SEO for Beginners: A Complete Guide to SEO

Updated: 13 July 2021

 

Welcome to the Complete SEO guide for beginners! Learn SEO Fundamentals, Content & Link Building Techniques, Advanced SEO, Techniques, UX Signals, SEO tools…

Every website, small or big, should know the art of ranking high on a search engine in the unpaid section in this competitive era to stand out among others. What is the best way to learn SEO for beginners? SEO is the magic wand one can use to achieve that goal. It’s not hard rocket science to understand how to do it. Therefore, the following article is here to your rescue.

Keyword density is vital when optimising an internet page for various search engines. To avoid this from happening, at least 80 per cent of your page content should not be keywords.

 

What is the best way to optimise SEO for beginners?

SEO is the practice of optimising websites to reach a high position in any engine’s search results, in this case, the biggest search engine Google. SEO will optimise websites so that they will get more traffic. The more, the merrier because that will convert into sales which is the sole purpose of any business without a doubt, even for beginners. There are many SEO tools one can use to achieve its goal. The best among them is the YOAST SEO Word press. We will discuss it later under an on-page optimisation heading. 

This means repeating keywords as much as possible while not breaking your article flow. Search engines work partly by locating keywords and evaluating their density; you will find your rankings improving.

What are the best resources for learning about search engine optimisation (SEO) for beginners? Before we roam into the other library of these practical SEO steps, we would like to answer every beginner’s most essential SEO question.

 

Why it’s essential to rank in the top 10 in Google search results?

Spiders analyse your site’s content and keyword usage to determine rankings; unless your content is easily indexed, they have to know how to navigate your site. A well-organized site map is a tool the spider can use to understand what content is essential.

Why? You ask! Well, it’s because Google is the most significant search engine everybody knows that. Ranking high in Google means grasping more clicks on your website. 57.8% of all website traffic originates from Google compared to 5.2 % from Facebook and 4.8% from YouTube, according to a recent industry study. 

Since this guide is for beginners, we will gladly try to cover everything until now about SEO to make it as resourceful for you as possible. Add a site map if you’re trying to get more visitors. A site map will link your web pages to each other.

 

Do you know how Search Engines Work?

Any search engine result page is divided into two separate, distinct sections organic & paid. When we discuss SEO, undoubtedly, it’s about ranking your website in the organic search results. You need to get familiar with both types to understand your result domain better for a good ranking. Include quality keywords in each page’s URL.

 

Organic search result

It is also referred to as a natural result which ranks based 100% on merit. To rank higher in it, you don’t have to pay a penny to Google or any other search engine. These results are generally of higher quality. The more the website has qualitative and quantitative information over the subject, the more it will show.

Organic search results are ranked based on hundreds of different ranking factors discussed further in detail ahead. In general, these searches are deemed by Google to be the most trustworthy, relative, and authoritative websites on the subject, so your websites have to have all these to be a part of it. 

 

Paid search results

Don’t use duplicate any content and avoid being flagged as spam. Know that you could be using duplicate content and aren’t aware of it. Using the same description is easy, but the search engines can’t differentiate between that and spamming.

They are known as ad words and have a symbol like this on top of the website title. In other words, websites with ad words signs on them have to pay a certain amount to Google over every single click. Ranking in paid search results is determined by how much money is offered per click to Google. The higher the price, the higher the rank will be. These results either appear above or underneath the organic search results. This type of advertising is known as ‘pay per click advertising. Well, you don’t have to pay too much attention to this one because your concern is ranking high in organic search results, so moving forward on to the factors Google considers to rank a website. 

How Google scans & rank your website for Ranking?

People often mistakenly think this happens on its own. Check back from time to time to make sure that your site is still indexed.

We know that look, don’t worry, we will explain it a bit simpler for you. Google uses a keyword search to scan your website to see if there is any on your website. Then google looks for links on your website, which could prove that your website is full of relevant quality content and is trustworthy and resourceful. In other words, Hold your seat belt while we go through these three factors in depth.

SEO Basic Fundamentals for Beginners

The publicity offered can only lead to an increase in your site traffic. Don’t ever turn away free advertising.

Now that we know what SEO is and why it’s essential, we should head on to the vital steps beginners can take to achieve it. This article is specially designed for beginners to describe them as simply as possible in this complex and ever-changing world of search engine optimisation.

 

What Is SEO & Why Is SEO Important for Beginners?

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization which boasts up your website ranking at any search engine, mainly GOOGLE, so more traffic visits your website. The more the traffic, the more, the merrier it is for you. Making SEO optimising your website will initially get you traffic converted to sales GREAT, isn’t it!

To get a lot of traffic, you need content that’s unique and interesting. People who stay and click around your site are likely to come back a second time.

SEO is an absolute must to get traffic on websites. Websites can easily be ranked in the top ten with the help of simple steps of SEO. But before we start our journey on that, let’s shine some light on what SEO is? What it stands for? Why is it important to do so?

 

What are the basic SEO techniques for beginners?

Use specific commands that result in relevant results.

• • Customers and Keywords research
  • SEO-Friendly Content
  • High-Quality Content Examples

Purchasing a previously used domain name with some history behind it will automatically get you to achieve a higher ranking. Older domain names have more recognition than newer ones with search engines.

• • Intro to Technical SEO
  • Link Building Basics
  • Search Intent

Don’t ever publish similar articles on your site! Having people link to two different pages for the same content will also dilute your incoming link count, making your page rank plummet.

• Emerging SEO Trends

Search engine bots seek out new material, so when you use a blog to add new material to your website regularly, you need to give them what they’re looking for to rank higher. People love sharing articles. They are good. This will encourage people to your site.

 

What are Search Engine Ranking Factors?

It’s best to know how Google ranks your website so you can work on SEO magic accordingly for your website. Google has to scan its index of hundreds of billions of pages to get what traffic searched for. Even though it’s still a mystery as to how Google does it because Google doesn’t make the inner workings of its algorithm public; being so secretive but over the years, based on filed patents and statements from Google, it is said that websites are ranked based on:

Focus on phrases rather than single words. Do you typically search with a single word? You need to choose those phrases that people use to find the types of products you are looking for exactly what you’re offering. ” as opposed to just “A sale. This is the best strategy when it comes to optimising your site.

• • On-page SEO factors: The ranking of your website is partly decided by these within website factors. They hold the primary key in order. These factors include technical aspects (quality code, site speed) and content-related aspects like the structure and quality of your website context.
  • Off-page SEO factors: These factors include links from other websites such as social media. These are somewhat difficult to influence, but you are halfway there once you are through with these factors. These are important because the more quality, relevant sites that link to your website, the higher your position in Google as your website seems more trustworthy.
  • Relevancy: First and foremost, your website is scanned to see if it’s related to keyword searches done by traffic. But this alone doesn’t promise a high rank in Google because your website is not the only fish in the ocean where millions of pages and websites are being generated by every passing hour. To bring out the best result for traffic Google relies on other factors, so you need to keep all these factors on standby when making your website. 

Search engine optimisation is a type of marketing. This is the technique of using keywords in your site content to promote better search engine rank. This is the best way to bring people to your site and bring you more business.

• • Domain Authority: Accuracy of content and trustworthiness are the next thing Google looks for in a website. Authoritativeness is all about this, and you can prove your website authority to Google by having backlinks.
  • Number of Backlinks: Backlinks are the number of pages that link to your website. In the process of ranking, backlinks play a vital role in boosting your rank up, meaning more links=higher in rank. To answer the question you just had after reading about backlinks as to how to get them? We will tell you that too in this guide under off-page optimisation heading ahead. 
  • Content Quality: This one is important because even if your website is full of expert content and loaded with backlinks, but the relevant data is not well organised, hard to understand, or perhaps the use of jargon language in it and is not user-friendly Google won’t rank you in its top 10. Your website should be easy to understand for the traffic to spend time on it instead of bouncing back.

Email marketing will give you on the competition. Use SEO keywords and include any social sites you belong to. Make sure the email is easy to forward emails to others.

• • Content Uniqueness: Consideration of this factor is of great significance because it could also backfire on your website. Google publicly stated a distinct difference between high-quality content and valuable content so try to generate a functional, unique, creative, simple, and well-organized website for your traffic.
  • Usefulness: The usefulness of a website is measured primarily based on the ‘user experience signal’. Since your a beginner, you can either hire writers to write full organised content or a graphic designer who will design a user-friendly website for your business. If it’s too expensive, you can always go for self-teaching, watch videos on YouTube about creating an effective website, and develop a habit of reading. Trust us; it will help you write articles for your website and learn about your competitors. 
  • Click-through rate (CTR): It holds a significant value in the ranking. For example, if the title and headline of your website are well optimised than the others above you, you will get more clicks which will gradually increase your ranking in Google. And mark our words. This one looks simple, but it’s a valuable trick and will ensure lots of clicks as well.

Focusing excessively on SEO techniques and strategies can make you lose sight of your goals. Don’t forget the purpose of both constantly attracting new readers and having them return. You want to have quality content regularly updated on your website to have high search engine rankings. Good content is the best way to optimise your site. Keep your content authentic and genuine.

• • Time spent (Dwell time): Friendly user experience and time paid by User also determines one fate so make sure to keep your traffic attracted to your website. 
  • Loading time of a website: It affects the ranking one way or another, making sure that a website doesn’t take much longer than 2 to 3 seconds to load. After all, it’s a busy world out there, and nobody is stopping for anyone. 
  • Mobile Optimized & Responsive Design: To make sure that your website outlook doesn’t get ruined in the mobile interface, check out the website on mobiles. Responsinator.com is considered to be a good website for tasks like this.

This will boost your rankings by search engine rankings. Meta descriptions serve as calls to action, as they often appear in the brief website description beneath the hyperlink of your website. Some content systems have places for you a chance to adjust the meta description when you’re editing an individual page.

• • Fully Crawlable Page: Search engines should not be blocked from accessing Robots.txt
  • Anchor Text: It tells Google what that backlink page is about.
  • Use of Keyword: Use the main keyword in title, headings, content, phrases, questions, and image alt text. Don’t do keyword stuffing (excess use of keywords)

To further tie everything together, you should include your company’s name at the end of the title link as well. People are not likely to search for your company by name unless it is truly well-known.

• Fresh Content:  keep your content up to date trends instead of going old materials

If your website is for a business, getting the owner or CEO active on the site will help boost your traffic. People want to hear this “voice” of the company.

 

What are some ways for beginners to practice SEO?

• • Add the main keyword early on in your content.

The meta tags should be highly descriptive. The meta tags on each page should be accurate and make people click.

• • Add unique titles, description & content
  • Optimise title tag using YOAST SEO WordPress plugin
  • Reduce site loading speed

If you feature a good number of videos on your site, realise that crawlers will have trouble finding these, even if the content is compelling and unique. To practice better SEO for videos, use a site map page that lists the videos.

• • Check results with Google Search Console.
  • Optimise images with keyword and metadata
  • Usage of  internal linking

Be sure to name your website so that it makes sense for them. You may have your business name in your banner title, but if a background image is used, make sure you do not use any keyword in its title since it is not relevant.

• Create backlinks for your website
• Create SEO friendly web design

Server headers are an essential aspect of search engine optimisation success. Server headers that aren’t set up can dampen success. Ensure your server headers have a “200 Ok” or a “301 moved permanently” status if you are correctly labelled.

 

Keyword Research & Competition Analysis for Better SEO

Before getting immersed into title tags and HTML, don’t skip out on beforehand research of keywords. You can only attain SEO success by creating content around topics that your traffic search for. 

Content is key to search engine success. Your content needs to be the right length but also focus on the main subject. You should always use better grammar than the competition. When your content is well written, it helps to have great content on your site.

Finalising keywords for a website is a crucial and fundamental aspect because it will ultimately affect the ranking. Traffic comes to your websites using these keywords, and Google scans your website for these keywords relevancy. 

 

What is the importance of keywords in SEO (for beginners)?

If you don’t know the exact keywords for your website or select a very vague range of keywords, your efforts to make the best website would be all for nothing when it doesn’t get the traffic or related traffic. Selecting a keyword with high competition and difficulty will also set you off as a beginner. That is why the only thing that will save your website from the fiery pit is thorough research of keywords. 

Now that you know why it’s essential to do thorough research, we will just move on to tell you how to find THE ONE! for your website. It’s almost impossible to know all types of things that are searched for. So the study of search queries type will give you push you to need. There are four types of search queries:

• Informational: This search query is all the questions type users use, for example, how to? What? Where?
• Navigational: Users who don’t remember the complete URL of a website uses Google to redirect them to it by using keywords they saw on their website.
• Transactional: This type of query is related to all buying and sales, for example, cheapest bookmarks.
• Commercial: It is similar to the Transactional type where users search for products, services, sales, promotions, discounts.

Your focus should be more on Informational and Transactional keywords to successfully carry out the optimisation mission. These two types of keyword searches will ensure traffic both ways, whether traffic is looking to buy or not. Either way, your website will pop up in the search result.

 

Google autocomplete

Everyone is familiar with Google autocomplete; firstly, use it to jot down any suggestions that come up relevant to your business. It’s vital to know your competitor’s keyword as well. Thorough research on your competitors’ websites will generate more keyword ideas and pages option for your website. The title and the homepage of your website should have your search keyword in them so it will be easy for Google to find your website. 

 

Long-tail keywords

Secondly, beginners should go for long-tail keywords because they are less competitive. Competing against websites around a decade is challenging and demotivating for beginners, so try to avoid choosing one word or short-tail keywords initially. Because they already have been handpicked by other prominent websites and outrunning them will take a lot of effort and time, and money as well.

 

Best-suited keyword

Thirdly use keyword search tools to help you finalise the best-suited keyword for your website. The keyword search tool can help figure out the many possibilities of traffic use to search. On top of this, they will also provide you with the analysis of each keyword that you have as options to help you select the best and less competitive one since your website is new. 

 

Which are the best SEO tools for a beginner?

We have SEO Automation Tools for many types of daily routine work requirements. The web world has millions of different paid and free tools. We will give you an overview of some tools and will suggest you the one you can use in the beginning; here are a few recommendations:

 

Soovle: it’s a free based tool that suggests keyword ideas from many search engines like google, youtube, bing, amazon, and more. This tool special is to save all the keyword suggestions with the drag and drop saved suggestion feature.

 

January: this one gives out unique keyword suggestions that you won’t find in most other tools. Along with this, it provides valuable data like competition, search volume, and potential traffic. QSR ‘quotes search result’ the best feature of it. The lower the number, the better chance you have on the keyword.

 

Google Search Console: gives you the best opportunity keywords suggestions that have a chance of working out for your website. Opportunity keywords are those keywords that will help you rank from #8 to #20; with a bit of different on-page SEO, you can boost your rank a bit high in google. It’s the best feature that you can link your google analytic account with it. 

 

Ashraf Keywords Explorer: if you want super in-depth information about keywords, look no further than this tool. It got you covered. It’s the best feature that it shows a proper keyword difficulty rather than vague ones. It comes with a bonus feature as well. It also tells you how much more backlinks your website needs to raise your rank in google.

 

SECockpit:  it’s a paid tool and a very overwhelming tool for beginners. It’s full of features for SEO professionals who live, eat, and breathes SEO. It’s up to you if you want to have a look but save this tool for later.

 

Google Keyword Planner: Data from this tool is confirmed legit because it comes straight from google statics. Its best feature is to show you keywords on top of page bid, giving you information over your competitors.

 

Keywordtool.io: keyword suggestions in bulk are provided by this tool. Its best feature is to narrow down, filter, or expand the results according to your requirement.

 

Moz Keyword Explorer: another paid tool for keyword search. This tool explores keywords that generate more traffic for your website. Its keyword suggestions are primarily out of the box that you probably wouldn’t have imagined. Its best feature is giving CTR (expected clicks) ratio and priority ratios (overall score of whether you should target a particular keyword or not).

 

Keywords Everywhere: one of the free tools for beginners displays data on the top 10 websites on google. Finding a list of related keywords of your search term is its best feature.

 

Keyword Snatcher: generates 2000 keyword ideas at a single search, and that’s it. It won’t give you other information on keywords like competition keyword difficulty, expected traffic, and so on.

 

Google Trends: formulates new keywords with trending search along with the chart over keyword growing in popularity. This gives an opportunity of using a keyword that will increase shortly and a chance of raising your rank as well. Its best feature is that it also shows keywords at the 2nd biggest search engine, youtube.

 

Semrush: it’s a paid tool and an expensive one on top. It comes with a lot of features. It’s best for having information over your competitors. The more you know about your competitors, the more tactics you can make to outrun them.

 

Kwfinder: a valuable and simple tool to use, but it’s a paid one. Its best feature is showing keyword difficulty.

 

QuestionDB: this one is a must-know tool because it explores question-based keywords for you. This will help your website pop up in search results even when the traffic is not looking to buy something? It’s the best feature that it sorts out the popular ones.

 

Serpstat: This tool analyses the first page of Google for in-depth information on keywords. Its speciality lies in quality content and link building for your website. The competitor graph is its best feature.

 

Ubersuggest: an overall review of a keyword is provided on this tool, including the volume, CPC (cents per click), and competition.

 

To help you, we have provided you with the best “keyword search” tools information. However, we do recommend Google’s Keyword Planner tool. It’s the best free tool for SEO beginners.

 

On-Page SEO Optimisation

On-page optimisation is all the factors within your website. Improving them regularly will raise your search ranking. Relevant content, title tags, meta description, and graphics are a few examples of on-page SEO optimisation. What is a good on-page SEO strategy for beginners? A combination of several strategies does the trick for effective on-page optimisation.

 

Research & Observation

Observation and analysis of your competitor’s website are fundamental before giving birth to your website. Doing thorough research over competitor’s websites will provide you with all the valuable information, content, layout designs, and overall look of a good website. In the end, you will have a whole imagined visual picture of how your website will look like. The development comes after this, and previous thorough research will ensure the quality of your website.

 

Technical Optimization

Server speed, source code, and IP addresses are the three main technical components of the website optimised. As the name suggests of server speed, it’s the time your website consumes to load. The longer it is, the worst for you. Your website needs to load within 2 to 3 seconds. Now let’s move forward to IP address, we all know what that is? A numerical label is assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the internet protocol for communication. You should always have a unique IP address for each web project that you are doing or planning to work on. Lastly, efficient source code will improve your website performance, turning it into a good user experience, one of the ranking factors.

 

Content

the content of your website holds the key. Expertise and organised content will do wonders for your website, but the content must be related to what the traffic is looking for. An organised content always gives defeat to content will the bulk of related information. Well, nobody wants to read-only text; it’s just dull. The use of graphics, pictures, and videos will keep your traffic interested in your website, ultimately resulting in spending more time on your website, and that’s for the best.

 

YOAST SEO WordPress

Your website will ace this. It will tell you all the necessary steps you should take to a fabulous website. You can eliminate all the problems that are showing in it to raise the credibility of your website.

 

Internal Links & Structure

Internal links & structure are used to optimise navigation to your website. For beginners, it is fundamental to have a proper site structure as in how many pages or levels your website will be comprised of. The fewer levels there are, the more quickly a bot can reach and crawl all sub-pages. Having internal links on your website will raise the relevancy of a particular keyword.  

 

Off-Page Optimisation

These are all the factors outside your website domain that you must consider: raising your optimisation and ensuring a boost in your rank. These measures provide creating high-quality backlinks for your website.

 

Why are backlinks important?

A backlink is a link one website gets from another website. Backlinks are one of the fundamental factors that impose a significant effect on the ranking of search engines. They hold a special place in SEO because they represent valuable resources for search keywords from another website domain.

The quality of links is far more critical than the quantity. The most desirable backlinks to earn are high authority backlinks. Trustworthy and popular websites have high authority backlinks. While backlinks from low-authority, potentially spammy sites are typically at the other end of the spectrum. Low Authority backlink will do more harm than good to your website.

One more important thing to keep in mind is that you need to get backlinks related to your website topic; getting random high-quality backlinks won’t do you any good. Beginners like you should focus more on earning backlinks through your website; in addition to this, you can go for blog and article writing. 

 

What is backlink building?

A significant number of people often confuse backlink building and backlink earning. These are two completely different planets. It means creating conditions for SEO backlinks referring to your site. To achieve a backlink means to deserve it. Is this possible? Of course, YES! If you want your site to be worth earning backlinks, you must do everything possible and impossible to please your guests and users. Make them addicted to your website.

Be extraordinary, unique, different, inventive, attractive, attentive to trends, regular basis updates, and have things that others don’t on your website. By doing so, the designated traffic won’t just visit your domain but share it on social media, blogs, and so on, thus creating backlinks for you.

 

What is an excellent offsite SEO strategy for beginners?

• Guest blogging
• Article writing
• Original research with insights
• Building relationships with influencers
• Link reclamation

 

What are the best SEO tips for beginners?

#1 SEO tip for higher ranking: Create a website that traffic love. Now it seems attainable for you after knowing all the ranking factors. Mark these words that it’s an ongoing process, not a single time effort if you want to stay in the top 10. To succeed with SEO today, your website needs to put out awesome stuff consistently. Make your website as best as possible so that Google won’t have any other choice but to rank you up.