Introduction To SEO for the Online Beginner

Now we discuss an introduction to SEO for the online beginner. It’s one thing creating great content or products, it’s another to get people to your blog or website to see this. One way is to advertise (which we have discussed previously), another way is for your content to rank high in search engines.

 

 

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This post is targeted for those who have little to no experience in SEO and would like to learn a little more. For those looking to learn SEO in more detail (for most of you I suggest you do this) then have a look at websites/figures such as Neil Patel, Brian Dean (Backlinko), SEMrush and Moz.

According to Search Engine Journal, “SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.”

Moz‘ definition of SEO is “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”

SEO isn’t easy and ranking high in a search engine takes time. Think of SEO like an inexact science. SEO is constantly changing so keep reading, keep researching, keep testing.

At the end of the day you want targeted SEO, if you have a blog or website about dogs you really don’t want to be ranking for a furniture restoration (unless it is for a vintage dog house).

Below I’ve listed 9 of the more important SEO elements that you and your site should be doing (in no particular order).

1. Use a plugin such as Yoast SEO to help with your sites SEO

The easiest way to make sure your site and content is at a decent SEO level is to use a plugin to help with your SEO. The plugin I use is Yoast which is great to optimize your site and your content for search engine purposes. It helps you highlight whether your content has been set up correctly when targeting a particular keyword or phrase helping with the SEO component as well as readability component. A good SEO plugin will also help with your titles and headings being optimized, with your sitemap being suitable for search engines plus many other SEO tools.

2. Use Keyword research to rank your content in search engines

It’s one thing to get a large amount of traffic to your website. It’s another to make sure that this traffic is highly qualified and targeted.

So after you have focused on exactly you want your blog or website to target you should start a list of keywords that you wish to target.

For some keywords unless you have a large authority site (like Wikipedia) or have a massive SEO budget you won’t be able to rank high for however if you get creative there are lots of ways to rank for a keyword, phrase or a derivative of your main keyword (particularly through the use of long tail keywords).

Keywords and keywords research are a very important part of SEO and you should take the time to learn about this subject. Moz has a great introductory guide to keywords guide.

3. Link building is an important part to any SEO program

According to SEO experts link building is a very important part of SEO. Essentially you want to get high authority sites (such as Wikipedia or a large national newspaper) linking to your site and your content (backlinks). If these authority sites are linking to your content or website then there is a big chance that your search engine rankings will climb!

The first step to get authority sites to link to your site is to create great content! Once you have created the great content then you need to reach out authority sites to get them aware of your content and ask them or entice them to link your content. To get into understanding what authority sites to look at (ie understanding domain ratings) have a look at the backlink guide from Backlinko (Brian Dean) or Ahrefs.

4. Make sure you also link out to relevant authority sites with your content

Whilst receiving backlinks should be a large part of your SEO plan, linking out to high quality content should also be a part of your SEO plan. Not only does this help for SEO purposes it also provides better quality content and information for your readers and subscribers.

If you are linking out to high quality content from an external site this site may in turn link back to some of your great content.

5. Make sure your blog or website is optimised for mobile use

Google has stated that they are focussing more on mobile search so it makes sense that your website is suitable for use on mobiles and optimized for mobile search.

If your site isn’t optimized for this I suggest you get to work on this straight away. Moz offers a beginners guide to do this, as do Search Engine Land and Neil Patel.

6. Make sure your on page SEO is on point

As per Moz, “On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals.”

For the sake of your SEO plans this needs to be high on your list. If your understanding of Title and Meta tags isn’t great, check out Backlinko’s or Neil Patel’s introduction to on page SEO guides.

7. Optimize your pictures, infographics, videos, etc for SEO

A great way to further connect your content with your readers is to add a picture or infographic to your content. Should you do this, make sure that it is optimized for search engine purposes.

When adding a picture, infographic of video to one of your website pages or pieces of content make sure any other content that you add is optimized for the keyword or phrase that you are targeting.

Particularly as people are highly visual a correctly optimized picture or infographic could send quality traffic to your website or blog. Make sure that any pictures that you add to your website or piece of content is correctly named with an alt attribute.

8. Make sure your website is quick

This could also fall under the on page SEO area however a fast site is not only important for SEO purposes it is also important for keeping readers. This means finding a fast, reliable host, having a fast loading wordpress theme and making sure all your pages load up quickly.

As per a Neil Patel article on website speed, “According to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds. 79% of web shoppers who have trouble with web site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again and around 44% of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience shopping online.”

Oncrawl and Moz also have posts about the effect of speed for your SEO.

9. Create great content that is easily shareable

This might seem obvious but if you create awesome content that solves a problem for your niche this will eventually attract an audience. If this attracts the eye of several authority sites who share or link not only will you get some nice referral traffic from this sites, search engines will see you having external links from authority sites and will boost your rankings.

Plus you will open yourself to a larger potential audience if these large or authority sites are sharing your content. Start with creating great content that solves a pressing issue or issues for your readers and subscribers then work towards the other SEO points above to start building several traffic funnels.

By getting a handle of these above points will put your SEO in good stead and help your content rank higher in search engines for your relevant keywords or phrases. Keep researching your keywords, keep going back to sites like Moz or getting updates from experts like Neil Patel.

 

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