If you know what SEO stands for, you probably don’t need to read this article. However, if you have heard about the term but not quite sure what it’s about, then this article is for you. In this post, you will find out what SEO is, why it is important, how to do SEO and what you can (and need to) do from the very beginning when you set up your website or blog.
This article is a small comprehensive article about SEO for beginner bloggers, what it is, how SEO is done right from the start of blogging.
What is SEO?
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SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, you are trying to make sure that your website or content appears high on the search engines’ result. Most of the time, we refer to Google as it accounts for 90% of the total search volume, whereas Bing only takes up 5% of the market share. The remaining is made up from Yahoo!, Baidu, Duck Duck Go, and other search engines. (Source)
Why is SEO important for your website?
When you search for something on Google, something like this will come up:
Google will crawl billions of websites available on the World Wide Web to find the most relevant answers to your query.
The goal of SEO, hence, is to send signals to Google, informing them that your content is what the user is looking for. The higher you rank, the more traffic you will get. A research done by backlinko.com shows that the #1 result in Google’s organic search results is 10x more likely to receive a click compared to a page in #10 spot.
SEO for new websites and blogs
3 important elements contribute to your SEO performance:
- Technical SEO: This refers to your site structure, website speed, sitemap, etc.
- On page SEO: This is about optimizing the content on your website. While it’s important to provide engaging, relevant information for your audience, it’s also crucial to make sure that it’s easy for search engines to crawl the website and understand its content and structure.
- Off page SEO: This refers to the activities outside of your website that you can do to signal to Google that yours is a credible, trustworthy site that provides valuable information for users. Note: If you want to understand off page SEO read this Off Page SEO Techniques and Checklist: Know Step by Step [2019 Edition]
5 things you need to do for your new website:
#1. Get your site structure right
The site structure determines how the information on your website will be organized. When you first start a blog or website, it’s easy to be engulfed in the design and content of the website.
You have a series of articles to publish, a cool infographic to share, and you want the website to be stylish and modern.
However, it’s important to take a step back to think about how all this information should be organized and this is going to be the best SEO for Beginner bloggers.
Having a well-structured website also means that it is more user-friendly.
Your audience will know where to find what they need, which leads to more conversions. Here’s a great guide on all you need to know about your site structure, hierarchy, and the best practices.
#2. Do a keyword Research
It’s always good to have a keyword plan defined, even if you are creating a new website from scratch. While you know what you are writing about, you might not be targeting the right keywords – the ones people use to search, and that’s a missed opportunity. Tools like Google Keyword Planner will help you identify new opportunities.
For example, you are setting up a website or blog about children’s toys. Simply input the topic into the planner, Google will let you know that the keyword “toys” is searched 1000 – 10000 times every month.
However, that may be too broad, and you may end up attracting a very different audience. From the result, you can see that people also search for “toys for kids”, and even more specific, “baby toys” and “toys for boys”. These are opportunities you can tap into.
Read this: SEO Optimization Techniques for Blog to Rank Instantly in Google SERP
#3. Optimize your on-page content for selected keywords
Once you have identified the right keywords, you will need to make sure that your pages and articles are optimized for them. Here’s an easy checklist to follow:
- Provide useful content for your reader. High ranking results tend to be long in-depth articles. As a guideline, you can aim for 800-1000 words for your content. You need to adapt the length to your style, industry, and topic. Don’t write just to hit the word count. If the information can be presented with an infographic, an image or a video, try it. The goal here is to be useful to your audience.
- Optimize your images. If you include photos on the website, check that:
- The images are resized to the size that you need. The website will load the full size of the pictures, so if they are too big, it will slow down the site significantly, and that’s not great for SEO.
- There is a proper alternate tag for all images. When a website fails to load a photo, it will display the alternate tag instead. Make sure that the keyword is included when appropriate.
- Properly define meta title and meta description. These determine how your result will be displayed on the search result page. Google usually displays the first 50-60 characters of the title and 155-160 characters of the description, so make sure that the most relevant information and keywords are within this limit.
#4. Include internal and external links
- Internal linking: Linking to other pages within your website helps to establish the site structure, provide more information for your audience and make it easier for your content to be crawled and found.
- External linking: While it may seem counterintuitive to like to page outside of your website, by linking to trustworthy sites within your industry, you can increase your relevance and popularity of your own.
Must Read: SEO Blog: 30+ Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic
#5. Work on off page SEO
Once you have managed to get everything on your site right, it’s time to work on your off page SEO, i.e. getting people to link back to your content. Here you learn How to do SEO and the more high-quality websites point to your content, the better it is. Here’s a great guide to get you started.This article is written by Khanh Tran from Villa Finder.
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