SEO 101: SEO Beginner’s Guide

SEO Beginner's Guide

In today’s world, everything is online, whether you want to order food online or want to do clothes shopping, everything is on the internet or specifically on a website. But how does a query result reach you? When you search for something and Google gets millions of answers for the same query which one is best for you how do you select this?

Let’s cover the scene behind the search results that appear on Google. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore what SEO is and how it works to stay in the best position on search engines like Google.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is all about making your website more popular in search engine results in an organic way meaning that without paying for ads. It involves doing certain things to appear and rank higher in the results list when someone uses a search engine.

SEO aims to increase the number and quality of visitors to your website by making changes to the site itself. It’s not just about filling pages with related words, but also about focusing on key things like how fast your site loads, how well it works on mobile devices, how interactive it is, and the quality of the content on your web pages.

Why is SEO important?

People are looking online for the services you offer. You can draw them in by appearing in search results for relevant words. But it’s not easy to appear in these results because others are trying to do the same. That’s why SEO is important. It helps convince Google that your website should be at the top of the list.

What are the benefits of SEO?

  • Improved user experience: SEO makes your website better for users by making it load quickly, look good, and be easy to get around.
  • Increased visibility: SEO can make your website easier to find, which can lead to more people buying your products or services.
  • Increased credibility: When a business shows up first in search results, people see it as a trusted source of information. This makes people trust the business more.
  • Organic search: Being on the first page of Google search results is important to get noticed by customers. Getting to the top spot can nearly double the number of people who click on your site compared to the second spot. And if you can get a Featured Snippet (a special box at the top of the page), you can even beat the top spot and possibly give customers another way to get to your site.
  • Trustworthy web experience: Getting to the top of search results depends on how much trust you’ve built. Even if you have the best answer or resource, if your website doesn’t offer a good experience, it’ll be hard to get people to visit. That’s why things like fast loading times, links from other sites, and other technical parts of SEO are so important for your online business success.

How do you do SEO?

1. Keyword research: Keyword research is about figuring out what people interested in your content are typing into search engines like Google. This helps you make content that’s more likely to show up high in search results.

2. Content creation: Content SEO is all about making and arranging your website’s content to help it show up at the top of search engine results. This involves not just writing the content but also organizing it on your site. So, when we talk about creating content in SEO, we’re talking about making, sharing, and taking care of content to get better positions in search results.

3. On-page SEO: On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is about making changes to your website and its content to make it more attractive to search engines. This can help your pages increase in Google search results, bring more people to your site, turn more visitors into customers, and boost your online presence and sales.

4. Link building: Link building is about getting other websites to put links to your website on their pages. In the world of SEO, link building is used to get more high-quality links pointing to your site. This is especially important in industries where there’s a lot of competition. It can help bring more visitors to your site from search engines and can also help your site rank higher in search results.

5. Technical SEO: Technical SEO is about making your website better in ways that help it rank higher in search results. This includes making your site easier for search engines to find, read, and understand. When you do a technical SEO check, you might look at how easy it is for search engines to go through your site, how fast your site loads, how well it works on mobile devices, how secure it is, and how well you’ve done with your on-page and off-page SEO.

How to track & measure SEO results?

So, when you begin creating fantastic SEO content and implementing all these strategies, how can you check if they’re effective? This question looks like a simple one at first but it is not! With certain SEO measurements, we can evaluate how well our website’s SEO is doing.

1. Keyword rankings: Checking where your website stands in the search results for various keywords isn’t the end goal. Having a general sense of your website’s position for key terms can be a helpful early sign of your website’s health. If your website ranks high for a variety of keywords, it’s a good sign that your website is easily found through organic searches.

2. Organic traffic: Organic traffic is a more reliable way to check the success of your SEO work. By observing the organic traffic, you can get an idea of the real number of people visiting your site and their activities. You can easily track your organic traffic with many analytics tools, like Google Analytics, which is free and widely used.

3. Organic lead and Sales: The best way to check the results of your SEO work should be through actual leads, sales, revenue, and profit. Just like any other business task, you need to ask: how is this task improving your overall earnings? The easiest way to do this is to set up goals or track e-commerce in a tool like Google Analytics. This is usually pretty simple, and for most businesses, it’s a good starting point to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategies.

4. Visibility: Imagine you’re monitoring one keyword, and all the top spots in Google’s search results are taken by pages from your website. 

Since your website is getting all the possible traffic from that keyword, your Visibility is 100%. But if your website only holds one spot in Google’s search results, with the rest taken by competitors, some clicks will go to other websites, so your Visibility will be less than 100%. 

If your Visibility is going up, that’s another positive sign that your SEO strategies are working well.

A Keyways:

SEO is about increasing the number of visitors to your website through organic search results. This is achieved by getting a high rank in these results. SEO is crucial because, without it, your website is less likely to get a good rank. A high rank means you get steady, free, and passive traffic every month. SEO includes researching keywords, creating content, optimizing your website’s pages, building links, and addressing technical aspects. It’s simpler to do SEO when your website is already optimized for it.

Conclusion

Don’t forget, that the main goal of any SEO work is to increase visibility and bring more people to your business or website. Find ways that traffic from search engines can benefit your business and website. Don’t get caught up in the latest SEO trends or make changes every time Google suggests something that might boost your search ranking but could harm your business overall.

Sunny Kumar
Hi there, my name is Sunny Kumar. My journey in the field of digital marketing began in June 2016, starting with SEO. Over time, I've gained skills in various areas such as SEO, SMO, blogging, and affiliate marketing. I'm currently managing my digital marketing agency, ELBESTOR, which has been a successful venture. Now, I've made up my mind to pass on the knowledge I've acquired to you.