In this article, you will find SEO basics and tips for beginners.
SEO can seem overwhelming for newcomers and those just starting out in digital marketing. But knowing some SEO tips for beginners can help you understand where to start.
Of all the components of digital marketing, search engine optimization, or SEO, is often the most confusing for beginners.
SEO is extremely important to your business, as it determines how your brand can be found online and how high you rank on search engine results pages.
Without an SEO strategy, it is unlikely that you will rank high enough in internet searches to be found by your target audience.
But with so many specific terms and advanced tactics, beginners who don't have a background in SEO can easily feel overwhelmed.
Fortunately, with a few simple actions, even beginners can improve their website ranking.
Read on to learn more about which SEO basics for beginners are best for your brand.
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9 Useful SEO Tips for Beginners
1- Detailed keyword research
The use of keywords is one of the primary ways that people find your pages on search engines.
Keywords are the particular words and phrases that are typed into the search bar to help find relevant pages.
All of your website pages, blogs, and even your social media posts should use keywords to help rank for those terms and appear higher on search engine results pages.
When searching for keywords, look for those that have a high search volume but low ranking difficulty.
You should also look for short-tail keywords of one or two words and long-tail keywords which are longer phrases that can be added to your pages.
This allows you to rank for more searches and have a better chance of being found online.
2- Develop long-form content
Long-form content is published writing that is between 1,000 and 7,500 words.
This longer content is more likely to rank for multiple keywords and address more than one relevant topic.
This can help your content get noticed by search engines and improve your brand authority in the eyes of search algorithms.
Long-form content includes items such as:
- E-books
- White papers
- Case studies
- Product guides
- Brochures
- Data sheets
3- Inform Google which pages should not be crawled
Crawling is an often-used term in SEO that beginners may not be familiar with.
When a search engine like Google "crawls" a page, it uses software called a web crawler to discover information about your web pages, such as links, content, and keywords.
This is how Google finds new and updated web pages and indexes them based on relevance, context, and value.
While crawling is important for your pages to be found and ranked, there may be pages you don't want search engines to look at.
These may be thank you pages, landing pages for advertising campaigns, internal policy or compliance pages, or even your own website's search results.
Adding a robots.txt file to these pages tells the crawler to avoid these pages.
4- Create content that is easy to digest
Creating content for your website and web pages should not only appeal to search engine algorithms. Your content must also have value to human readers.
First, it helps your content become more popular with audiences, and it also helps algorithms see the value in the content you produce because it resonates with your key audience segments.
When you create content, you need to make sure it's easy for your readers to digest.
This means it should be grammatically correct, with no spelling or grammatical errors.
It should also be written in a way that is accessible to all members of the audience, even those who are not experts in your industry.
You may want to avoid specialized industry terms that may alienate some audiences.
5- Create unique page titles
Your page title is an important SEO element that many brands don't understand the importance of.
Your title tells readers and search algorithms what the page is about and what type of content it contains.
Each page title you create should be unique and tailored to the page it is on.
Some brands and companies place the same generic page titles on multiple pages, which can confuse readers and search engine algorithms and hurt your site's chances of ranking.
You should strive to create a page structure where each page has a unique, informative, accurate, and easy-to-understand name.
6- Accurately describe the page content
The page title is the first step in accurately describing the content of a page, but there are also other elements that help readers and algorithms understand the content of each page on your website.
One of the things we've already discussed is the presence of keywords on the page. You certainly don't want your pages to be ranked for keywords that are completely not relevant to the topic in question.
Another important element in determining the content of a page is the meta title. This is an alternative title that is used at the back of the web page.
The meta description is another important element that can be used to create the uniqueness and individuality of your pages.
It is a brief description of a page, which often appears below the title in a search result link.
7- Utilize headings and formatting
The way you label and format your web pages is also important.
Each web page should only have one H1 title, which is the main title of your page. From
there, you can create sections and subheadings using the H2, H3, and H4 title tags.
This creates a system on your pages that is easily understood by both the audience and search engines.
You can also improve the formatting of your web pages by using bullets and numbered lists to break up information and create snippets.
You can also use small paragraphs and white space to create text that is easier to read than heavy, dense paragraphs of information.
8- Plan your homepage navigation and site hierarchy
Your site navigation and hierarchy are extremely important to the ranking of your web pages online.
As mentioned earlier, each page should have its own title and, therefore, its own URL. These unique URLs help create your website page listings and navigation.
Your URL structure helps search engine algorithms see which pages are related to others, which are most important in your structure, and which are subcategory pages.
Your website homepage navigation can be a great tool for establishing your site hierarchy.
It gives your readers and search engine algorithms an idea of your website structure, which pages are drop-down menus from the main pages, and how your website flow moves people from one page to the next.
9- Give readers what they want
SEO often gives brands the misconception that they should focus on the algorithms and not their audience. However, the opposite is true.
As search engine algorithms update and become more advanced, they pay more attention to the types of pages and content that interest readers and provide accurate and relevant information.
Website visitors want to be able to easily navigate your site, find the information they are looking for, and engage with your content.
By focusing on creating a website journey and customer experience that keeps readers coming back, your website rankings and domain authority with search engines like Google will follow.
This allows you to create a strong website with powerful and compelling SEO content that appeals to your audience and search engines.
SEO Basics for Beginners Summary
While SEO may seem overwhelming at first glance, just take a few SEO basics and tips for beginners and apply them to your brand to see a major improvement.
SEO is a long-term strategy that you need to work on constantly in order to get the best results, rise to the top of the search engine results pages and build your brand's online reputation.
