key steps:

1. Analyze data: Use Google Analytics or Search Console to find out which pages generate the most traffic. Track changes in keyword positions and CTR (click-through rate).
2. Update content: Regularly refresh old articles by adding up-to-date information, checking links, and refining keywords. Improve text structure for easier reading.
3. Adapt to changes: Keep an eye on search engine algorithm updates and adjust your strategy. Experiment with new formats, like short videos or infographics.

Below are keyword data points showing how readers find my Patreon article in Ukrainian.

Analyzing such data helps identify growth opportunities.

For example, if your site frequently appears for a specific query in search (Impressions) but gets few clicks, consider improving the content.

You might need to expand on the topic or provide deeper insights into the query.

Since you’re already showing up in search results, improving the content can lead to more clicks.

Why Creators Need SEO?

Advantages

1. Free targeted traffic: SEO helps attract people to your site or videos without spending on ads, which is especially useful with a limited budget.
2. Brand recognition and trust: If your content is easy to find, it builds trust in your brand and makes it more visible.

Disadvantages

1. Slow results: SEO takes time. Often, noticeable results appear after weeks or even months.
2. Dependence on algorithm changes: Search engines like Google regularly update their algorithms, which can impact your content’s visibility. However, focusing on quality content usually results in more traffic.

How AI is Changing SEO?

Google is increasingly enhancing search results with AI-optimized answers.

The algorithm analyzes key links, extracts crucial information, and displays a ready answer directly in the search results.

For example, I have an article on how to create an OnlyFans account.

Previously, users would visit my site after searching.

Now Google can display the instructions using my content but without my affiliate link.

This is an important factor to consider:

1. Ready answers instead of links: Search engines are increasingly showing solutions directly in the results instead of listing links.
2. Content quality over keywords: Algorithms prioritize valuable content with context, rather than keyword-stuffed text.
3. Adaptation to new formats: Content should stay relevant and tailored to modern search formats. I’m planning to focus on creating videos.
4. AI as a helper: Use tools like ChatGPT for reviewing, editing, and testing new ideas.

What’s Next?

SEO helps you stand out without spending on ads.

It’s a long-term investment: results come slowly but last a long time.

The key is balance between optimization and value.

Create content that’s useful for people and understandable for search engines.