Did you start your blog or a business website but still reap no benefits from it? So here are SEO basics for beginners to take your traffic to the next level.
For the uninitiated, SEO or search engine optimization is a process by which the visibility and thereby success of a web page or website can be increased.
This has been used to make your company’s website as amenable to the internet search engine algorithms as possible.
While this seems intimidating and unclear, it is easy to make the best options on your hands with just a little bit of help and basic instructions.
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Why is SEO important or a worthy option?
Once you have a website, SEO should be your next step in your optimization game plan.
There is a growing market and need for SEO. It is also sometimes considered to be difficult to use or even not worth the effort.
This opinion, however, is largely subjective and can be easily negated because the basics of SEO are extremely simple.
With the help of SEO, you can get a lot of traffic on your website and optimize it to your benefit. You can directly get the traffic from Google; considering all the benefits, it is definitely worth the effort.
If you think your website is not doing well enough or can do better, SEO is the choice for you since most people have a basic understanding of it to help you immensely.
Wondering why it’s so important to rank higher in Google ranking?
The answer here is quite simple; through this organic search traffic, most sites attract people; the higher you are in the search results, the more easily you will be found by people.
What are the benefits of SEO?
A higher rank in the search results is the most important advantage of SEO, but the ranking is also the result you seek to achieve and not the means through which you can get them.
There are multiple other benefits of SEO related to the traffic that it can help attract. These are:
1. Leads to more traffic on your website
It is common practice for people to choose the first options they get when searching for anything using the google search engine.
This attracts most people to the first few websites more than others; people rarely get to the second page of results. This is true across the board, which is for most things, so optimizing your website across to search engines will boost traffic on your website.
2. The traffic is consistent and not shifts
Since your website is already optimized, the traffic that it attracts will be consistent until a newer, most efficient website comes up.
You do not update and optimize yours enough. That is to say, your website will remain attractive to most of the traffic if people keep coming back to it, and it remains at the top of the list.
3. This traffic is also obtained free of cost
The traffic gained through SEO is much cheaper than traffic through other means. These other means include items such as paid ads.
Ads are reported to be significantly more expensive than generating SEO content that helps increase the ranking of your website on google.
Step by Step SEO guide to boosting your Online Business
By now, you’re aware of the significance and ease of SEO. You know why and how it helps boost the website for your business. Now we must proceed to a step-by-step guide to making the best use of it.
Following are the necessary steps that you must follow for basic SEO:
1. Checking if you are on Google
It is most important to make sure your website is on google and available through a simple google search. To make sure you’re in the index, search for your website’s URL if you find your website in the results you’re on google.
Worry not, even if you’re not on google yet. While Google crawls billions of sites on the internet, it is possible that your site was missed due to some reason. The reasons may include,
- Your policy may not allow Google to crawl the site
- Your site may not be well connected to the internet
- Google detected an error upon an attempt on crawling
- Your site is relatively new, and Google hasn’t crawled it since
- The design of your site is a little complex which makes it difficult to crawl it
To make sure your site is on google, make sure all these errors or problems are done away with as soon as possible, and your website is visible on the internet; only then can its rankings rise.
2. Let Google find your content
Once you make sure that your site is visible on Google, you must ensure that your content is such that google can locate it and produce results when searches relate to your business.
The best way to get your site crawled is by submitting a sitemap that helps the search engines get it on search results. It also helps the search engine know about your pages and the changes made to them.
3. Make sure to tell Google which pages should not be crawled
Sometimes, you may have sensitive information on your website that you may not want to be crawled. For doing this, you will have to name “robot.txt,” which specifically tells search engines if a specific page has to be crawled or not.
Basic caveats include making sure that you don’t let your internal search pages be crawled by google.
4. You must help google understand your content
When the Googlebot that crawls pages and websites crawls your page, it should see it as an average user does.
The Googlebot should be able to access the JavaScript, CSS, and image files by your website so you can obtain the best indexing and optimal rendering.
For this, it is suggested that you use the URL inspection tool, which allows you to view your webpage as it will be visible to the Googlebot and how it renders your content. This will help you to identify the issues in your webpage and fix them.
5. It would help if you create good titles and snippets
Once your website is crawled and indexed, it will appear on search results. As a result, parts of your content, including a few lines from the content, maybe visible under the hyperlink.
You will thus have to ensure that catchy and relevant content is displayed on your homepage or title page. You should also make sure that the website’s title seems catchy, relevant, and communicative enough to interest more people.
You may also want to avoid choosing the same title for all pages and have unique titles; this also lets google know that each page is distinct.
For being visible on google search and all the secondary considerations, some primary things need to be dealt with to make optimization easier.
Basic SEO includes:
1. Keyword Research & Targeting
The foremost step when looking to engage more people with your work and website is to decide what you wish to optimize for.
This generally means looking for important words people are looking for – keywords or buzzwords.
While this sounds simple enough, there are a bunch of things that you must keep in mind when you determine keywords related to your business. These generally include:
The search volume – that is to say, the number of people looking for a specific word-gauge the significance of a word or topic and the traffic it could potentially bring to your site.
Gauge relevance – that is to say, after checking if the word is frequently used, you must also verify if the term is relevant to you specifically. While you may choose generic keywords that point to your business, you also need to make sure that you use specific relevant keywords to stand out from your competitors.
Keep an eye out for competition – In SEO, you must keep in mind the competition, because ultimately it is the success you have in mind. Thus, you must understand your relative competition especially terms that your competitors are using.
2. On-page Optimization
After you’re secure with your keyword list, you must start thinking of implementation. That is to say, each page of your site should have targeted keywords that lead people to them, employ your services, or buy your product.
Some of the common means to do the same is through the following:
- Relevant title tags to understand the meaning of your page
- Meta Descriptions to attract more people based on the concise information you provide for the pages
The body of the content also needs to have certain attributes, making it easy and fun to engage with instead of boring and tedious to read, making it easy for people to ignore.
This content has to unique and makes people think that you can provide data, products, or services that are not available elsewhere.
It should be relatable and sharable, so people engage with it extensively instead of reading and leaving. If you are ranked high or wish to rank high up in the list, you must make an effort to keep your content creatively fresh.
URL attributes are also significant in terms of accessibility to your website; thus, you shouldn’t choose a specifically embellished or peculiar URL. Choose something and do not change it unless you need to do it at some point for an emergent reason.
3. Internal Linking of pages and the architecture of Information on the Website
It is also important that your website has properly arranged pages etc., with proper arrangement of links to other pages. This impacts a user’s experience when browsing; a user-friendly interface will attract more people.
Additionally, search engines also check the content on pages, the links, and the text on the link to see if what is linked is legitimate information and needs to be linked where it is.
4. Content Marketing and building a network
The search engine algorithm is largely based on links and people sharing links or viewing webpages; it is important. It would help if you did this systematically.
You must first identify and understand you’re linking and sharing audience; you must gain some traction and be known to get into a network or build one.
Next, need to determine what type of content is created by you and what way you choose to promote it. Once this is done, you must highlight this and implement it rigorously.
Finally, you must map your assets and show them before anything else. This will help you show your strengths to people and tell them what you’re capable of doing.
5. Common Issue faced
There have been issues regarding SEO that people have been facing and complaining about in the recent past. While it remains one of the most efficient ways to build links and drive search engine results, it does come with its own set of faults.
User page speed, etc., was called into question, and newer forms of SEO are called into question.
However, what is known as traditional SEO is still extremely valuable. There are technical SEO issues that still prevent google and other search engines from ranking a site; there are proposed solutions to these.
The final words
Once you’ve started taking note of the growth and implementing the necessary steps for further growth, you need to keep the platform as it is and work to make it better once you have most of the basic information.
Everything is evolving with time, so will designs and styles, but you can adapt to change if you’re up to date.
While there is no guarantee that this is a foolproof plan throughout, this will help you make it high in search engine rankings.
Once you’re there, it is only consistent effort and perseverance that will leave you forward.
