This is SEO for beginners.
I will cover topics that someone completely new to SEO needs to know.
From explaining what SEO is and SEO strategies to Platforms and Tools to use.
Lets dive right in.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation.
Search engine optimisation is improving your website or content to rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing.
Basically, if someone searches for a term related to your website or its content, depending on how high your website is on the search results, you will get more visitors.
SEO is different to paid advertising because website traffic is unpaid and organic.
A few examples of the factors search engines look for to determine how high to rank your website are:
- Title tags
- Keywords
- Image tags
- Internal link structure
- Inbound links, also known as backlinks
- Site structure
- Website design
- Visitor behaviour
- Other external, off-site factors
But the two main SEO factors are your website’s rankings and visibility:
Rankings
Rankings are used by search engines when deciding where to position a web page in the SERP.
Examples of factors that can change a web page’s ranking are:
- Age of content
- Competition in the SERP
- Algorithm changes by search engines
Visibility
A Website’s visibility is how often a domain appears in the search engine results.
The difference between lower and higher search visibility is:
- Lower search visibility is when a domain doesn’t show up for a lot of relevant search queries
- Higher search visibility is when a domain does show up for a lot relevant search queries
But overall, search rankings and visibility of a website is what produces the main end goal of an SEO strategy, which is traffic and domain authority.
How does Google’s search engine work?
Search engines work by matching relevant answers or information to a search query or question.
The search engine ranks the most relevant pages to your query by authority or popularity.
Relevant pages to the search query are determined by topic or keywords.
Authority is determined by the popularity of a website, which to Google means its content is more valuable to readers.
Search engines analyse this information using search algorithms.
Over time, SEO people have figured out ways that help websites rank, which they include in their SEO strategy.
One way to help your website have more relevance and authority is using the E-A-T framework.
E-A-T in SEO stands for:
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
It’s not ranking factors but can improve your SEO content which influences other ranking factors.
A few examples of Ranking Factors that influence your ranking and search visibility include:
- Adding more content
- Optimising image filenames
- Improving internal links
How does SEO work?
For SEO to work, your content and website should be optimised for search engine ranking factors.
Search engines use bots to crawl each page on the internet to collect information and put them in an index, which is a big database of web pages.
Then the pages in the index are analysed against hundreds of ranking factors or signals to organise the results that appear in the SERP when you search a query or question.
So, factors like quality content, keyword research and site speed are just a few examples that help your pages rank higher in search results.
Is SEO important?
SEO is important because most online traffic comes from search engines.
People also use search engines first to find information about problems, solutions, products and services then, they will use alternatives like reviews or social media.
Plus, organic search results receive more clicks compared to paid advertisements.
And content that ranks for the right keywords will bring traffic to your website over a long period of time but advertising needs funding to send traffic to your site.
What is an SEO strategy?
An SEO strategy is a combination of methods to get more visitors to your website using methods based on the ranking factors of a search engine.
The main methods to optimise your website are divided into three areas, the first is On-page SEO, which involves optimising your content with keywords.
The second is, Off-page SEO, which is getting links from other websites which are more popular than your own.
And the third is Technical SEO, which is making your website faster and search engine friendly so it’s easier to crawl by bots so they can find and index your content.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is simply optimising your website and pages so a search engine like Google can scan and index it easily.
To search engines web pages look different. We see it as text, graphics, colours, formatting, and links.
But, search engines only see text and links so anything a search engine can’t see is invisible.
Search engines only recognise images by their file names.
Technical SEO factors include:
Website navigation and links
Search engines crawl sites by following links. Using links to find other content to analyse. Unable to see images, set the navigation and links as text-only.
Simple URL structure
Search engines don’t like long words with complex structure. Keep URLs short. Include a few words with the main keyword closer to the start but no stop words.
Page speed
A website’s load time reflects quality for search engines. Image size also affects load time, for example. Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool details how to improve page speed.
Dead links or broken redirects
Dead links to nonexistent pages and broken redirects to resources that aren’t there are poor for user experience and stop search engines from indexing your content.
Sitemap and Robots.txt files
A sitemap lists all your website URLs so search engines know which pages to crawl and index. A robots.txt file tells search engines which content not to index. Both to speed up content crawling and indexing.
Duplicate content
Identical or similar content won’t be displayed by search engines. Search engines can penalise your website for duplicated content as it’s a negative factor.
More on Technical SEO
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is fulfilling the needs of your audience’s search and giving search engines the information they need to figure out your content’s topic and quality.
So, search engines can match a person’s search query with the most relevant pages.
To fulfil the needs of your audience, examples of details include the title of the page or article, the depth of research and keywords used.
And to give the right information to search engines, examples of details include HTML headings and anchor text.
Content
Content comes first in SEO, to provide the best source of information to audiences.
Then comes your SEO work to help your content stand out on search engines.
Content can be an article, product page, an about page, testimonials or videos.
So, your first priority is to make quality content that engages and informs your audiences.
A few features of content include:
Quality
Add quality to your content by making sure it solves the readers problems, provides solutions and covers the topic in full.
Use similar content on your topic as an inspiration and for topic outlines, just add more value than other similar pieces.
Google says high quality content should be accurate, comprehensive, original and professionally presented.
Intent
Search intent is knowing the reason a person is searching on Google or any other search engine.
There could be a number of reasons such as searching for information, a certain website and even searching for a product or service.
Using your knowledge of your audience’s search intent helps you create better content for their needs.
Freshness
Posting frequently helps with Google rankings is one of the signals of freshness.
Making content you’ve already published more up-to-date is another.
So, make sure your content is accurate, fix broken links, and replace old data with new statistics.
For more on Content
Keyword Research
On-page SEO starts with Keyword research to attract the right visitors to your website.
Keywords are phrases your potential audience uses when searching a topic related to your website.
After finding terms and topics relevant to your website and researching related keywords your audience would use.
Then, you would use these initial keywords to optimise your content.
On-Page Optimisation
On-page optimization helps search engines figure out topics and keywords of web pages to match them to relevant searches.
This type of SEO work moves past the words you use to optimise details in the code.
Keyword Optimisation
The keyword you want to rank for should be included in:
- Post Title: Close to the start of the title. Google puts more value on words at the start of the headline.
- URL: Include the keyword or phrase in your page’s web address and nothing else. Remove stop words.
- H1 Tag: Usually displayed in the page title by default. But make sure to check the settings.
- First 100 words or first paragraph of your content: The keyword at the start of your blog post reassures Google that it’s the page’s topic.
- Meta title and meta description tags: Search engines display the meta-title as the search listing’s title and the meta description describes the content below it.
- Image file names and ALT tags: Search engines can only see images file names. So, make sure at least one image has the keyword in the file name.
Alt tags are text displayed in the browser instead of an image for the visually impaired and are also in the image code so search engines use them as relevant signals as well.
Semantic keywords make sure your page doesn’t start showing up for irrelevant searches in the search results.
For example, if your main keyword is “Apple,” it could mean the fruit or the iPhone company.
But if your content also contains terms like sugar, orchard, or cider then the context and the queries to rank it for would be obvious.
So, using variations or synonyms of your keywords to help search engines figure out how relevant a page is to the search query.
Additional On-Page Optimisation Factors
Include other details for credibility and authority:
- External links: Linking out to other website pages relevant to your topic provides a good user experience, positions your content as a valuable resource and helps search engines establish the contents topic.
- Internal links: Linking from one page to another in your website lets search engines find and crawl other pages on your site and shows semantic relations between pages, for better relevance with the search query. Include at least 2-4 internal links per blog post.
- Content’s length: Longer content ranks better because it contain more information on the topic and increases dwell time which keeps a reader on your site longer, an important ranking factor for search engines
- Multimedia: Not required but videos, diagrams, audio players signal page quality. Keeping readers on a page for longer.
More about On-page SEO
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is everything you do to your website externally or off-page.
Search engines rank relevant pages to queries that have the most authority.
Website authority is based on popularity and content by popular websites rank because of its value to readers.
And backlinks make a website popular, depending on the quality and quantity of the links.
What is a backlink?
Backlinks are when other websites talk about your content or website.
For example, when your content or website is mentioned on another website, the author directs their audience to you and that’s how you get backlinks.
Depending on how popular and high-quality the website that is linking to you, search engines like Google use this as a sign of your website’s authority.
Your website’s authority also increases depending on the number of these high-quality links pointing to your website or content.
Links Quality Factors
Quality of links is important because just as high-quality links can increase your website’s authority, low-quality links can do the opposite.
Low-quality links, from low-quality websites can affect your authority in a negative way.
Even suspicious links which Google considers built deliberately to make a website seem more authoritative can reduce your rankings.
So, only focus on getting high quality backlinks.
Some backlink factors to consider:
- Popular websites: Links from authority websites are high quality with good quality links pointing to them.
- Topic: Links from websites with similar topics to yours have more authority compared to random websites.
- Trust: Links from trusted websites are better for rankings.
Link building
Link building in SEO is getting new backlinks.
Link building takes patience and search engines don’t allow links to be built deliberately.
But this strategy can be directly responsible for your site’s success in search.
Link Building strategies include:
- Editorial, organic links: From websites that mention your content on their own based on quality and expertise.
- Outreach: From contacting other websites for links. By creating high quality content, and telling them about it via email.
- Guest posting: Publishing articles on third-party websites. And including one or two links to your site in the content and author bio.
- Profile links: Certain websites allow you to create a link in an online profile. Listing your website there. Easy to create and worth trying.
- Competitive analysis: Analysing competitors’ backlinks to find websites to target for your own website.
More on off-page SEO
SEO Reporting
SEO reports allow you to track your website’s data about traffic, engagement and links.
Monitoring your website data can help improve test different SEO strategies.
SEO metrics include:
- Organic traffic growth
- Keyword rankings (split into branded and non-branded terms)
- Conversions from organic traffic
- Average time on page and the bounce rate
- Top landing pages attracting organic traffic
- Number of indexed pages
- Links growth (including new and lost links)
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a basic analytics tool that provides statistics for search engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing use.
You can measure your website’s organic traffic, which is the number of visitors from search engines.
Google Analytics also tracks website activity such as session duration, pages per session, the bounce rate of visitors and the source of the traffic.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console, formerly known as Google webmasters tool, is to monitor and maintain your website on the Google Search results.
Search Console tools and reports include:
- Confirmation Google can find and crawl your website.
- Fix indexing issues and request re-indexing of new or updated content.
- View traffic data: how often your website is in the search, which queries show your website, how many searchers click those queries, and more.
- Receive alerts for indexing, spam, or other issues.
- Show your websites backlinks.
- Troubleshoot issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other features.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools (Bing WMT) allows you to add your website to the Bing crawler to show up in the search engine. Also, to monitor and maintain a site’s presence.
SEO Verticals
Local SEO
Local SEO is getting in front of potential customers in your area.
Local and global ranking factors are similar for search engines but location-based results include additional ranking factors:
- Appearing for searches which define the location.
- Results are based on relevant locations.
- Give the user as much information as possible.
- Targeting mainly smartphone users as local searches are mostly on mobile devices.
In local SEO, for example, when searching for a “restaurant near me” a localpack will include most of the information a person would need to choose a business.
The results contain a list of restaurants in the area and a map to show their locations.
Information about each business would include:
- Business name
- Description
- Image
- Opening hours
- Star Reviews
- Address
- Phone number
- Website address.
Local Search Ranking Factors
When a search contains “near me” Google analyses local websites against a searcher’s location and tries to show the closest businesses first.
Keywords are important in local SEO, as well as a business’s name, address, and phone number, also known as NAP, to assess the businesses location.
Google’s Local SEO also determines authority by links, reviews and citations, which are the online presence of a business’s address or a phone number.
A business’s information in Google’s local business listing, Google My Business, also helps with rankings.
Ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO is getting organic traffic from search engines like Google for your online store.
Examples of this includes:
- Writing product descriptions with relevant keywords on each product page
- Getting backlinks from relevant websites to improve your online store’s rankings
Social Media SEO
Social media SEO combines social media and SEO strategies to improve your website’s search rank, increase traffic and conversions.
The way social media impacts SEO include:
- Helping your content get discovered when it’s not on the top of search results.
- Builds an online presence so your website is familiar when in the search results.
- Earn SEO-friendly backlinks when your content is mentioned on other websites.
- Increase local presence through business profile data and customer reviews.
Impacting your SEO and your rank including:
- Social media profiles appear in business searches right under your website.
- Search engines index tweets, appearing in searches and specific queries.
- Google works with Instagram and TikTok to index video posts.
Mobile SEO
Mobile optimisation makes your website user-friendly and easier to access for mobile devices users.
What is Mobile Optimisation?
Every year people spend more and more time on their mobile devices and tablets, but many websites still aren’t designed to account for different screen sizes and load times.
A few things your website has to optimise for mobile devices:
- Site design
- Site structure
- Page speed
The main point of mobile optimisation is to make sure your website is not turning mobile visitors away.
WordPress SEO
When it comes to content management systems (CMS) for SEO, WordPress is one of the best.
WordPress is well-optimised out of the box.
A few advantages of WordPress include:
- Basic setup
- Easy customisation
- Over 31,000 themes
- Over 55,000 plugins
- Beginner friendly
- SEO-friendly
WordPress gives you the right basic settings to build and run your website on a solid foundation.
Which SEO Techniques Should Be Avoided?
SEO techniques which should be avoided are using black hat SEO because search engines issue penalties from search listings.
Black hat SEO uses strategies which are against search engine guidelines to manipulate search engine algorithms.
Popular techniques include keyword stuffing, buying links and cloaking, which hides keywords in code , invisible to users but not search engines.
Although, Black hat strategies give short term results, the penalties include being taken off search listings.
Learn SEO
There are a few options when it comes to doing the SEO work.
If SEO interests you and you have the time to learn then you can do it yourself. But remember SEO is a long term commitment and consistently sees results.
Or you can delegate SEO to a team member or hire an SEO specialist. So, find someone who is interested in growth marketing, development, or even web design
Outsource to an SEO Agency
If you don’t want to do SEO yourself, find it boring or too complicated then you can outsource SEO to a reputable consultant.
SEO experts, also known as SEO specialists, are highly skilled in bringing organic traffic, leads, and conversions to businesses so they can come in and get to work straight away.
A consultant can be less expensive than hiring someone full-time because they don’t need insurance benefits, payroll taxes, etc.
SEO Cost
If you do SEO yourself, it can cost between $100 and $500 per month for a keyword research tool.
An SEO consultant costs between $75 and $150 per hour
And it can cost up to $10,000 per month for a full-service SEO marketing agency.
Search Engine Marketing
SEO vs SEM
Both SEO and SEM marketing target traffic sources from search engines.
The difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO traffic comes from organic search but whereas SEM traffic from paid search.
So, SEO uses methods to get visitors to websites without paying and SEM uses PPC which stands for Pay Per Click, which are the ads that appear in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone uses a keyword related to your business.
Examples of popular PPC include:
- Google Ads
- Bing Ads
- SpyFu
SEO Tools
What are SEO Tools?
SEO tools are software that give data and insights about the health and success of your website.
They show potential opportunities and weaknesses or issues that stop your website from ranking higher in the SERPs.
Examples of popular SEO plugins include:
- Moz Pro
- Ahrefs
- Google Trends
SEO Plugins
What are SEO Plugins?
WordPress SEO plugins are tools created to allow you to change features on your website easily without coding.
Allowing you to customise your website’s details such as meta data like the page title and meta description which allows search engines to know what your page is about.
Examples of popular SEO plugins include:
- All in One SEO
- Yoast SEO
- MonsterInsights
Conclusion
That is a basic overview of what I learnt when starting out with SEO.
Obviously we will deeper and more in-depth on SEO topics, so keep a look out.
Do you have anything specific you want to learn about?
Let me know by leaving a quick comment below right now.