SEO Essentials: A Beginner's Guide to SEO Success

If you want people to find your website on Google, you must understand the fundamentals of SEO. These are easier to make than you might think.

Continue reading to learn what SEO is, how to set things up for success, and how to get indexed.

SEO Fundamentals

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a website's organic search traffic. It's where you do things that help you appear and rank higher in a search engine's organic results.

What is the significance of SEO?

People are probably searching for what you do, and ranking for those terms can help you attract customers. However, you are unlikely to rank without effort, as others are also attempting to do so. This is why SEO is important. It helps Google see that you are deserving of the top spot.

What are the advantages of SEO?

Because most people click on the first few search results, higher rankings usually result in more traffic. Unlike other channels, search traffic tends to be consistent and passive. This is due to the fact that the number of searches is usually fairly consistent from month to month.

Search traffic is also "free," which is significant because ads can be costly.

How do you go about SEO?

SEO consists of five major steps:

• Keyword research:  Find out what people are looking for.
• Content creation:  Create content for search engines.
• On-page SEO:  Make your content as clear as possible.
• Link building:  Build trust and authority by linking to other websites.
• Technical SEO:  Assist search engines in efficiently finding, crawling, and indexing your content.

Preparing for SEO Success

These steps are the primary focus of our SEO beginner's guide.

When your website is properly set up for SEO success, doing SEO becomes much easier. Let's take a look at a few options.

Get a good domain name.

Most domains are suitable for SEO, so don't be concerned if you already have one. However, if you're still looking, keep these two aspects of a good domain in mind.

The domain name

It's best to keep this brief and memorable. Don't try to cram keywords in. Your business name without hyphens or special characters is usually a good bet.

TLD stands for top-level domain (TLD)

This is the part that comes after the name, such as .com. Your choice of TLD has no bearing on SEO.[1] However, we believe that.com is best for most people because it is the most recognizable and trusted. For charities, .org or your local equivalent will suffice. If you only do business in one country outside the U.S., your country code top-level domain (ccTLD), like .co.uk, is fine too.

It's best to avoid TLDs like.info and.biz, which are commonly associated with spam. But if you have one, it's not the end of the world. You can still create a legitimate website that ranks.

Make use of a website platform.

Website platforms make it simple to create and manage a website. There are two varieties:

Hosted platforms:  Everything's done for you. They host the site, provide pre-designed templates, and allow you to add and edit content without touching code.

Self-hosted platforms:  These also allow you to add and edit content without using code. The distinction is that you must host and install them yourself.

Most SEOs advise using a self-hosted, open-source platform such as WordPress because:

• It's customizable.  You are free to modify the open-source code in any way you see fit. There's also a large developer community that knows the platform inside and out.
• It can be expanded.  There are millions of plugins available to extend its functionality, including numerous SEO plugins.

However, if you value convenience and support, a hosted solution may be a better fit. All of the big ones have adequate SEO capabilities for the majority of people.

Use a reputable web host.

You'll need a web host if you're using a hosted solution. These servers save your website to a hard drive that anyone with an internet connection can access. When selecting one, keep the three S's in mind:

• Security.  Make certain you obtain a free SSL/TLS certificate. Or, at the very least, support for Let's Encrypt, a non-profit organization that provides free certificates.
• Server Location.  Data travels slowly between the server and the visitor. As a result, it's best to select a host with servers in the same country as the majority of your traffic.
• Support.  The availability of 24 hour support is ideal. Before you sign up, ask the above questions to see how good their support is.

Make the user experience enjoyable.

Google wants to rank pages that provide visitors with a positive experience. Let's take a look at a few ways to accomplish this.

Make use of HTTPS.

Nothing is worse for visitors than having their personal information compromised by hackers. Always use SSL/TLS to encrypt your website.

Select an appealing design.

Nobody wants to visit a website that looks like it was designed in the 1990s. While your website does not need to be redesigned every few months, it should look good and reflect your brand.

Make certain that it is mobile-friendly.

Mobile searches now outnumber desktop searches, so it's critical that your website is as easy to use on mobile as it is on desktop.

Use a legible font size.

People use a variety of devices to access the internet. Make certain that your content is readable on all platforms.

Avoid annoying pop-ups and advertisements.

Everyone despises advertisements, but they are sometimes necessary. If this is the case, keep interstitials to a minimum. Pages containing these may not rank as highly.

Make certain that it loads quickly.

On both desktop and mobile, page speed is a ranking factor. However, this does not imply that your site must load lightning fast. It only affects pages that provide the slowest user experience.

Make a site structure that is logical.

Your website's content should be easy to find for both visitors and search engines. That is why it is critical to establish a logical hierarchy for your content. You can accomplish this by creating a mind map.

Each branch on the map becomes an internal link, which is a link between two pages on a website.

Internal links are important for UX and SEO for several reasons:

• They aid search engines in discovering new pages. Google cannot index pages that it cannot locate.
• They aid in the spread of PageRank throughout your site. The foundation of Google search is PageRank. It assesses the quality of a page by examining the number and quality of links pointing to it. Google still uses it today.
• They assist search engines in determining the topic of your page. For this, Google looks at the clickable words in the link, also known as anchor text.

Make use of a logical URL structure.

URLs are significant because they assist searchers in understanding the content and context of a page. Many website platforms allow you to customize the structure of your URLs. These are the five main options for URLs in WordPress:

• Plain: website.com/?p=123
• Day and name: website.com/2021/03/04/seo-basics/
• Month and name: website.com/03/04/seo-basics/
• Numeric: website.com/865/
• Post name: website.com/seo-basics/

If you're creating a new website, choose the most straightforward and descriptive structure possible. That is the title of the post. If you're working with an existing website, changing the URL structure is rarely a good idea because it can break things.

Set up an SEO plugin.

Most website platforms include basic SEO functionality by default. Install an SEO plugin if you're using WordPress. Without one, even basic SEO best practices are difficult to implement. Yoast and Rank Math are both viable options.

Getting On Google

Setting up your website for SEO success will aid Google in crawling and indexing your pages. However, submitting your site to Google can expedite the process even further. This is because it allows Google to find your website even if it lacks backlinks.

Finding or creating a sitemap

Sitemaps are files that contain a list of the important pages on your website that you want search engines to index. If you already have a sitemap, it's probably at one of these addresses:

• site.com/sitemap.xml
• site.com/sitemap_index.xml

If you can't find it there, try site.com/robots.txt, which usually has it.

If you still can't find it, you probably don't have one and should make one.

Submission of your sitemap

This is done through Google Search Console (GSC). It takes approximately two seconds.

How to Measure SEO Success

Before we get started with SEO, it's important to understand how to track and measure SEO performance. This is never easy, and we'll only provide a high-level overview here.

Organic traffic

Let's start with the most obvious. If your organic traffic is increasing, you're doing something right. This is free to track in GSC. Sign up for a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account if you don't have access to GSC. Then enter your domain name into Site Explorer to get an estimate.

Keyword rankings

If rankings are on the rise for your target keywords, that's another sign that you're doing something right. You can track average keyword rankings for free in GSC.

Important takeaways

• SEO is the process of increasing organic search traffic to a website.
• This is accomplished by ranking high in organic search results.
• SEO is important because, without it, you are unlikely to rank well.
• Month after month, ranking high provides you with free, passive, and consistent traffic.
• Keyword research, content creation, on-page SEO, link building, and technical SEO are all part of SEO.
• When your website is properly set up for SEO success, doing SEO becomes much easier.
• Google will typically discover and index your website on its own, but you can sometimes expedite the process by submitting your sitemap.