If you want to learn or are into Digital Marketing this is not the first time you are hearing the acronym SEO – Search Engine Optimization. Here’s an SEO tutorial for beginners in which, I will help you with the fundamentals to be an SEO Expert and nail your Digital marketing effort successfully.

Let’s start with the basics:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

According to one of the Forbes Top 10 Digital Marketers Neil Patel,“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword.”

Image from: Wix

Get it? Lemme make it simpler,

You may consider, Google as a librarian, websites as books and the internet as a library. Google analyses all websites very closely and knows what they contain. Whenever a visitor asks for a specific query, Google recommends the most relevant website. It also presents other options as well, according to the relevance.

You must have seen more than a billion of search results for a single keyword search query on Google, those pages just don’t end. Around 97% of users just click on first 3 search results and 91% of them specifically on the 1st result only. Google ranks them according to their trust factors.
Each day, thousands of pages/contents are created.

What makes the popular ones stand out?

Most of the internet users make a search query before deciding to make a purchase. Ranking on the first page of the Google search makes a huge difference in revenue, but how to do it?

Google changes its Search Ranking algorithm regularly. However, there are some basic factors which decide the page rank on the Google search results.

 

The most important SEO ranking factors are:

• Content:

  I write this everywhere, ‘Content is the King’. As a good librarian Google rate websites for unique content, creating more relevant and interesting content will make your website rank higher. Google bots (Crawlers) scan every word of the website literature.

  Posting at constant intervals and the presence of useful information makes the trust factor stronger.

  Detailed content which covers everything gets rated higher. Now, you know why Wikipedia articles are placed on top!

 

• Backlinks:

  Google considers links as a trust factor. The number of links directing to your websites makes an impact on your ranking. The incoming links have a quality factor too. A few links from high trusted domains like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn make your website more trusted than other sites having many inbound links from low domain authority sites.

  Here the quality matters over the quantity.

  Link Building is a strategy to link the social media and other channels to your Web Page. Optimize your content according to the platform and then Link it back to your landing Page.

   

  

  Image from: 7boats

• Mobile-friendly:

  Since 2016, the number of Mobile Internet Users has exceeded the number of Desktop Internet User. Therefore, Google has been promoting mobile friendly websites. So if your website is optimized according to the mobile browsers. You’ll rank better than others.

  Google is taking care of the mobile users to increase the internet accessibility.

• Technical Aspects:

  Technical factors like Encryption (Google bots mark the HTTP as unsafe and prefer HTTPS over it), Using Relevant Images, Header Tags (use of proper Keywords in h1 and h2 tags of the source code) also play a huge role in deciding SEO ranking.

  You’ll have to be on the same page with the tech team to increase the page visibility across the internet.

Search Engine Journal writes, “SEO is an ever-evolving industry. In the past few years, we’ve seen Google make a steady push for rich content, quality links, and a perfect mobile experience. Other ranking factors are certainly important and will play a role in your rankings, but if you prioritize improving elements of your website related to these factors, then you’ll come out ahead of the competition.”

Read: Reasons why Digital Marketing is the Present and Future ‘Big Thing’.

 

These were the factors affecting SEO, let’s see the steps we can proceed with:

1. Keyword Research:

   Every time you want to look for something one the world wide web you need to enter (maybe speak) some keyword – words or phrases related to things you are looking out. You have to research about keywords users would use to search your product.

   Content around a relevant set of keyword for your product/ website is the most important factor of SEO.

   Various tools like Google Keyword Planner, KWFinder, Moz’s Keyword Explorer can be handy for you. I prefer Google Keyword Planner, see the screenshot:

2. Good Content:

   After you have the keywords, you should create content around those keywords. Include those keywords into the website literature or title of the blog/ article you have written. Use them to describe your product. Most importantly, writing good content helps you stand out of the crowd.

   A content which covers all the aspect of the product you deal in is your website’s SEO wizard.

3. Structured Website:

   A well-layered website which has contents categorically divide is not only important for SEO improvement but also for a good User Experience. Your website will not be a mess if you’ve divided your web pages into different categories and subcategories.

   Image from Moz

4. User Experience:

   How many time have you visited some website and just loved the experience? Have you visited Airbnb? I love them, isn’t it flawless and easy to use? UX also helps a website rank higher in search engines and also helps your visitors to have an awesome experience and remember your website.

Effective practices for improving SEO can be categorized among two parts:

1. On Page SEO: It refers to the practices of improving SEO by optimizing web pages by altering content and HTML source code.
2. Off Page SEO: It refers to the ways which help in SEO ranking outside the website’s limits.

Let’s have a quick look on both of them:

• On Page SEO:

  • Blog Post Title: Make sure your Blog title has the keyword you want to rank for.
  • Permalink Structure: Structure your URL properly make sure they don’t look ugly.
  • Tags: Optimize your header

    tags by adding your keywords.

  • Word Count: A detailed post of around 1,000 words is good for SEO.
  • Keyword Density: It’s ideal to have a keyword density of 1.5% (number of times the keyword appears in the post, at least once in first 100 words)
  • Speed: Your site load time also affects SEO, the faster the better.
  • Posting Engaging Content: Post related Images, videos etc. If you can engage your users it increases the time they spend on the web page and this give Google a signal that visitors like your website.
  • Links: Post External Links (Search Engines get a signal that your information can be trusted if you give references to other sites) and Internal links (to engage users on your website and make them spend time).
  • Social Sharing Options: Ask your visitors to share your content on social networking site among their connections this will not only help increase your reach but also help your SEO ranking.

• Off Page SEO:

  • Brand Image: Your Brand Image plays a huge role in making people search for you and looking out for you.
  • Customer Service: If you engage with the prospect and customers and provide them an excellent support they will act as your ‘goodwill’ ambassador.
  • Web Presence: Reach to your prospects on different web platforms. It’ll help you increase your trust factor. It’ll also give you back links which help in SEO boost.
  • Social Media Engagements: Along with the active social media presence, engage with your audience in comments etc. You can build a community and keep on engaging with them taking real time feedback and reviews.
  • Finding Influencers: Find influencers (someone who’s trusted in your niche market) and try to impress them to tweet/ share about your product. It’ll give you an instant traffic and help you in building trust.
  • Engaging in Forums: There are various forums and directories where people are talking about the market related to your product you can engage there and talk about the product.
  • Adding Value to others’ Blogs: There’s something called ‘Blog commenting’ where you comment on others’ blog related to your product and add value to that blog and share knowledge and drop your web link (which again gives you a backlink).
  • Experimenting With Content: Try out different things see what works best for you, different platform some product can perform better on YouTube others on Facebook. Try it and Find out.

 

Apart from all the tactics, SEO ranking also depends on some aspects.

The time visitors spend on your website/webpage (dwell time), the longer the better. This sends Google a signal that visitors like your site. So, try to create engaging content and images. Promotion is an important part of SEO ranking. It helps to create backlinks and to reach the audience.

It gives a boost to the SEO when people share your content while increasing the visibility.

Regular use and observation of Google Analytics and other Analysis web apps will help you to keep a track of visitors and you may improve according to it.

Conclusion:

So, this was a detailed tutorial on best practice Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for beginners.

We discussed the important factors of SEO rankings. We also read the steps we can take to proceed SEO building process. The importance of  Keyword Analysis, creation a good Content and structuring the website were discussed. Along with all these, we saw the Effective practices which should be kept in consideration while working on Search Engine Optimization.

The golden rule is to:

‘As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself. Just Do It!’