12 SEO tips for beginners

SEO TIPS: Search engines are crawling with content – it’s estimated that there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day! (That’s 18 zeros, in case you were wondering)

So if you are a content creator, how do you compete with other sites to be visible to your targets?

The answer is search engine optimization or SEO. Digital marketers need to understand Google’s ranking factors and how you can make sure your website is showing up in the right place, to the right people.

SEO is a powerful tool that, when used correctly, can make the organic search a viable and lucrative part of your inbound marketing strategy. Here are the best SEO tips for beginners to quickly reach your traffic, conversion, and sales goals.

Before diving into your google SEO strategy, it’s important to understand your website’s business goals. Every site is different, so targeting the right audience is critical not only for SEO, but also for tracking conversions, successes, and referrals.

Are you looking to increase your brand awareness? To get a set number of leads? To increase income? Define your key performance indicators (KPIs) based on these goals. These could be:

• Sales
• Downloads
• Email subscribers
• Contact form submissions
• Phone calls

No, rankings and traffic are not on this list. SEO should be used to support your business goals, not for vanity measures! For example, do you prefer:

• 5,000 website visits and 2 downloads, or
• 300 website visits and 25 downloads

This is where understanding your business goals can help guide your SEO strategy from the start.

Who are your internet competitors and what are they doing well? Analyze the online activity of your competitors and assess who ranks at the top and what their ranking is for.

This will give you the data of what you are up against, what you should be focusing on, and your possibilities to do better.

Note: Your traditional competitors may not be the ones you compete with online. So start by researching your product offering or the keywords to find them.

The SEO relies heavily on relevant keywords for your website popular with users but has a low level of competition with other brands.

A good way to start is to find an online keyword research tool, like SEMrush, or Google Trends Keyword Planner. Use them to find data on keywords relevant to your brand, then use it in your on-page SEO strategy.

Incorporate keywords into your content by creating blog posts or landing pages on the subject, and by including them in meta tags such as title tags and meta descriptions.

Keyword research isn’t just about finding those with high search volumes. You need to consider the research intent of potential customers to define the right keywords. The three search intentions are:

• Transactional: A user who wishes to purchase a product or service
• Informational: a user who wishes to obtain information about a product or a service
• Navigation: A user who wants to go to a specific website

Understanding these intentions will help you know which keywords to target. For example, a blog post would require an informative keyword such as “How to brew the perfect cup of coffee”, while a service or product page would target a transactional keyword, such as “SEO agency”.

Once you know how to find targeted keywords and understand the intent of the user, it is important to understand the difference between keywords and long-tail short behind.

Short tail keywords, sometimes referred to as “generic terms”, are 1 to 3 words long with generally high search volumes and competition. These generate high traffic and are harder to rank for, but with the right approach and a little patience, they can be perfect for your website. For example “SEO”

Long-tail keywords are keywords longer and more specific. These are phrases that a search volume and lower competition. Visitors are more likely to use them when they are closer to the point of purchase. For example “natural referencing agency”.

Targeting these keywords is likely to generate less traffic, but a higher ROI, by attracting exactly the audience you are looking for.

While keywords are certainly important, search engines have become increasingly sophisticated in how they rank pages on the SERP results page; they reward websites with interesting and engaging content. Find the criteria for quality SEO content. Recent updates from Google are heavily focused on user experience. It is therefore quality rather than quantity.

If you check the first page of your search results, I guarantee you won’t find shoddy content.

Spamming your keyword won’t do you any favors, in fact, if Google suspects that you are keyword stuffing you will be penalized for it.

So write for humans first, as search engine follower users, not the other way around. Not all SEO tips will help you if you are just recycling generic content!

Longer content consistently ranks better than short content, and they also get more shares on social media. This is no coincidence: In February 2012, Google released Google Panda, an algorithm update that affected around 12% of all results and negatively affected “light content” sites. That is why your content strategy should focus on long, argued content.

The long-form content is a content of about 1200 words or rained s, most of the contents of a short form of 500 to 800 words.

While some may argue that audience attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, so the 500 to 800 news type range is better to keep their attention, but producing longer articles is a great way to go. to increase visitor engagement and provide them with an informative and authentic experience.

This is where understanding user intent comes in. If your visitor is looking for an informative guide, long content is your key. However, some topics may not require a lot of text, such as news or product pages.

Think about the intent behind your keywords and make sure that you come up with a word count for your article that delivers the full expected value.

Mobile internet traffic continues to increase all the time. In the second quarter of 2020, 51.53% of searches came from mobile devices (excluding tablets). This means that not only does your website have to be mobile-friendly, but your content has to be mobile-friendly as well.

Images and graphics are essential, but make sure they aren’t too heavy, and most importantly pay attention to your site’s loading speed!

SEO analysis and strategy must be closely linked. Using analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can give you an accurate overview of your current users and help you define the success of your next SEO campaign.

Take a look at how your users actually find you on search engines. What keywords lead them to your site the most? What landing pages do they come across? Write them down and write your content accordingly.

The creation of quality links can seem like bewildering tactics – why would you want to drive people away from your content. But in fact, it’s actually an invaluable tool for improving your domain’s ranking, a very important ranking factor for Google and other search engines.

If you link quality sites to your page, and even better, if they link to you, Google will perceive your site as an authoritative presence on that topic. Trusted sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while poor-quality sites rarely link.

This can be done through internal linking, guest blogging, and other backlink tactics.

White hat SEO refers to website optimization tactics endorsed by Google. These techniques focus on the user experience and give them the best search engine results.

White Hat SEO includes:

• Follow Google’s quality guidelines
• Create quality shareable content
• Optimize for humans, not search engines

Black hat SEO refers to SEO strategies that do not necessarily follow the rules. They usually try to spam or trick search engines. While black-hat SEO techniques can get results, they put your website at huge risk of being penalized and worse, even deindexed by Google (removed entirely from search results).

Black-hat SEO can include:

• Bypass webmaster guidelines
• Focus on ranking for search engines rather than the user
• Tricking users and search engines with doorway pages or link schemes

Black hat SEO techniques require a level of technical knowledge and can help you get results, but they are very risky. With that in mind, we would never recommend their use.

The local SEO, or optimization of local search intent, is crucial for businesses that serve customers in a specific field. Your business should be listed on Google My Business, with the profile completed as completely as possible.

Get Google reviews from customers and you’ll be rewarded with strong signals that your site is trustworthy and authoritative.

The local SEO also includes the location signals from your website, so make sure your complete address is clearly listed and it is the same wherever it is referenced. You should also include keywords related to the location, such as “Digital Marketing Agency Lahore” if this applies to your business.