SEO- The Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimisation
The Perfect Guide To Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Beginers
Search engine optimization is a technical, creative, and analytical process to improve the visibility of a website in search engines. Its main function is to drive more traffic to a site. The website can then convert the traffic into sales.
Search engine optimization (SEO) may seem a bit mysterious especially if you are new to digital marketing. What is more, the SEO world contains some hidden rules, which take time to master.
However, there are some simple SEO basics that you can learn and utilize on your website to increase traffic from organic search.
The free Search Engine Optimization basics that you will read on this page will help you design a successful SEO friendly website yourself, which will rank higher on google and other search engines for selected keywords.
Understanding the basics will help you as you learn more about the diverse and complex topic of search engine optimization (SEO).
Let us answer some of the simple, but common questions that new website owners ask in regard to SEO.
1. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy that focuses on growing visibility in organic search engine results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) covers both the creative and technical elements that a website needs in order to improve rankings, increases awareness in search engines and drives traffic. SEO features include the words on your page to the way other websites link to your website, as well as with other websites. The concept is simply a matter of ensuring that your site is designed in a way that search engines understand.
SEO is more than just building search engine friendly websites. It is about improving your site for your audience too.
2. What are SEO tools?
The key search engines such as Bing, Google, and Yahoo have primary search results. This is where web pages and other content such as videos and local listings are ranked and shown based on what the search engine considers relevant.
3. Why do you need to optimize your website for SEO?
Users searching online are more likely to find you if you make some simple tweaks to your website’s content. This means that you will receive increased traffic to your site. The search engine journal shows that 70-80% users ignore the paid ads and instead focus on organic search results. SEO is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to drive more traffic to your site.
Said simply, your site will suffer if you do not optimize it for search.
The words (search queries) that users type in the search bar (or search box of google, Bing, and other search engines) carry extraordinary value.
Experience shows that search engine traffic can make or break a company. Your success in the online universe absolutely depends on search! This is because the enormous traffic that search engines drive to websites ultimately improves the site’s exposure, revenue, and publicity like no other method of marketing.
In addition, investing in SEO offers an exceptional rate of return compared to other types of promotion and marketing (such as paid ads).
4. Can the search engines figure out your site without SEO?
The answer is No. Why? Search engines are smart but they still need some kind of help. The major engines work to improve their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return better results to users. However, there is a limit to how search engines work.
This is where SEO comes in!
The right SEO technigues can bring you thousands of visitors and increased attention but if you do it wrongly, you will end up hiding or burying your site. SEO helps to boost rankings so that the content is placed where users will readily find it.
5. Can you do SEO by yourself?
SEO can be a bit complex but most people can easily understand the basics. In the SEO world, even a small amount of knowledge can make a big difference. Free SEO education is readily available on the internet. You can decide whether you want an expert to handle things based on time commitment, the complexity of your site and willingness to learn.
One has to understand the basics of how search engines work in order to develop an SEO strategy.
If you need some help with your search engine optimization, we can help. We provide the content that you need to keep your website fresh and we can also help you create the backlinks and design an effective SEO strategy for your website.
6. How do search engines work?
A search engine’s main process consists of three things, that is, indexing, crawling and querying.
Below, I will discuss each one of them:
- Crawling– a search engine runs a software program known as "spider” that discovers content on the web.
- Indexing- the search engine analyzes the content in order to determine what it is about. It then indexes it or organizes the content so that users can retrieve it quickly.
- Querying- when you search for something online, the search engine gives you a list of results to consider. These search results appear on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). According to Google, their algorithms look up your search terms in the index to find the suitable pages.
7. What is an algorithm?
Google’s algorithm is a computer database that analyzes a series of unique characteristics of each web page it indexes. This assists Google to serve up the most relevant pages in response to a user’s query. However, very few people know the actual details of Google’s algorithm because it keeps it a secret.
Google updates the algorithm frequently, which keeps the SEO experts on their toes.
8. How do you attract Google’s attention?
In the past, most SEO experts were in the business of gaming the system hoping that they would get top placements on SERPs to attract users. The experts tossed out massive amounts of low-quality content pages on a various topics. They would then pack the content with keywords, which appear in popular search terms. Even though this scheme worked at first, Google caught on and updated its algorithm to hinder this strategy.
The most important thing that you need to know about SEO is that content must be informative, high quality, and satisfying to a user.
If your content can impress a human being then it will probably impress Google. If Google and other search engines happens to give you the honor of serving your page up as a top result then you had better deliver quality content. Google and other search engines will penalize you if your users leave the page (bounce) without clicking any other page.
What are the key characteristics that Google favors in the content that you write?
a. Length
If you want a place at the top of the search engine results page then you have to aim for about 2500 words for prized content pieces. This is because content that covers a topic in depth and is well-researched impresses Google.
b. Freshness
Update your website with fresh content in order to be best friends with Google. Each time Google’s spider crawls and indexes your site they award a freshness score that factors into their algorithm. If you fail to update at least on a weekly basis the site will appear stale to Google hence less appealing.
9. How to use keywords for SEO
Using the right keywords is a very important aspect of every SEO strategy. However, keywords no longer hold the kind of power they once did due to those algorithm changes we mentioned earlier. Even if you used all the keywords in the world and your content is poor, keywords will probably not help you rank higher.
Despite this, you should use keywords when writing your content. Keywords, especially long tail keywords are important traffic drivers. Looking at the common keywords, or search queries in Google can guide you on what to write about so that you have the best chance of gaining traffic.
So, how do you know which kinds of keywords will bring traffic? This brings us to the next question.
10. What is a keyword?
A keyword is a word or a short phrase that pops up in popular queries. You will discover which keywords have the potential to drive the most traffic to your site by conducting a keyword research. Use keywords by writing content that focuses on topics that cover those keywords. In addition, make sure to include those keywords in your content.
11. What is the best tool for writing relevant content?
Google’s Keyword Planner is the SEO professional’s best tool for writing relevant content and gaining traffic. You can use the keyword planner to learn about what search terms are popular in your niche.
After you get the keywords that you want to use, then you will need a copywriter to write the article. If you are confident in your writing skills, you can do it yourself, however, hiring a copy writer through our website can help you achieve your content writing needs a lot faster and more cheaply. We can also do research of the right keywords.
12. What are title tags?
A title tag is the title of your article or page. Your title tag appears on SERPs, at the top of the page in your browser and on other social media sites. The title tag is important to both the user experience and SEO.
This is because it tells the users and search engines what the page is about. You should keep your title tag relevant and interesting so that users can click on it on SERPS and when you place it on social media.
Therefore, the tag should display an accurate and concise description of the content on the page.
You have to follow the best practices to have a positive impact on SEO when it comes to optimizing title tags for your website.
Below are some recommendations for optimizing title tags for search:
- Maintain your tags between 50-60 characters. This will prevent a too-long title from being cut off in search results.
- Your title must accurately describe your page content
- Place your keywords toward the beginning of the title tag
Remember not to use the same title tag for multiple pages on your site. Google will penalize you for duplicate content on your site.
13. What is Meta Description?
In order to get a better definition on Meta description, it helps to define a snippet. A snippet is the description that Google offers on a SERP beneath your title tag. The snippet is a short summary of your page that helps users get a preview of what the page contains before they click.
A Meta description is also a brief description, summary or your page content but composed by you. You can install as SEO plugin within your CMS such as Yoast. This allows you to offer Google the content of the snippet. Your Meta description will show up in SERPS as a snippet if Google decides that your description is relevant. However, Google will display its own snippet from the content on your page if you do not compose your own Meta description.
Search engines normally highlight a keyword in the snippet if a user performs a query that includes that keyword if used in your Meta description. Highlighted keywords can draw the attention of the search engine user, which will bring a higher click-through rate to your content.
14. How do backlinks help with SEO?
Using links on your website can provide great value in terms of SEO. We have two types of links that you can include in your web content. They include external links and internal links.
a. Internal links
An internal link connects one page of your website to another. For example, your homepage might link to the "contact us” page on your site. The source domain and target domain are the same in an internal link. Internal links help users and search engine ‘Spiders’ navigate your site efficiently and easily.
b. External link
These links directs the user to another domain.
15. Why should your care about external links?
Because links add credibility to your website. For instance, outbound links (links from your website to external content) show that your content is well researched from reputable sources and Google will be impressed. In addition, they help the users of your site to locate the articles that you used in your research.
I try to use one or two links in my articles.
Inbound links are equally important. When other sites link to your website, this tells Google that your website has something valueable. Google responds to this by giving you more love by ranking your website and its content higher on SERPS.
As much as links can significantly help your SEO ranking there are things that can cause harm as well. Avoid mistakes with your hyperlinks. Consider the following tips when using links:
- Links from sites related to your product or topic are usually more valuable than links on unrelated sites. This is because related sites provide relevance that is more topical.
- The link text also known as ‘anchor text’ matters. However, Google can penalize you for overly optimizing your anchor text. The best method is to simply write naturally and link accordingly without trying to game the system.
- The number of links included on a page matter in terms of SEO. You do not want to post too many links. Google divides the value of the links by the number of links on the page when a page links to multiple web pages. This simply means that the value of one link among many is diluted as compared to the value of a single link on a page without many others.
Finally, now you can employ these strategies to create superior content. In addition, you will increase traffic to your website from search. This way, new users who are searching topics that are relevant to your niche will easily find you.