Simple SEO Guide For Beginners | 2022 Edition
I’ll not bore you with a long-form blog with unimportant stuff but to clear the air regarding SEO, let me just quickly share what is SEO at the fundamental level and why is it important?
Here’s a quick Wikipedia definition of the term.
SEO is “The process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results.” SEO can help drive more relevant traffic, leads, sales, and ultimately revenue and profit for your business.
Organic search accounts for more traffic than all other sources of traffic combined. Why not leverage it?
Benefits of SEO:
- You get more organic traffic.
- You get consistent traffic, unlike social media.
- You don’t have to pay a single penny “it’s free traffic”
Setting up for SEO success checklist:
It’s much easier to do SEO well when your website is properly set up for SEO success.
Let’s take a look at how to do that.
- Get a good domain — The name of your business with no hyphens. It should also be short & memorable.
- Use a good website builder platform — Webflow is recommended | No coding knowledge required.
- Use a good web host — Check this blog out for further details.
- Create a positive user experience
- Create a logical site structure
- Use a logical URL structure
- Install a good SEO plugin — YoastSEO for WordPress
I just published my site, why can’t I see it on Google?
SEO helps you to rank higher, but you can’t rank higher if Google doesn’t even know your website exists in the first place.
Google will eventually find your website on its own, but there are a couple of key benefits to manually submitting your site:
- Faster discovery. Most new websites don’t have any backlinks from other websites, so it might take time for Google to discover them.
- Improve your website. Google Search Console gives recommendations on how to improve and optimize your website.
The first step to submitting your website to Google is to find your sitemap.
Sitemaps are files that list all of the important pages on your website. You can usually find yours by typing one of these URLs into your browser:
- website.com/sitemap.xml
- website.com/sitemap_index.xml
If it’s not there, go to website.com/robots.txt where it’ll usually be listed.
If it’s not there either, you probably don’t have one. Check out this guide to creating a sitemap.
The second step is to create a free Google Search Console account and submit your sitemap.
Free SEO tools
1. Keyword research tools
Google Keyword Planner
Find unique keyword ideas.
Keyword Generator
Generate hundreds of keyword ideas.
SERP Checker
Check the estimated search traffic potential for the topic based on the top three results.
Keyword Difficulty Checker
Check the Keyword Difficulty (KD) score of the keyword.
2. On-page SEO tools
Yoast SEO
Add title tags and meta descriptions to WordPress posts and pages.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Find missing title tags, meta descriptions, and alt text anywhere on your site.
3. Link building tools
Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker
See the top 100 backlinks to any website or web page.
HARO
Get link opportunities daily. (It’s technically more of a service than a tool)
Gmail
Send outreach emails to link prospects. No fancy outreach software is needed.
4. Technical SEO tools
Google Search Console
Find index coverage errors, page speed issues, and more.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Find 100+ SEO issues on your website, including many technical issues.
The key is to understand this,
SEO optimization is a marathon, not a quick sprint, you’ll start winning if are consistent with it.
About me:
I’m Harsh Makwana, a brand and web designer from India.
To contact me, email: theharshmak@gmail.com
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