The Ultimate Beginners Guide to SEO

The Ultimate Beginners Guide to SEO for Google

Want to learn how to do SEO? As a beginner looking for that ultimate introductory guide, you have come to the right place.

But before we get into this guide you need to keep one thing in mind: you are only going to get out of SEO what you decide to put in. If you are not willing to continuously learn and implement what you have been taught by what you read, then you could well find that your outcomes fall well below your expectations.

So, now that you know that SEO takes a certain amount of commitment and you are ready to learn more about this fantastic world, let’s jump in.

In this guide, you will learn what you need to know in order to perfectly SEO a website so that it starts ranking on a search engine.

Keeping in mind that all SEO practices will take a certain amount of time to get going, depending on the keywords you wish to rank for, it could take anything from a few weeks to a few months to start seeing the results you are looking for.

To make this guide as useful as possible, we will include explanations for SEO terms, teach you how to search for keywords, and let you in on the other must-know information that you will be able to use to rank your website.

Search Engine Optimisation is completely unlike all types of marketing.

And not just because it is a digital way to advertise.

While traditional advertising has basically been the same since its inception, at least the principles remain the same, SEO is a completely new ballgame.

Since there is no Google guide to SEO, as Google will never tell users how they actually rank websites on search engines, a big part of SEO is guesswork and practice. This also means that SEO is continuously changing and growing as new, effective techniques and practices come to light.

When you are learning how to do SEO, you need to make sure that you are committed to always improving your knowledge so that you don’t fall behind on the latest information.

How important is SEO?

It is strange that we still have to have this debate in 2021, but seeing as SEO is still not quite the mainstream marketing technique, SEO practitioners are often finding themselves in the tricky position of having to explain why SEO is one of the most important marketing tools you could possibly have at your disposal, whether you are a company owner or an artist wanting to be seen.

The vast majority of online traffic comes from Google. This is why when people tell their friends to look up something online, they will tell them to Google it!

When you take into consideration just how much research is done online, when it comes to sourcing products and services, you will be able to see why SEO, a method used to improve online visibility, is so important.

Without SEO, you have absolutely no visibility. It’s not a matter of having some visibility, it’s a matter of having none at all, because with the immense amount of online competition, and the sheer number of websites displayed and being added to the web each day, it is almost a certainty that you are going to be lost in the noise if you don’t take SEO seriously.

The Basics

Even though SEO is constantly changing, there are certain aspects that will stay the same. As long as you get the hang of the basics of SEO, you will be able to effectively optimise the website and start benefitting from the work that you have put in.

For beginners, the basics of SEO are very simple and incredibly easy to understand, even if this is really all quite new to you.

To break it down, these are the 7 important principles upon which SEO functions and which you will need to get to grips with:

1. Search engines must be able to crawl your website and actually read its contents.
2. All of the content you include on your website needs to be compelling, informative, and written for human consumption.
3. You need to include keywords that are able to attract search engine users and search engines alike.
4. The overall user experience needs to be just right for website users. This means the site must load fast and be really easy to navigate.
5. The content that you create (or have created for you) needs to be share-worthy so that it generates both clicks and links back to it.
6. Your website URL, page titles, and meta descriptions shouldn’t just be used for SEO purposes, it should also be used to generate attention and clicks.
7. Google snippets really work.

Getting Your Website Set-Up

When you are setting up your website to be SEO friendly, you need to keep all 7 principles in mind while you work on getting your website ready. You also need to consistently update your site, keeping up with the latest trends, and making sure that your content is on point.

Every website on the net, whether you like it or not, is being indexed and ranked by Google. But being ranked is an automatic process and it does not determine whether or not your website wins the ranking race to the number one spot.

Implementing SEO, since it is an ongoing kind of thing, means that once you have started the process of optimising your site, you can absolutely take the online lead.

To get the best possible outcome, there are some things that you can do to make sure that your website is set up properly so that when you start implementing all of the other little tweaks, your site gets a running start.

In order to do this, you will need to:

1. Make sure that you have a good domain

In the past, the domain name would have been a huge factor influencing SEO. While it is certainly still something that can have an effect on the site’s ranking, if you already have a domain registered, you don’t have to go into a flat spin just yet. Just three things can make a good domain, and those three things are

• Your business name, as your website is going to be a big part of your brand identity.
• A lack of hyphens, Google does not like hyphens.
• Short, memorable, and to the point.

You can also think about using a domain name that includes your main keyword but doesn’t alter the entire site address in order to incorporate a keyword, as it can end up looking unnatural, and it could also confuse your clients, especially since your domain name is going to be used in your email address.

2. Make use of a good Content Management System

A content management system is basically what you will be building on, and you get free platforms and paid-for ones.

Paid for platforms are often the preferred type since they will give you more security, more flexibility and they are going to look a whole lot more professional. Paid for platforms are also faster when it comes to loading, something that definitely has a huge effect on your SEO.

The best platform you can use is WordPress. Although the platform can be used for free, since you will be using your own domain name, you are in essence paying for the platform via your hosting. WordPress is the preferred platform for SEO because it is used by almost all web themes which allow it to be fully customised.

3. Web hosting

Not all web hosting is the same. Web hosts are those companies responsible for storing your website, on a hard drive, and who ensure that your website can be seen by those looking for you.

When you are choosing a good host for a website that you are going to be optimising for SEO, you are going to need to make sure that the host you choose can offer:

• The best kind of host is the one that will provide you with an SSL (security) certificate as a part of their hosting package.
• Servers are located in a specific place in the world. This means that the further away the host is, the more data and time it will take for the data to travel between the server and the website visitor. The longer it takes, the slower the site can be. While slower site speed might be a worry, the server location shouldn’t be a massive worry as you can always set up a content delivery system to speed things up.
• When your website is ranking well, every moment you are offline is a waste of money. Ideally, you will want to make sure that you have 24/7 support so you are never stuck in a difficult spot.

4. User Experience

This comes down to design and safety. Google is, not so surprisingly, all about the user experience. The search engine, when ranking sites, doesn’t care as much about the technical side of things, so long as the technical contributes to the overall user experience.

You should always make sure that you build your website to suit the user and in some way benefit them. Some tips for improving the user experience include:

• An appealing design. People are visual creatures and by choosing a design that is really nice to look at, users will be happier to stay longer on the site. When you choose the best possible website design, you won’t be reworking the design every couple of months.
• Mobile friendly. As more and more people access the web using their mobile devices, you need to make sure that your website can adapt to a mobile interface.
• Choose a good font. An easy-to-read font is definitely a winner when it comes to creating a user-friendly website. Now is not the time to be creative with your fonts because if users are not able to read when it is that you have written, they will click away from your website.
• Don’t use pop-up ads. Pop-up ads are intrusive and they are often enough to chase visitors away. If you can’t avoid using them, then make sure that you are following Google’s guidelines.

5. Think Structure

The way in which your website is laid out, i.e. the way the menu and pages are set up, is a huge SEO and user usability factor. When you have the structure of the site set up the right way, your site will allow people to easily navigate it.

The easiest way to do this would be to create a mind map, starting with the home page at the top, filtering down to the main pages, and then to the subpages beneath.

The way that you structure the layout of the pages is important, because:

• It allows the search engine to easily find even the most difficult pages.
• It assists PageRank, which is Google’s ranking algorithm.
• It allows the search engine to have a better understanding of what your page is all about.

6. Logical URL

URLs are important for both users and search engines. And what’s great is that every URL can be customised, if you are using a platform like WordPress. Although the web platform will often choose your URL for you, based on the title of your page, if you are customising your URLs make sure that you keep them as simple and logical as possible, and try to stick to just using words.

7. Choose a good SEO plugin

There are all sorts of plugins used specifically to help you rank your website. The best plugin, which is also the most popular, is called Yoast. This plugin is absolutely amazing, and it is more than able to take care of all of your basic SEO needs by allowing you to implement the latest best practices. The plugin is available for free and can be installed via the plugins section which can be found on the backend of your website.

1. Keyword Research

It is not research in the sense that you might be fearing. You don’t have to study the web and read every website that is similar to yours.

Choosing keywords means finding the words that you are going to rank your website for. You can rank your website for as many keywords as you like, but you will want to have only one or two main keywords per page and you will want to make sure that you have chosen the right keyword.

What is the right keyword? It is the one that is getting loads of searches each day and is not all that difficult to rank for, which means it has low competition.

Google makes keyword research incredibly easy.

With a handy keyword research tool, known as Google Keyword Planner, anyone with a Google address can access this tool. When you log into the tool, you can type in suggestions and then see what Google suggests.

Once you have a list of suggestions, you will need to see if the keywords you are eyeing have potential. You can determine this by checking how many monthly searches the keyword gets. Those with a high amount of searches are being looked for the most by users and as such can be valuable to your website.

But having what appears to be the right keywords is often not enough because although those keywords might have high search rates, they could be very difficult to rank for which means you’ll have to put in a lot more effort to have them bringing you the leads you want.

2. On-Page SEO

When the search for the perfect keywords is out of the way, your next step is going to be placing the keywords on your website using a method called on-page SEO. On the surface, on-page SEO can look a little intimidating, but in reality, it is so much easier than you think.

Content

To start with, you will need to be sure that your keywords match your page intent.

Rewinding a bit, each page should have an intention. It could be that you want the page to give people more information about something or it could display products that you want people to buy through your website.

Matching the intent is so important because if you get it wrong, not only do you ruin your chance of making a good impression, but you will also miss out on the opportunity to rank. Make sure that the keyword you are ranking for matches what you have displayed on your page.

So if you are ranking for “wedding dresses Johannesburg” and your intention is to sell, your page should have sales content as well as a selection of wedding dresses.

At this point, you will need to check the content (or add content to the site). Insert keywords in the most natural way possible and then move onto the next step, which is looking at the URL of the page.

URLs

Each URL should be quite descriptive. And to make it as descriptive as possible, you can add your page’s keyword to it. You can also try to keep your URL rather short. When it is too long, the meaning can get lost and Google could have a hard time figuring out what it is that you want to say.

Title Tag

Your title tag is the link that you see on the search engine. And it is both a great tool for SEO as well as a wonderful tool for marketing.

When written well, it can really be used to entice the web user to click on your website and pay you a visit. Just like your content, you need to make sure that you have aligned whatever you wish to write in your title tag, with your search intent. You can also include your keyword somewhere in the title, so long as it is promoting your intent.

Images

Every image you have displayed on your website can be optimised in some way.

Image optimisation can be done by editing the image as it is on your page, by clicking the edit option, and then writing a short, descriptive sentence to place in your alt tag and your image name. You should also compress the image. Large images are able to slow down websites which is just bad for SEO.

Not only does this help your website to rank on a search engine, but it will also help in a Google image search. This is particularly important if you have a web store because people will often look at Google images to get an idea about what they want.

3. Link Building

Congratulations!

At this point, your website should be sufficiently optimised to start ranking. But before you pop the cork, there is still something that you can do and should do, to not only give your website the boosts it needs but which can also be used every other day, as a way to keep your SEO alive.

Link building is quite easy, once you get the hang of it. It is basically a practice used to get your website link shared far and wide on the web, which in turn slowly but surely gets your website into the perfect position on a Google search page.

This practice can be done in a number of ways with the most common being listing the website on a listings directory, and guest blogging. You can also take it one step further by finding a big, informative article online, the type that relates to what it is that you do or sell, and then rewriting it to include even more content, which, in turn, will have people linking to your content instead of someone else’s.

SEO is a fascinating and fast-paced world, and once you join the rollercoaster, you will quickly find your feet and have your website ranking on Google’s top spots. Just keep learning!