SEO Crash Course: A Beginners Guide to SEO
Starting a new website for your product or business may seem daunting, but you can master SEO with the help of this guide. First of all, SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” This means that a website with good SEO will come up earlier in the lists search engines provide when you look up a word or phrase. The goal of SEO is to get as high as you can in the search pool as possible—naturally. We’ll go over what this means in more depth below.
Google Search is aware of 130 trillion pages
SEO for Businesses
Because online traffic has become crucial to the success of a product or service, websites need to be able to attract and hold the attention of consumers. This is where SEO comes into play. If you’re a consumer looking to buy a new pair of jeans, you want the pair that will be the most durable, and least expensive. So what do you type into Google? Probably something like, “good cheap jeans.” This will bring up a practically infinite amount of results, but only a handful will be shown to you on the first page. More often than not, you will end up picking a result from this first page of websites.
Why is that? Well, firstly, these websites are ranked highly among users. This means that people travel to this site often and they make purchases from it regularly. It’s important that these rankings are generated organically, meaning the business has not paid people to rate their website highly. Real people must travel to this site of their own accord in order to do well in this category. This contributes to the website traffic, which is the second reason for the site being on the first page of results. The more people that use a website, the higher it will be in the list of search results.
Finally, a website with great SEO knows how to monitor its results. This is where the creator of the website has the most control. In order to properly monitor your results, you need to be aware of what keywords are popular, which links are safe to use, and how to structure your meta description (that’s the blurb under your website’s link on a search results page).
SEO for Beginners
From the previous description, it should be clear as to why SEO is so important for the success of your website. In order to get your website seen by consumers, it needs to be able to stand out among the millions of other options. SEO allows that to happen.
Additionally, having a good SEO campaign will boost your chances of being seen by customers. Once buyers determine which sites they enjoy purchasing products from, it’s rare that they will expand their buying pool. The goal is to ensure sure you make their list of favorite websites. Once you enter their list of top sites, you’ll earn a loyal customer. SEO brings these loyal buyers to you through careful planning and a knowledge of what customers are looking for in a website.
It’s also important to remember that search engines like Google know that websites are being made every single day. They are aware of how many people want to get their businesses seen by potential customers. Because of this, they created SEO to weed through the less developed websites and only prioritize the sites that people actually want to see. Don’t be discouraged by this fact. Just like others before you, you can learn how to play the SEO game.
Strategies and Tactics
To do that, you need to understand the SEO basics. Firstly, figure out your content. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it can be difficult to find your niche. Let’s continue with the jeans analogy. If you’re selling jeans, that’s great! But so is every other clothing company in existence. You want your website to stand out, not blend in. Find your niche in the jeans market. What makes your jeans stand out? Are they retro? Are they high fashion? Do you pride your company on having low prices or are you going for a more exclusive client base? These are all questions you should be asking about the content of your website. When you determine the answers, you’ll be able to tailor your content to your specifications, making it easier for people to find.
After you’ve specified your content, you want to use keywords that will allow customers to find your website easily. These keywords are what people search for to find products—like “good cheap jeans” mentioned earlier. The more keywords you include on each of your web pages, the higher your page will be in the rankings. You don’t want to use the same keywords over and over again in one web page, though. This plateaus your visibility. You want relevant, diverse keywords to draw as many people to your product as possible.
Finally, you’ll want to consider linking to other pages. Ideally, these links will be to other pages on your website, but you can use any website relevant to your content. These links should be integrated into your content, meaning you use hyperlinks on certain words in your content. Don’t just plop a big URL into your paragraph and call it a day. Your website should be easy to use and aesthetically pleasing. Using simple navigation, internal links, and a logical tagging system will benefit your web traffic greatly. No one likes using a confusing website.
Overall, use your best common sense when creating a website with great SEO. Take everything you enjoy about your favourite websites and emulate them. With all that in mind, you’ll be top of the list in Google’s search results in no time.
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