What is SEO? A complete tutorial for beginners

What is SEO?

SEO stand for Search engine optimization and is the practice of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engines‘ organic (unpaid) search results. To gain visibility among potential customers who might visit your site and even make a purchase.

Organic search results are earned listings that often appear alongside paid listings—meaning advertisers paid for those spots.

SEO is beneficial for your website and your business because it provides an ongoing stream of traffic at a much lower cost than paid advertising. Therefore, once you start ranking highly in organic search results, you continue receiving traffic with minimal additional costs.

Markedly, SEO helps build brand credibility and trust among potential and existing customers. Which can ultimately lead to more sales for your business.

But first, before try to understand What is SEO, you need to have a clear idea of how search engines work.

How Do Search Engines Work?

Search engines (like Bing or Google) work by crawling hundreds of billions of pages using their own web crawlers. These web crawlers are commonly referred to as search engine bots or spiders. Search engines navigate the web by downloading web pages and following links on these pages to discover new site pages that have been made available.

Let’s visualize an example.

In the picture above, we can see the first few results when someone searches for the keyphrase ‘mercury’. In this case, Wikipedia website is the first result, and NASA website is the second one. This means their page on Mercury planet ranks number one and two on this search term.

Therefore, SEO process is when you optimize your page to become the best result for your key word(s), you can climb those rankings and become one of the first results that people see. Which will get you more clicks and traffic to your site!

Although this example only shows us organic results. There might even be Google Images, or a few products by Google Shopping, possibilities are many.

Nonetheless, you have to know that what Google shows is based or depend on the information is found on the Websites, therefore the best optimized is your Website the better Google find your content and display it on top.

What is SEO and Why is so important?

You are thinking on having a website because you want people to buy your product or services, or read your content. Whatever your goal, you want people to visit your website. If you own a shoes shop in new York, for example, you want your website to be number 1 when people Google: “shoes New York”.

Because the chances of people clicking on your website are much higher when it’s the top result!

But how do you make this happen? simple: Search Engine Optimization – SEO is a great way to get people to your website for free. Which is especially useful if you’re a small business owner who doesn’t have big cash to spend on paid advertising.

What determines how high you rank?

How high each result ranks is determined by the search engine (i.e. Google) algorithm.  These ranking is divided into two categories:

On-page SEO

On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing a website’s content and structure to improve its search engine ranking. The goal is to make a website more relevant and user-friendly. 

On-page SEO best practices:

• Content: Optimize content for search intent, and make sure it’s relevant to search queries   
• Title tags: Use descriptive title tags that include the primary keyword   
• Internal links: Use links to connect pages on your site, and use relevant anchor text   
• URLs: Use descriptive URLs   
• Images: Optimize images to improve user experience and search engine visibility   
• Mobile-friendliness: Make sure your site is optimized for mobile   
• Page speed: Improve your site’s speed   
• Organization: Group similar pages into directories, and reduce duplicate content 

These are all crucial on-page SEO factors that you can work on.

Off-page SEO

In addition to on-page SEO category, your rankings are also determined by off-page SEO. 

Off-page SEO is a set of activities that take place outside of a website to improve its search engine ranking. It’s also known as off-site SEO. 

How it works

• Backlinks: Clickable links from other websites to your site. Google considers backlinks to be one of the top ranking factors.   
• Social media: Increasing engagement and shares on social media platforms.   
• Content marketing: Creating guest blogs for other websites, podcasting, and video marketing.   
• Digital PR: Creating and distributing press releases, engaging with journalists, and securing coverage in reputable publications. 

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What is SEO? 9-Steps SEO Tutorial for Beginners

SEO can be hard to understand for beginners, but we’re about to go over how to do SEO for your website step by step. 

1. Find Relevant Keywords

Keywords are words or phrases that people type into search engines like Google to find what they’re looking for.

They could be looking for content related to your industry. Or products or services that could solve their specific problem(s).

One of the key part of a successful SEO service or campaign is to identify these relevant keywords related to your business of product, and optimize your website’s content around them. So your website appears in those search results—increasing your visibility and potential traffic.

Tips for effective keyword research

Conducting keyword research is essential for SEO and marketing campaigns. Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Brainstorming: Begin by brainstorming a list of broad topics relevant to your business. Think about what your target audience might search for.
• Use keyword research tools: Utilize tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, and Ahrefs to find relevant keywords. These tools can help you identify search volume, competition, and related terms.
• Analyze competitors: Look at high-ranking competitor content to see which keywords they are targeting. This can provide insights into effective keywords for your own strategy.
• Focus on long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are specific phrases that are less competitive and can attract more qualified traffic. For example, instead of targeting “toaster,” use “4 slice chrome toaster.”
• Understand keyword intent: Ensure that the keywords you choose align with the intent of your audience. Are they looking for information, comparing products, or ready to make a purchase?

By following these tips, you can develop a robust keyword strategy that enhances your content and improves your search engine rankings.

2. Understand Search Intent

When people type keywords into search engines, there’s an underlying search intent (goal) behind those searches. Understanding that intent is critical because search engines are unlikely to show results that don’t meet what searchers want to achieve. 

There are generally four types of search intent:

• Informational: The user wants to find information about a topic. Examples: “how SEO works” and “SEO best practice”
• Navigational: The user wants to go to a specific website or page. Example: “successful SEO campaigns”
• Commercial: The user is researching before making a purchase. Example: “top SEO agency in California“
• Transactional: The user is ready to make a purchase. Examples: “hire SEO services”

Doubtedly, you need to understand the search intent of your keywords. And then map those keywords to the right types of pages, so you can create content accordingly.

3. Create Content (Quality)

It’s hard to explain or recognize what is quality content, knowing how to write good content helps you get more visitors, higher conversions, and lower bounce rates. But who determines the quality of your content? The easy answer: your users.

However, this also makes creating the right content more difficult. Because every user is different and has a different search intent. But they have one thing in common: every user knows what they want or what they are looking for. Meanwhile, you’re still figuring out what your audience wants to read about!

Although your users eventually determine the quality of your content, you can take a few steps to ensure you end up with well-thought-out, readable, and attractive content. In other words, content that’s eligible to be considered high-quality by your users and search engines. And yes, this will take some time. But it’s time well spent.

Here are some tips for creating quality content:

• Satisfy the search intent: Provide the value to the user. This could be in the form of useful information, answers to their questions, or solutions to their problems.
• Work with experts: Collaborate with subject matter experts to ensure your content is accurate, reliable, and valuable. This not only enhances the quality of your content but also builds trust with your audience.
• Be unique: Try to offer a novel perspective or information that isn’t readily available elsewhere. This will help your content stand out
• Structure thoughtfully: Use proper formatting like headings, bullet points, and images to make the content easy to scan and understand
• Add visuals: Include videos, graphics, and other visual elements to enhance the content

The goal is to create such a rich and valuable content experience that users have no reason to look elsewhere.

4. Use On-Page Techniques

On-page SEO techniques include optimizing content, images, and URLs, as well as using internal and external links.    Content

• Write unique content: Create helpful, engaging content that’s relevant to your target audience   
• Use keywords: Integrate relevant keywords into your content, title tags, and meta descriptions   
• Use headings and subheadings: Organize content with H1, H2, and H3 tags to help users and search engines understand the page   

Images 

• Optimize image size: Compress images to make your site load faster

• Add alt text: Provide descriptive alt text for images so that search engines can index them

URLs 

• Use descriptive URLs: Make your URLs easy to understand and relevant to the page’s content

Links

• Add internal links: Use relevant anchor text to link to other pages on your site   

• Add external links: Link to other relevant websites to increase your site’s authority and credibility   

Other techniques Improve your site’s load time, Create user-friendly content, Organize your site by grouping similar pages into directories, and Reduce duplicate content. 

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5. Provide a Great User Experience


Offering a great user experience means your website is easy to use, visually appealing, and fast. Which benefits both users and SEO.

To ensure a good experience, start with a clean and simple design that has visual appeal, straightforward navigation, and legible fonts that are easy to read.

Then, optimize your page speed. Because fast-loading pages keep users happy and can improve your SEO.

Here are some tips to boost your page speed:

• Enable compression: Use file compression tools like Unminify to reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. This will remove unnecessary characters from a file, decreasing its size and improving load times for your pages.
• Optimize images: Ensure that images aren’t larger than they need to be, are in the right file format (JPEG for photos and PNG for graphics), and are compressed for the web using tools like ShortPixel.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN): Try a CDN, which distributes your website across multiple servers around the world. This lets users access it from the closest server to speed up access to your website.

6. Create a Well-Organized Website Structure


SEO website structure refers to how the pages of your website are organized and linked to one another to maximize search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. A well-structured website ensures that both search engines and users can navigate and understand your content easily, improving your site’s visibility and rankings on search engines like Google.

Here are the key components of SEO website structure:

URL Structure

• Use clean, readable URLs with relevant keywords.
• Keep URLs short and descriptive (e.g., www.example.com/seo-tips).
• Avoid unnecessary parameters or complex strings.

Site Hierarchy

• Organize content in a logical hierarchy.
• Use categories and subcategories to break down content in a way that makes sense.
• Start with the most important pages at the top (e.g., homepage) and work down to subpages (e.g., blog posts, product pages).

Internal Linking

• Use internal links to connect related content across your site. This helps search engines crawl your website effectively.
• Link to important pages from multiple locations within your site.
• Use anchor text that is descriptive and relevant to the linked content.

Navigation

• Ensure that your site navigation is clear and simple, with intuitive menus.
• The main navigation should lead to key areas of the site (e.g., homepage, services, about page).
• Breadcrumbs help users track their path and improve internal linking.

XML Sitemap

• An XML sitemap is a file that lists all your website’s pages to help search engines crawl and index them.
• Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console or other search engines.

Mobile-Friendly Design

• Ensure your site is responsive and works well on mobile devices. Google uses mobile-first indexing, so this is important for SEO.

Site Speed

• A fast-loading site improves user experience and is a ranking factor in SEO.
• Optimize images, leverage caching, and minimize scripts to improve speed.

Content Organization

• Use headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to organize content clearly.
• Include keywords naturally in your content, titles, and headings.

Use of Structured Data (Schema Markup)

• Implement schema markup to help search engines understand the content of your pages more easily.
• Structured data can improve the appearance of your website in search results, such as adding rich snippets (e.g., star ratings, product prices).

SEO-friendly Content

• Ensure that content on your pages is relevant, high-quality, and optimized for keywords.
• Content should be easy to read, helpful, and engaging for users.

HTTPS/SSL

• Secure your website with HTTPS to ensure security and trustworthiness. Google uses HTTPS as a ranking factor.

Having an SEO-friendly structure helps search engines crawl and index your site more effectively, ultimately improving the chances of your website ranking higher in search results.

7. Fix Technical SEO Issues

Technical SEO is all about addressing the technical SEO aspects of your website that can affect the performance of your site in search results. And it’s critical because even high-quality, optimized content is unlikely to rank if your site has many technical issues. 

Some common technical problems include:

• Duplicate content: Pages with identical or nearly identical content confuses search engines about which version to serve in search results. Which can lead to lower or even no rankings. 
• Redirect loops: Two or more pages that all redirect to one another form an infinite loop that can frustrate users and prevent search engines from properly crawling your site
• Non-secure pages: Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) pages are less secure than hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) pages. Which is why HTTPS is a lightweight ranking factor. 
• Broken links: Links directing to pages that no longer exist or have been moved provides a bad user experience. And can get in the way of crawling. 
• Robots.txt file mistakes: Problems with the directives in your robots.txt file (which tells search engines which parts of your site they should and shouldn’t crawl) can prevent all your important pages from being discovered

8. Build Backlinks to Your Site

Building backlinks to your site is an essential part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A backlink is a hyperlink from another website that points to your website. Search engines like Google view backlinks as “votes of confidence” or endorsements for your content, which can significantly improve your site’s credibility and authority.

When you build backlinks effectively, search engines are more likely to rank your website higher in search results because they interpret backlinks as an indicator that your content is valuable and trustworthy.

Why are Backlinks Important in SEO?

• Increase in Domain Authority: Backlinks from high-quality sites increase your website’s domain authority, which helps your site rank higher.

• Improved Search Engine Ranking: Backlinks are one of the top-ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. Websites with more quality backlinks typically rank better.

• Referral Traffic: Backlinks not only help in SEO but also drive traffic from the referring sites. If the site linking to you has a large audience, you could gain direct visitors.

• Indexing & Crawling: Search engines use backlinks to discover and crawl new content. If your page is linked to by other authoritative sites, it can get indexed faster.

How to Build Backlinks:

• Create High-Quality Content:

  • High-quality, shareable content naturally attracts backlinks. This includes blog posts, infographics, case studies, videos, and research.
  • Content that solves a problem, provides new insights, or is highly relevant is more likely to be shared and linked.

• Guest Blogging:

  • Writing guest posts on reputable websites within your industry is a great way to earn backlinks.
  • Focus on creating valuable content and include a link back to your site in the author bio or within the content.

• Broken Link Building:

  • Find broken links on websites in your niche, then reach out to the website owner to inform them of the broken link and suggest your content as a replacement.
  • This strategy helps website owners fix their links while giving you an opportunity to get a backlink.

• Influencer & Blogger Outreach:

  • Connect with influencers or bloggers in your industry and request them to link back to your content if it’s relevant.
  • Building relationships with industry influencers can lead to more backlinks and exposure.

• Skyscraper Technique:

  • Find high-performing content in your niche and create even better, more comprehensive content.
  • Once your content is published, reach out to the sites linking to the original content and ask them to link to your improved version instead.

• Directories and Resource Pages:

  • Submit your website to high-quality business directories and resource pages relevant to your industry.
  • While these links might not carry as much weight as editorial backlinks, they can still help improve your SEO.

• Participating in Forums & Communities:

  • Engage in niche-specific forums or communities (like Reddit, Quora, or industry-specific boards) and include backlinks to your site in relevant conversations.
  • Be careful to provide value and not over-promote.

• Social Media Sharing:

  • Share your content across your social media channels and encourage others to do the same. While social signals don’t directly impact SEO, it can drive traffic and increase the chances of getting backlinks.

• Press Releases:

  • Issue press releases when you have newsworthy updates (like product launches, milestones, or events) and distribute them through PR networks.
  • Journalists and bloggers may pick up your story and link back to your site.

• Competitor Backlink Analysis:

• • Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to analyze the backlinks of competitors.
  • Identify where they’re getting links from and try to get backlinks from those same sources or discover new opportunities.

Best Practices for Building Backlinks:

• Focus on Quality Over Quantity: It’s better to have a few high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites than a large number of low-quality ones.
• Avoid Black-Hat Techniques: Steer clear of tactics like buying backlinks, using link farms, or engaging in link exchange schemes. These could lead to penalties from search engines.
• Diversity: Diversify your backlink sources—get links from blogs, news sites, forums, and directories to ensure a natural backlink profile.
• Anchor Text Optimization: Use descriptive and relevant anchor text for your backlinks, but avoid over-optimization (e.g., using the same keyword excessively).

Red Flags to Avoid:

• Paid Links: Buying backlinks is against Google’s guidelines and can lead to penalties.
• Low-Quality or Spammy Sites: Links from spammy sites, irrelevant sites, or those that violate Google’s guidelines can harm your SEO.
• Link Schemes: Participating in link schemes (like link exchanges or paying for links) is a violation of search engine policies and can result in penalties.

By building backlinks the right way, you not only improve your search rankings but also drive targeted traffic to your site.

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9. Track Your SEO Results

Tracking your SEO results is essential to understanding how your website is performing in search engines and to identify areas for improvement. By tracking key SEO metrics, you can adjust your strategy and measure the success of your efforts over time. Here’s how to track your SEO results effectively:

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool to monitor and track traffic to your website, the sources of that traffic, and user behavior. Here’s how to use it:

• Organic Traffic: In Google Analytics, navigate to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels, and select Organic Search. This will show you the traffic that came from search engines.
• Top Pages: Track which pages on your site are receiving the most organic traffic (under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages).
• Bounce Rate & Time on Page: These metrics help measure engagement. If users are bouncing off your pages quickly, you may need to improve content or user experience.
• Conversion Tracking: If you have specific goals (e.g., purchases, sign-ups, or downloads), set up Goals in Google Analytics to track conversions from organic search traffic.

Use Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another free tool provided by Google that helps you monitor how your website is performing in search results.

• Search Analytics: Under the Performance section, you can see key metrics such as:
  • Impressions: How often your pages appear in search results.
  • Clicks: How many times your pages were clicked in search results.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks.
  • Average Position: The average ranking position for keywords you’re targeting.
• Index Coverage: You can check whether your pages are being indexed properly and identify any errors that may be preventing your site from ranking.
• Mobile Usability: Monitor whether your site has any mobile usability issues.

Track Keyword Rankings

Monitoring your keyword rankings is one of the most direct ways to assess your SEO efforts. There are various tools available to track keyword rankings:

• Ahrefs: Provides detailed keyword tracking reports, ranking history, and helps identify keyword opportunities.
• SEMrush: Tracks keyword performance over time, monitors competitors, and shows keyword ranking fluctuations.
• Moz: Offers a rank tracking tool that helps you see your rankings for specific keywords and how they change over time.
• Google Search Console: While not as detailed as third-party tools, it can show you the average ranking position for your keywords.

Monitor Backlinks

Backlinks are a significant part of SEO, so it’s important to track the backlinks pointing to your site. This helps you understand how your link-building efforts are progressing.

• Ahrefs: Tracks backlinks, new referring domains, lost backlinks, and gives a detailed analysis of the quality and type of backlinks.
• SEMrush: Provides a backlink audit tool to monitor backlinks and their quality.
• Google Search Console: You can see which websites are linking to your site in the Links section of GSC.

Track Organic Conversions

Measuring conversions from organic traffic helps assess how well your site is converting visitors into customers, leads, or other key actions.

• Set up Goals or Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics to track how organic traffic is converting.
• Measure conversion rates and compare them to other traffic sources (e.g., direct, referral, paid).

Use Heatmaps and User Behavior Tools

Understanding user behavior on your site can give you insights into how well your SEO efforts are performing in terms of user engagement and experience.

• Hotjar: Provides heatmaps to visualize where users are clicking, scrolling, and interacting on your pages.
• Crazy Egg: Offers heatmaps, scrollmaps, and session recordings to help you see user behavior and optimize accordingly.

Check Page Speed

Page speed is a ranking factor for SEO and directly affects user experience. Tracking how fast your site loads is essential.

• Google PageSpeed Insights: Provides a detailed analysis of your website’s performance, including mobile and desktop scores, and offers recommendations for improvement.
• GTmetrix: Offers insights on page speed, loading time, and performance grades.
• Pingdom: Analyzes page speed and identifies bottlenecks that could slow down your site.

Track Mobile Performance

With Google’s mobile-first indexing, it’s critical to monitor how your website performs on mobile devices.

• Google Search Console: Check the Mobile Usability report to see if your site has mobile issues that could impact rankings.
• Google Analytics: Compare mobile traffic and behavior with desktop traffic to ensure a smooth user experience across devices.

Monitor Local SEO Performance (if relevant)

If you’re optimizing for local SEO (e.g., for a business with a physical location), you’ll need to track local rankings and visibility.

• Google My Business: Track insights such as how often your business appears in Google search results and maps, click-through rates, and user actions (calls, website visits, etc.).
• Local Search Tracking Tools: Tools like Whitespark or BrightLocal offer local SEO rank tracking and local citation monitoring.

Use Reporting Tools

Many SEO tools allow you to set up custom reports to monitor your SEO performance over time. These tools can save you time by compiling key metrics automatically, so you don’t have to manually check each platform.

• SEMrush and Ahrefs both allow you to generate automated reports on keyword rankings, backlinks, traffic, and more.
• Google Data Studio can connect to Google Analytics and Search Console to create custom SEO reports.

Key SEO Metrics to Track:

1. Organic Traffic: Number of visitors arriving through search engines.
2. Keyword Rankings: Rankings of your targeted keywords in search results.
3. Backlinks: Number and quality of backlinks pointing to your site.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR): Percentage of people who click on your site after seeing it in search results.
5. Bounce Rate: Percentage of visitors who leave after viewing one page.
6. Conversion Rate: Percentage of visitors who complete a desired action (e.g., make a purchase or submit a contact form).
7. Page Load Speed: How fast your pages load.
8. Mobile Usability: How well your site performs on mobile devices.

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What is SEO? – Conclusions

In conclusion, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a vital digital marketing strategy that helps improve the visibility and ranking of your website on search engines like Google.

By optimizing your site’s content, structure, and technical aspects, SEO ensures that your website is discoverable by users who are actively searching for the information, products, or services you offer.

Whether it’s through keyword research, creating high-quality content, building backlinks, or improving user experience, SEO is an ongoing process that can drive organic traffic, build brand credibility, and boost conversions.

In today’s competitive digital world, mastering SEO is essential for any website looking to succeed and grow online.

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