Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 101: The Beginner’s Guide

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 101

Hello and welcome! What brought you here? You must have been looking for information on how search engine optimisation (SEO) works or something similar. Whether you came here via Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine, we’re glad you’re here to learn about SEO.

In this SEO beginner’s guide, you’ll learn about how SEO works – and how to optimise your site for search. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Search Engine (or SEO) Basics

Are you puzzled by search engines and how they work? Not technically oriented? Unfortunately, this makes you vulnerable to bad SEO advice or sets you up to be taken advantage of by a bad SEO firm.

This section will explain the three basic search engine concepts in layman’s terms. Let’s get started.

1. Relevance

This is the essential first concern that a search engine must address when examining any web page. What is the story about? Search engines need to know this as it helps them respond to search queries by the users with relevant pages.

A variety of cues can be used to evaluate the usefulness of a given web page. Some examples are:

• The web page’s title tag
• Content semantic analysis
• Anchor text used in links to the web page
• The topic of third-party web pages that contain links to the page
• The topic of third-party web pages that contain links to the page
• The topic of the site on which the page sits
• How users react to the content in search engine results pages

2. Importance

Search engines also attempt to determine the importance of each page relevant to a specific search query. This is how they determine which pages should be ranked first, second, and so on.

Inbound links have historically been the primary driver of this factor. Many people believe that social signals play a significant role in this, but that may not be always true.

Most SEO experts will vouch for the belief that links will continue to be the main factor of importance calculations.

3. Popularity

For some queries, popularity is more interesting to determine than importance. For example, a search query like [hottest movies] indicates a clear desire for something that is the most popular.

For trending topics such as breaking news, popularity can also be a powerful factor. This is an area where social media signals may be important, as many social shares of a particular news article may be picked up on and used by search engines.

User SERP behaviour, like relevance, can be a strong indicator. A search engine might try ranking news articles in a specific order and then adjust that order based on user click patterns.

Why is SEO important

In the simplest terms, good SEO increases your online visibility. This simply implies that as more users visit your website, your online traffic increases, and you have a better chance of reaching a larger number of people. Let’s take a look at why is SEO so important.

1. Build customer trust

SEO and user experience (UX) complement each other. Your website’s user experience refers to how visitors communicate with it.

SEO benefits your business by organically building trust. When your consumers enjoy a positive experience with your website, you get more clicks, which increases traffic and, as a result, your SEO.

As this happens naturally over time, your position on search engine result pages (SERPs) will move closer and closer to the top ten spots.

2. Attract clients with greater visibility

Attracting visibility organically means that your website appears as a result of what your customers searched for.

Customers can find you based on their requirements, and this is where keywords come into play. Customers become more engaged when they perceive you as someone who can meet their needs.

However, engagement cannot begin until they know you exist. The significance of SEO is that it makes potential leads aware of you, implying that the engagement process can begin.

Pros of organic search

• It is completely free
• Gives outstanding Return on Investment (ROI)
• Help companies maximise their benefits by maintaining and expanding their SEO strategy
• Boosting credibility
• Attracts relevant users
• Assists with a variety of alternative marketing channels, such as social, paid, email, video, and others

Cons of organic search

• Require regular upkeep
• Takes time to produce results
• Competes for real estate on search engines, so having an SEO background and skills is necessary

Pros of paid search

• Gives results immediately
• Provides keyword information for SEO
• Gives excellent return on investment (ROI)
• Provides keyword information for SEO
• Gives in-depth ad campaign data including, keywords, time spent on the page, demographics, and more
• Assist with a range of diverse marketing channels, such as social, email, paid, video, and others
• Suitable for all budgets

Cons of paid search

• It requires ongoing upkeep.
• Comes with initial expenses
• Gives short-term results
• Experience and knowledge of PPC are necessary

Organic search vs paid search

Also Read: Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing: All You Need To Know

Types of SEO

There are primarily three types of SEO, and in this section, you’ll learn about each type along with the guidelines governing them.

1. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is exactly as it sounds: technical parameters that influence a website’s visibility in search engines.

The primary goal of technical SEO is to guarantee that search engine crawlers can easily crawl and index a website.

Some important technical SEO guidelines:

• Check and optimise your robots.txt to ensure that search engines can access your website correctly.
• Add your website to Google Search Console and verify it, as well as specify your preferred domain.
• To locate and correct crawl errors, use the COVERAGE report.
• Make an XML Sitemap and submit it to all of the major search engines.
• Improve the structure of your website and its URLs.
• Use SEO-friendly web design.
• Make websites that load quickly on desktop as well as mobile devices.

2. On-page SEO

On-page SEO is directly involved with the web page itself and focuses on how to improve its usability and search engine visibility.

It should be noted that, while search engines examine the entire website, ranking is done on a page-by-page basis.

That is why it is critical to focus on optimising every page on your website.

Some important on-page SEO guidelines:

Optimise your page titles: This is an important SEO factor. Page titles are displayed in search results and should entice users to click.

Optimise your H1 Tag: While the page title is displayed in the SERPS, the H1 tag is displayed as the page’s top heading.

Optimise your headings: Aside from the H1 tag, a page must have subheadings (H2, H3) for each section.

Image search engine optimisation: Any images used on a page should be properly optimised, or else search engines will be unable to understand what they represent.

Format your web page: It is not a good SEO practise to publish a page with text and images without taking the time to beautify the content.

3. Off-page SEO

Promotion is the focus of off-page SEO. O ff-page SEO is concerned with techniques for promoting your website on the Internet.

Popular websites are more likely to rank higher on search engines compared to less popular websites.

Some important off-page SEO guidelines:

• Building links: The process of obtaining SEO backlinks from other websites is known as link building.

These backlinks act as ‘votes of trust,’ increasing the authority of the target website (provided the link does not contain the nofollow attribute).

• Brand promotion: Because people trust well-known brands, search engines prefer to rank them high in search results.

Aside from promoting your website to obtain backlinks, you must also promote your brand and encourage discussions about it on various social media networks and forums.

How do search engines work

Search engines perform three main functions:

• Crawling: Searching the Internet for content by inspecting the code/content of each URL found.
• Indexing: It is the process of storing and organising the content discovered during the crawling process.

When a page is added to the index, it is eligible to be featured as a result of relevant queries.

• Ranking: Provide the content that best answers a searcher’s query, which means that results are ordered from most relevant to least relevant.

SEO best practices

• Make your website’s structure clear, user-friendly, and up to date
• Include one primary keyword in the URL of a page
• In URLs, use underscores (_) and hyphens (-)
• Instead of a dynamic URL, use a static one
• Keep URL addresses short, descriptive, and relevant
• Make a distinct title tag for each web page of your website
• Use meta-description to improve the presentation of your brand
• Remember to include ALT attributes for all images
• Look for keywords that will work for you
• Combine various types of keywords at the same time
• Remember to include a location in your keywords
• Use keywords in your headlines, subheadings, and anchor text
• Place keywords naturally all across your on-page content
• When optimising a web page, aim to concentrate on one keyword
• All images should be keyword optimised
• Monitor the performance of all your keywords as soon as you begin SEO
• Only publish high-quality, fresh, and keyword-rich content
• Pay close attention to spelling and grammar
• Only publish high-quality, fresh, and keyword-rich content
• Develop content that will be appealing to your intended audience
• Prepare your content strategy thoroughly
• Make easy-to-read content
• Create a strong backlink profile for your website
• When actively seeking links, only seek out high-quality ones
• Don’t spend money on sponsored links
• Connect to other high-quality websites
• Earn links by assisting others
• Create content that people want to link to
• Establish good relationships with websites in your niche
• Make a social media presence for yourself
• Look for opportunities for guest blogging exchanges but don’t overdo it

On a concluding note

SEO can help your website rank higher in search results, resulting in more traffic; however, ranking and traffic are only a means to an end. There is little point in ranking if no one clicks through to your site, and there is little point in increasing traffic if that traffic isn’t achieving a larger business goal.

For example, if you operate a lead generation website, which would you prefer:

• 1,000 monthly visitors but only 3 contact form submissions?

Or

• 300 monthly visitors but 40 contact form submissions?

We hope you choose the latter if you’re using SEO to drive more traffic for conversions! Before you begin SEO, make sure you’ve defined your business goals, and then use SEO to help you achieve them and not the other way around.

SEO achieves much more than just quantifiable metrics. When done correctly, it assists real businesses in achieving real success goals.

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