SEO for beginners guide to rank in search better

SEO for beginners is the first step you need to do before you start a great content strategy.

Your business can be promoted via social media channels or search engines.

Search engines, notably Google, clearly have a monopoly as other search engines are there, but Google is dominating eighty percent of the market. 

After all, Google performs more than 3.5 billion searches each day. And there’s not just the number of users, but the type of searches they made. You’ll find answers to your questions on Google.

For SEO analysts to survive in the online world, every business must make proper search engine optimization. That is why we have developed this guide so that beginners can learn how to perform search engine optimization in better ways.

In SEO practices, there three main categories, including on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. We will discuss all three of them in this guide. But first, you should learn how search engines function before you get to implement SEO practices. This will get and SEO beginners started.

The working mechanism of search engines SEO for Beginners

Search engines are databases that provide answers to a question that the users search for. They do not answer each question, so they look for other sites that can provide a helpful response and present it to the customer. 

Google, Yahoo, and Bing are some of the most significant search engines globally, whereas Google takes the lead. They have trillions of traffic without any direct visitors.

Any blogger indexes the site to a search engine to view the results of a search on their website. Yet dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other sites want their findings to be shown for the same queries. Search engines search the results from tall of those sites and chronologically display the best results.

When you search for the “blue jeans” keyword in Google, it will throw the hundreds of pages listed with several websites with blue jeans keyword in them. You can see the total number of results Google gathered below the search bar. It would be in millions.

Therefore, to beat this rivalry, you need to get to the first place in search engine result pages SERPs.

Google uses over two hundred factors to determine these results, according to research conducted by experts. Backlinks are the best of these considerations, which is why digital marketers procure services from a link building company.

The first result of a search enjoys traffic of about thirty-three percent. The second and third results enjoy fifteen and nine percent of traffic, respectively. Many people don’t mind going through search results on the second page.

There are also featured snippets, knowledge graphs, knowledge cards, and many more SERP features that can get more traffic to your website. This is an essential part for SEO and beginners.

White hat SEO vs. Black hat SEO for Beginners

All search engines provide comprehensive guidelines. All practices that you should adopt and prevent include these guidelines. When you follow the recommended SEO practices by search engines, it is referred to as White Hat SEO. 

If you breach the search engine optimization rules to get traffic with shortcuts, it is called Black Hat SEO. 

Grey Hat SEO practices also exist that do not precisely follow these directives but are regarded as safe against penalties. 

When search engine algorithms detect that you follow wrong or forbidden practices, such as building unplanned and rapid links to increase your ranking, it significantly de-indexes your website or reduces your rank on SERPs.

Now that you know how search engines work and what you need to do with the recommended and restricted SEO practices, let’s jump into the search engine optimization guide for beginners.

Let’s dive into Technical SEO for Beginners

When you try to rank your website in a search engine, you start with the technical SEO. Technical SEO is also called on-site SEO since websites themselves are designed according to search engine specifications.

Any technical SEO practices allow the search engine to index, browse, and enhance the user interface on the website. Knowledge is essential for SEO jobs. To do the technical SEO of a website, follow the below steps:

Start using Webmaster tools

Use webmaster tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, etc. to manage and configure your website. These tools are offered by Google and are free of cost for technical SEO.

Site Structure and Navigation

The structure of the website should be designed to explain which material is significant for search engines. All group and subcategory pages should be on the homepage, and visitors should be able to access all pages quickly. SEO and beginners often struggle with this step.

Get SSL certificate

The “HTTP” converts to “HTTPS” with an SSL certificate. It indicates that your site is secure for users. Google makes it clear that sites with SSL certificates get priority in the ranking criteria.

The SSL certificate usually comes with the Domain through Registrar, but if it doesn’t, you can book the SSL for free on the sites like Lets Encrypt. 

Mobile-responsive site

More than 60% of Google searches are conducted on mobile devices. Google decides the rating of a website based on the mobile-friendliness score. Make your website mobile-responsive to get a higher ranking in SERPs.

Include breadcrumb list

Breadcrumb is a list of the internal connections that lead to the main page or the previous pages that the user has visited to get on the current page. Google has recommended this because it makes using the website convenient for users.

XML Sitemap Optimization

XML Sitemap is a file that contains all website pages. This also helps to grasp and index the page through search engines. Include relevant pages on the website to customize the XML sitemap.

The crawlers of Google use a sitemap to find the quality of the pages to index it in the search engine. 

Boost site loading speed

In three seconds, more than 47 percent of visitors leave your website if it doesn’t load. To understand problems and increase the loading speed at pages, using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Include schema markup

Add structured information code to your web pages to enable search engines to understand the content with its intended context. Beginners may find it difficult, but you should be aware of the schema markup, at least.

Robots.txt optimization

In the website root directory, you can find a text file named ‘Robot.’ It indicates the pages that search engines should crawl. It is set by default, but you must check that no pages are blocked in this file.

On-page SEO and SEO for Beginners

On-page SEO mainly deals with the website’s content because it is believed that content is still king. Users need content to get the answers to their questions.

When the content isn’t up to the mark, all your SEO attempts are pointless. This is what you have to do to automate your website content.

Research keywords and SEO for Beginners

Keywords are the questions that your target audience ask in search engine search bars. You must consider their needs and discover the most relevant keywords that can perform well. Use SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, or Google Trends to find low competitive and high performing keywords.

The tools mentioned above will let you know the statistics about the specific keyword, and this way, you can check the CPC, ranking difficulty, and similar data over these tools. 

Optimize your content

After you have got all your keywords, build content to answer those queries correctly. Use keywords and keyword synonyms systematically and follow these strategies in the content too.

• Use a grammar checker to remove grammatical mistakes from the content.
• Include keywords in the image name, captions, and description.
• Using links of specific sites to get traffic back to your site. It is called backlinking. Use a backlink tool to generate quality backlinks.
• Avoid publishing copied or plagiarized content on your website. It can harm your ranking use an authentic copyright detector to check the originality of your content.

Google monitors and uses the website’s success in engaging visitors as a rating metric on the website. So, you should write the content by keeping your audience in mind.

Write in a manner that is conveniently understandable by teenagers and kids. Your content should be more readable, and you can check the readability score of your content by using free tools. It will also ensure that the website traffic continues to increase, and the audience will revisit your site for your content.

Add Meta titles and description

The meta title is the one that is displayed on Google after a query is searched. It is essential because it helps the search engine recognize the relevance of the content’s title. 

The meta description summarizes the content that is displayed for giving the reference about the meta title. 

Add Image ALT text 

Images are also a ranking factor that increases the appearance of your site over the internet. This means that you should add more pictures to your content, but that must be relevant. 

To be unique, use free of copyright images that are available at different websites. Moreover, you should also add the Image ALT Text because it will help the search engine recognize the image’s introduction. 

URL Structure 

The URL of your article and page should be structured and according to the SEO guidelines. The Guidelines tell that the URL should have a short length while it should contain the article’s title with a slash between the words. 

It would be far better to use the keyword in the URL in the structure as it is a ranking factor for different search engines. Different tools are available online to make SEO friendly URL for your content. 

Off-page SEO

Off-page search engine optimization includes link building primarily. It typically begins with a strategy that involves using different anchor texts to obtain different types of backlinks from relevant platforms. To do off-page SEO, follow the below steps:

Guest posting

It is one of the easiest ways to receive a backlink that impacts the website’s ranking and benefits the company in several other ways. It is a hectic task to write helpful posts and submit an email to websites for posting your article.

The website with better authority asks for paid backlinks through guest posting, whereas some of the websites offer free guest posting for their site. 

Comments on forum

There are popular questioning forums like Reddit and Quora, where millions of users ask questions. Find your niche there and start commenting or answering with a backlink to your site. Paste the backlink of the page that contains the information about the topic.

Mention your brand

A brand mention means that mentioning your brand without a link. This strategy is a key component of off-page search engine optimization, which increases your market visibility and helps you become a brand.

Social bookmarking

A page’s social bookmarks are often used as backlinks and as a significant element. The social bookmarking sites can be used by an SEO analyst such as Reddit, Dribble, and Medium.

Submission of directory

Find and submit your website for specific directories in the niche. You get a backlink by directory submission, and it shows you are a legit company. Some directory companies charge for that purpose, and some are providing free of cost services. This is a great start SEO for beginners.

Social Media Marketing and SEO for Beginners

Social media marketing is although a separate section in the sense of marketing, but it is a part of Search Engine Optimization. Search Engines consider the sites for ranking with more references on social media because it has more engagement with internet users. 

This importance of social media marketing can estimate through the fact that most of the web developing platforms i.e., WordPress, ask for social accounts. Moreover, plugins like Yoast SEO require the social media linkage to work correctly to improve your site’s ranking. 

Conclusion on SEO for Beginners

So far, we have covered almost everything that a beginner should know before jumping into the vast world of search engine optimization. Follow these strategies and tips and practice them with patience and consistency to become an SEO expert. 

The above strategies are the best options to perform SEO of your site instead of hiring highly paid professionals. 

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