SEO Guide: How to Move up the Rankings Fast as a Beginner
It can be overwhelming to create content, publish, search for it on search engines and not find it on the top pages. As a webmaster, creating content that appears on the first page of search results is a goal you should aim to achieve.
Where do you get started?
First, you need to learn the basics. Understand the various terms and factors used in ranking pages. This article on SEO guide on google for beginners highlights everything you need to know to get started.
Let’s dive in
Table of Contents
What is SEO or search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is improving a website ranking in the results shown by web browsers such as Google, Bing, and Yandex. It is trying to make your website appear on the first page of search results on search engines.
Advantages of Search Engine Optimization
Improving your rankings in search results through SEO has the potential for helping your organization achieve your goals by acquiring leads and sales. Some advantages of SEO are:
- SEO helps build reputation and relationships
- SEO increases targeted traffic
- SEO drives more traffic than pay per click
- SEO is cheaper than paid adverts
- SEO helps an organization move ahead of its competitors through increased online presence. This increases brand awareness and credibility.
What is search intent?
Search intent is the motive behind the search query. This is the purpose why someone conducts research. For example, is the searcher looking for a particular website? Does he want to buy anything? The search intent forms the basis of the buyer’s journey.
There are 3 main types of search intent
- Informational intent
People looking for particular information do this. This can be on anything. For example, “what is SEO” fits in the informational intent search query.
- Navigational intent
here, people are looking for a specific website. For example, people who search for twitter are on their way to the Twitter website.
- Transactional intent
With online shopping increasing massively over the last few years, it’s easy to find the best things to buy. People are looking to buy whatever they are searching for.
As you start your SEO journey, it important to understand what are keywords and their intent to target keywords that you can easily rank. These are keywords with low competition.
SEO example
Let’s say I provide SEO services in New York. If a person searches “SEO services New York” in google and my website appears on the second page of the search results, then ill need to optimize my website to move up in positions and appear on the top page. My website can also be optimized to appear as the first result in the organic rankings.
While Google wants to give more importance to natural web positioning such as voice, that doesn’t mean google ignores the basic and technical aspects of Seo that are covered in this article.
What is a keyword?
A keyword is a term used to refer to words or phrases used to perform a search in search engines or search bars. Keywords are very essential in any copy written for the web
There are three main types of keywords
- Generic keywords- these are unspecified keywords that get searched for. For example, keywords such as “home equipment” and “badminton shoes” can be considered a generic term. Generic keywords are highly competitive and hence should be avoided when developing organic search strategies.
- Broad match keywords – they form the core of any SEO strategy. For example, “blue badminton shoes” is more engaging than generic keywords. If well optimized, broad match keywords provide good traffic with less competition.
- Long-tail keywords– these are the sentences that get typed in google. For example, “how to sign up for GetResponse email marketing”. Long-tail keywords drive little traffic but have little or no competition.
What is On-Page Optimization?
On-page SEO is the optimization that can be performed directly on the pages of the website that is trying to improve is in search engine rankings. that is, everything you can alter on your website or blog to appear on google search results. This can include whatever you do on your content, title tags, and meta tags to improve rankings.
What is Off-Page Optimization?
Off-Page SEO is the optimization that is tried to be done from outside your site to improve on the search engine result pages (SERP). Off-page SEO tells search engines what others think about your website.
How can I optimize my website or blog?
Straight to business. There are many things to always remember when improving your web positioning, but I want to make clear to you some details that search engines consider and which are basic but very important:
- Search engines check how your website functions. Logical, right? This is affected by the web hosting you choose to use hence choose a web host with SEO in mind. One of the best web hosting service providers is Bluehost.
- Responsive on mobile phones and tablets. With a majority of searches occurring on mobile phones, Google has moved to include this as a factor in SERP rankings hence you need to pay close attention to mobile user’s experience.
- The loading speed of your website: search engines love websites that load faster. Google considers A site loading under four seconds fast. If using WordPress, the number of plugins installed affects the speed drastically. The higher the number of plugins, the slower the loading speed. In addition, the size of each page will also affect the speed.
- Search engines love fresh, quality, and unique content. The type of content that easily gets shared or goes viral hence increasing visitors. This way, Google understands your content better hence improve rankings.
- Site architecture. search engines are interested in knowing if users have found what they were looking for. The navigation through the website makes users happy and hence google too. Furthermore, some basic factors can easily be ignored when optimizing your website. But these factors are the fundamentals of search engine optimization on your website.
Other important details
To wind up, below are 6 simple details that are as important as the previous ones if you are interested in optimizing your website for google:
- Use images and embed videos: images improve your web positioning and attract many more visits to your website. Using targeted keywords as names of images and the alternative text is essential. The size of the images should also be reduced to improve the loading speed of the website. Furthermore, they increase visitor engagement, hence the time spent on a page.
- Write unique and quality content: Google loves that the content is fresh, useful, original, and, if possible, complete and well designed to improve user experience.
- Make your website mobile responsive: this can be achieved by choosing an excellent design that attracts visitors, allows them to view your website from all devices, and makes browsing your website easier. This will improve the user experience and he can stay for longer.
- Promote your content: share your pages and articles on social networks. This can be on Facebook groups, Twitter profiles, LinkedIn articles, and Quora spaces. You can also run paid ads on Google, Facebook, Quora, Linked In, etc. finally, create an email list of subscribers and take part in communities and forums related to your website, etc. Make them know you!
- Internal linking: link to related content within your website. This lowers the bounce rate if visitors are clicking through to other pages on your website. In addition, internal links spread the link juice from ranking pages to other pages on your website, hence help build authority from within.
- Audit your content: carrying out an SEO audit for content is important. This is because you can realize what is performing well and what is not. This can be done after every 4-6 months to work on what needs improving. For example, you can use internal links, increase the content on a page, or add images and videos to non-performing content.
Bottom of it
All in all, when you get used to writing articles and blog posts using the above details, you will see drastic results in search engine rankings for the keywords you are aiming to rank for. Forget those myths about SEO and focus on the above. But remember that SEO takes time.
If all this feels overwhelming, you can hire an SEO auditor to do it for you.
Let me know what your SEO tactics are as a beginner. Don’t forget to share.
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