SEO Guide: The Beginner’s Guide To SEO (2017 Updated)
I can remind myself the very first days I heard about Search Engine Optimization. I was eager to learn it and found every single “SEO Guide“ on the internet, wonderfully informative and useful.
But unfortunately I couldn’t find somethings easily the, or I should say, something to the point for beginners.
Those were quite confusing days for me…
So from that day, I decided to write a compact SEO Guide for the newbies in this field.
Well, guys! If you are a new one with confused concepts of SEO just like I use to be, in the beginning…
Then, just sit back and relax as your confusions are going to vanish.
After reading this article, you will have a clear sense of all necessary things and a path to move on, on your SEO journey.
And I am sure, you’re gonna love it.
Before starting, let me give you a Golden Tip to understand anything in an efficient way, especially when you are trying to learn something for the first time.
“While reading an article, like this one, do not de-track yourself by starting thinking deep about any sub-topic. Just try to walk with the writer in your first read and only pay attention to
Just try to walk with the writer in your first read and only pay attention to What the Writer Want to Say. Questions like
Questions like WHY and HOW comes later”.
Hope you are 100% ready now! So, Let’s move on…
Starting with our SEO Guide
As already described, the purpose of this SEO Guide is to give a perfect understanding of Search Engine Optimization to the beginners. So, I did a bit research work and dig out some critical questions which must be answered.
So, I did a bit research work and dig out some critical questions which must be answered.
Let’s start with the first and the most important question.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO is a combination of strategies used to increase a website’s visibility and ranking in search engines. You can say, it is a way in which the webmasters inform the search engines about the quality of their websites, to drive more organic (non-paid) traffic by improved ranking in search engine result pages.
You can say, it is a way in which the webmasters inform the search engines about the quality of their websites, to drive more organic (non-paid) traffic by improved ranking in search engine result pages.
It mainly depends on the content, structure, and links to a website. We just need to develop these things in a way, a search engine can understand better.
But remember! While doing SEO to make our site search engine friendly, we should never ever forget the concerns of our viewers. We are definitely doing it for the best user experience.
Up to this point, you can ask any question if you have…
Okay! That was just an expression, and I hope your concept about SEO is a little bit clear now.
So, let’s move on with our SEO Guide to know more.
Here is the next question, you should ask yourself…
Why Do I Need To Do SEO Of My Website?
Let’s recall our previous concept of SEO! We are doing it to improve our site’s visibility in search engine results.
And here is Why:
Search engines are the biggest and best sources of web traffic. You may already know the major ones, which are:
- Bing
- Yahoo
For sure, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, etc. can also generate a bunch of visitors to your website. But when it comes to the primary source, it’s always a search engine.
I can relate to some my friends who still use google search bar to reach Facebook.
And also, a newbie will always open google to browse anything. Same stands true for regular internet users, whenever they wanna search anything like an article content, any type of services, products or even any information.
Another big reason which is making the search engines unique is that they provide highly targeted traffic. We’ll get people on our website who are looking for what exactly we are offering.
Search engines will do that on their own if we have done our website’s SEO.
But if we don’t do that, search engines might not be able to find our site. In short, we’ll not be getting any traffic.
Users’ search queries are the words that users type into the search bar for finding anything.
And these are critical.
If we are not doing proper SEO by ignoring search queries, our websites will get ignored by search engines as well.
Targeted traffic means increased exposure and revenue. So don’t hesitate to invest in SEO, if you want to get an excellent rate of return as compared to any other marketing option.
What If I Don’t Do SEO Of My Website?
Here you must be thinking:
“Oh Man! Isn’t it the same question like the previous one? And you just told, No SEO means No Traffic From Search Engines!”
Yes! You are right…
But I want you to take a bit special insight of this question as well. And, I am sure you won’t mind reading this interesting information.
Once your website is live, search engines will crawl it to find out what’s it about. Now if a user searches for a topic related to your site, search engines will show it in its result pages.
Search engines are brilliant and continually improving their technology to crawl a website more efficiently.
But still, they have limitations in their operation.
Search engines are brilliant and continually improving their technology to crawl a website more efficiently. But still, they have limitations in their operation.
This is precisely where SEO comes into action. SEO helps the search engines to know more about a website’s relevancy and some other factors, which they can’t do themselves.
Rightly done SEO can give you thousands of viewers while some wrong moves can disappear your website from top search engine result pages leaving you with almost zero traffic.
SEO not only serves the purpose to make your site’s content available to search engines but also improves your website’s ranking by placing it higher in the search results. And hence, more searchers will find your source quickly.
Competition is constantly on the rise and, the ones who do SEO of their platforms will surely have a distinct advantage in case of traffic and viewers.
I hope that the concepts are clearer now.
Let’s move to the next question in our SEO Guide.
Can I Do SEO?
No doubt SEO is a little bit complicated, but not that much if can keep track!
The basics are easily understandable, and your way to do that can make a big difference. The Internet is full of free resources to learn it, including this wonder SEO Guide.
Just learn then add some practice, and you are ready to go expert in that niche…!
If your website is complex and you are not willing to learn and implement each and everything, you can seek the help from experts to take care of the things for you.
A firm like BlogRex can help.
But remember: Having a sound knowledge of the core concepts of SEO is a must…!
I think it’s enough now if someone asks you “What is SEO?”
Now let’s take a look at the structure of SEO Guide. The next section is about practical information and will be very useful to make your base about actually doing SEO.
How Google Works
Just remember we will always focus on white hat SEO. We are not going into the details of comparison in this guide. So, in case you wanna know, you can find more here.
That was all about basics. Hope you’ve got everything because I have added almost everything.
Before moving on further, below are the major divisions of SEO:
- Keyword Research
- On Page SEO
- Off Page SEO
#1 Keyword Research
Almost all of the beginner’s guides to SEO on the internet are ignoring this factor. But according to me, it is the most important one.
SEO is a game of Keywords.
So I decided to give you a solid introduction to “What Is Keyword Research?” and “Why It Is That Much Important?”.
In an earlier part of this SEO Guide, I have talked about the user’s search queries. These exact wordings of a user are called keywords.
You must be aware of the keywords related to your topic or niche if you want to be successful in SEO. Different keywords have different value depending on their search volume and some other factors. In this SEO Guide, we don’t need to go deep into these factors.
Different keywords have different value depending on their search volume and some other factors. In this SEO Guide, we don’t need to go deep into these factors.
Keyword Research is all about finding the intentions of the users to use search engines. What exactly the users are searching for your topic, are your keywords.
Using the right keywords while doing SEO of your website, is the career deciding thing for your site. It gives you an opportunity to know your targeted audience in a better way. It will increase your site’s relevancy to your topic, and that is a great thing for SEO and search engines.
It will increase your site’s relevancy to your topic, and that is a great thing for SEO and search engines.
You need to do proper research to find valuable keywords related to your topic before starting your website. Even if you already have a website and content on it, you can optimize it by using correct keywords.
Even if you already have a website and content on it, you can optimize it by using correct keywords.
For now, if you want to know more about how to do keyword research to find valuable keywords, you can check out these cool guides for details….
» Backlinko: Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide
By the way, BlogRex’s comprehensive guide for proper Keyword Research is posted. You can read now.
Now moving to the next step!
On Page SEO
On Page means everything displayed on the web page and its back end programming. In On Page SEO, you need to optimize your website’s page and posts, etc. for search engines.
In Short “Optimizing Content for Search Engine!”.
It covers a lot of things, so let’s break this into larger branches.
1. Content
Content is the biggest division of On Page SEO. You might have heard that famous quote about content that:
“Content is the King, ” and there is no place for doubt about that.
Do you know that Google is the biggest search engine! I mean sure you do, and no one even needs to ask that… Google’s first priority is to provide its users with top quality content, and with best relevant information available on the web.
These days Google also loves the right length of content. So, try to write long and informative.
Content on your website isn’t only about the written article. It also includes videos, pictures, animated slides, and infographics, etc.
[clickToTweet tweet=”The Beginner’s Guide To #SEO Must Check This EPIC #SEOGuide” quote=”Content is Not King! The Way You Present Your Content, Makes it King. “]
Try to make it for the best user experience and perfectly optimized for the search engines at the same time. It will increase your user’s probability to share it more and more.
Pay more attention to for better content:
- Titles – Create eye-catching titles that raise the reader’s interest. You only have one chance to make a great first impression.
- Keywords – Pick keywords that will help bring people to your site and are relevant.
- Links – Link to quality sites that compliment what your website is about. It’ll encourage sites in your niche to link to you as well.
- Quality – Try to publish unique and quality content. This prompts users to come to your site because they cannot easily find the content elsewhere.
- Freshness – If you are publishing content that does not age or becomes outdated, that’s great, but you also need to add new content on a regular basis. If you don’t have the time to add content to your website, consider adding a question and answer section or a blog to your site.
While writing your content, don’t ever forget to embed your keyword research in the best possible and natural looking way.
For now, You can read some content writing guides to know more…
While BlogRex’s content writing a guide with effective tips, tricks, secret strategies and specific step by step process, is on the way as well.
2. Website Layout
After optimizing your content, Website Layout is the next thing you need to take care of while doing On Page SEO.
An example of the worst website layout is when someone has totally irrelevant categories as compared to their topic.
I have personally seen some sites which have layouts like, their niche is health and they got categories related to fashion designing. So, don’t ever do that serious harm to your SEO.
This thing just greatly disturbs and distracts the user…
Can you just imagine visiting a website with a bad layout, there are more than 80% chances that you won’t like to visit that site again….
So, Why would anyone else!
Then, why not making it user-friendly! And sure, Google love that as well.
3. Website Speed
Yes! Website Loading Speed matters a lot! Have you ever heard about Dwell time? No! Let me tell you…
When a user searches for something and your website appears on search engine result page (SERP).
Then that user opens your site. Dwell time is the duration for how long that user stays on your site after clicking on it.
And that Dwell time is indeed an important search engine ranking factor.
Now let’s work on an example to see what happens to that Dwell time when a website has slow loading speed…
How about taking an example of yourself? Let’s say you search something and then open the top site appearing in the search results.
What if that website is taking too long to open! What would you do? Wait…! No way. You will close the tab and move to the second site…
And here is how Dwell time of the first website gets destroyed. Results…! Ranking down.
In short, a user needs good speed, and Google also has an update for website speed. So, try to improve your site to increase its Dwell time and hence improving its ranking in SERPs.
4. Website Design
Website design is another critical thing to have good user experience… Your theme needs to be Responsive and should have an Eye Catching Design.
I would always prefer to stay on a website with an attractive design along with informative content. I can also read from a poorly designed website but only when it is the only result I have…
There are lots of sites which have excellent content but actually a bad design.
Just ask yourself! How long can you keep visiting these type of sites, which are even worse when you are using your smartphone…
You’ll surely get tired and at the end, will stop visiting that site…
Personal Experience!
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
So I would say again, always use Responsive and Eye Catching Design.
For now, that’s enough about On Page SEO. And here you can find our guide to getting you on page done with detailed understanding.
#2 Off Page SEO
Just like you have done your On-Page SEO, you also need to do Off-Page SEO to make your domain authority in the eyes of search engines.
In other words, I can say we need to make our website trustworthy for search engines.
And it will happen when other famous sites tell the search engine that our site has the best content about our topic.
Now, how would it happen…?
We need to get our website referred from other famous resources on the web about our niche. In technical terms, it is called link building.
Naturally, it’s an automatic thing. We will post very high-quality content on our website and share it with topically interested people and internet marketing resources.
Eventually, whoever would like our resource will link to it.
The best link building strategy is to create something awesome and let everyone know about it.
But Remember: In today’s competitive environment, we need to learn about proper link building strategies. Then plan and execute pre-defined and practical ways adopted by some quality sites.
And your hard work in that activity will surely pay you with better ranking in SERPs.
Just to know, here are the things which should be done:
- Use social network to promote your content
- Do some blogging and guest posting
- Refer your suggested solutions in discussion forums
- Photo and video sharing
- Relevant business and local listing
Next heading might be a bit annoying, but trust me it is critical information for all of us…
How Link Looks Like and How To Get Them?
Start Tag of The Link
It’s a signal for search engine about the beginning of a relationship. It is like, Hey! Next information is the link to something which should be followed. It is called “Anchor Text.”
- Link Referral Location: It is the information for search engine about the site, where a link is pointing. Referral site can be a web page, a picture, a downloadable file or a video, etc. You can also keep the reference location, a particular point on the same page you are visiting means another section of a single page.
- Visible/Anchor Text of Link: Sometimes, you might have seen blue colored, bold or underlined text which is clickable. When you click on it, you move to another web page about that particular word. These are also links, called anchor text.
- Link Tag Closure: Just like the name of the tag is suggesting, it is a signal indicating the end of a link to the search engine.
You will need above information once you are making links practically.
On average, the higher up page 1 the result is, the greater the number of linking domains that the webpage has.
Okay now! We have had a view of some connection parameters. Let’s move on to know the ways which can be used to get links.
- Develop Quality Content: Developing quality content is the best way to get links automatically. Have you seen that I have mentioned some article and guides in this SEO guide? I have done this to help you out with some very useful information through these links. Yup! These are links, which I have given to these sites. Why I did that? Because these articles have excellent content with in-depth details. And it might be possible that this guide of mine would get some automatic links. It is a little difficult thing, but if you choose to work on your passion related niche, I can assure you that your content can stand out of the crowd.
- Guest Posting: There are blogs which accept to publish your unique and informative posts. They will link to your site, once you are allowed to post on these platforms. But, you need to work hard to get the approval from high authority blogs. You will get a ranking boost by publishing on these high authority blogs. I am repeating that your content quality matters a lot when applying for guest posting.
- Blog Commenting: Finally, an incredibly easy way to get some quality links. But still, a little comment approving game is on. Reach out the free blogs related to your niche, read the articles and do some attention seeking comments like you can ask something which is not entirely clear to you. Be a little smart, and you will get the job done.
- Get Some Links From “Wikipedia”: Search your niche on Wikipedia, go to edit, update the content if you have new and proven information and then link to your site. A link to Wikipedia is way better than links from high authority sites. But remember, you need to maintain limits. Otherwise, search engines will consider these links spam.
- Social Bookmarking: Have you established a vast social network? If yes! Then it is awesome. Mention your website in your social profiles. This is called social bookmarking. Great way to get links.
I think, your concepts have been modified. Aren’t you feeling updated about off page SEO…
Here are some cool link building guides. You can make High-Quality Backlinks by following these…
» Backlinko: Link Building: The Definitive Guide
» QuickSprout: The Advanced Guide to Link Building
» Ahrefs: The Noob Friendly Guide To Link Building
SEO Checklist
SEO Ranking Factors
Here is another neat trick:
Social Sharing is a Ranking Booster
Let’s say that you are all settled up with your website and about to publish your very first and excellent content. Would it start getting instantly from the search engine? No Way!
So, What’s the solution to keep away from sudden disappointment? Yes! Establish your social network and give some shares to your newly published content.
This will give you instant traffic and sure a ranking boost as well…
Okay, Guys, I am done with my guide…! Isn’t it what you are thinking right now?
Actually, BlogRex doesn’t think that way.
We have seen a lot of guides not doing a proper wrap-up…
So, we have decided to help you out about what to do next or where to go now. It is our bonus:
Your Way Forward
Now that you have understood SEO Guide, and some of you might be thinking that I have missed a lot of information about SEO as not all the beginners only will read this guide.
Making it clear, yes I did that on purpose.
Why?
I could have written about 50000 words on this topic making a lengthy chapter wise and very in depth guide. But, trust me, that would have been annoying and distracting for the beginners.
And also, there are lots of those lengthy guides available on the web. Then why do I need to add another one…
The purpose is to get a clear idea from this guide, then learn updated about each subheading, not the outdated lengthy guides.
How To Do SEO?
In your way forward you need to follow these steps:
- Select your niche (always start with your passion)
- Do keyword research and content planning
- Set up your platform/website
- Develop content with a bit deeper keyword research
- Setup your social network
- Post content and on-page optimization
- Make your content commercial with social sharing
- Start off-page optimization
- Analyze your performance
- Plan improvements and go back to step 3
- You may skip step 4 in your second round
While doing all these things, keep on learning and improving. Exploring each subheading, you will find some new, website’s authority and ranking parameters defined by SEO experts.
Like domain authority, page authority, trust flow, citation flow, do-follow backlinks, and spam score, etc.
These parameters are actually useful and do change your ranking with increase or decrease in their values. So Google these to learn in depth.
Wrapping it Up
Finally, I am covering SEO Guide with a certainty that you have actually improved your SEO knowledge.
And if you are finding it an effective guide, then give us a thumbs up by sharing it with your friends.
In case you have any type of feedback or suggestions, must comment and don’t hesitate to ask.
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