17 Top SEO Tips For Dummies
As a beginner in search engine optimization, it is important to know at least the basics. As any type of business without doing your due diligence can result in wasted resources like time, effort, and money. Get yourself started in SEO with this newbie-friendly material — “SEO Tips For Dummies”. This can help you have an understanding and familiarization with terms you will encounter in your SEO journey.
Search engine optimization is the method to getting organic traffic to your site. This is the natural way of getting your website traffic without doing any paid advertisement campaign. Knowing how to effectively do SEO for your website can have benefits both in the short and long-term perspective.
If you are an absolute beginner, this article can help you navigate through the complex world of SEO. If you are somewhat already familiar, try reading our article, there may be some topics you have not tackled or need some refresher to keep you updated.
There can be no substitute for being mentored by an SEO expert or specialist. However if you find yourself alone and have no actual clue on where to start and what to do, don't worry this article will guide you.
Table of Contents
1. Having A List of Important Terms
Many of us started reading educational materials or guides without looking at important terms being used. Knowing the terms or abbreviations or where to find them can be a huge time saver in learning something new.
The same goes for learning SEO since there are several terms that are unfamiliar to you. But once you get the hang of it and start being familiar with at least the basic terms, reading guides and SEO articles can be a breeze. You can easily connect the dots and understand what the author is talking about.
Before we get started, let me list to you some of the terms that I think you should get acquainted with.
SEO. This is what our topic is about. Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of tweaking your website to increase visibility in the search engine results page. By having better visibility, your website will more likely get traffic that can result in increase profit to your business.
SERP. The search engine results page or SERP is the page appearing after doing a search on the search engine bar.
Traffic. These are web users visiting your website.
Query. This is the keyword or phrase you enter into the search bar.
Organic. A natural way of getting traffic without doing any paid campaigns.
Ranking. This is your website ranking in the SERP
LSI. Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI are related keywords that search engines use to deeply understand the content on a website.
There are many other terms aside from this and as you go along and encounter them it is important that you list them until you get yourself familiarized.
2. Doing Keyword Research
Google Keyword Planner
After you have familiarized yourself with basic SEO terminologies, it is now time to learn keyword research. Search engine optimization is all about doing what search engines like and one way of doing it is by having good keyword research. One of the SEO tips for beginners is having to target high search volume and low competition keywords.
If you are starting out and don't know the basics about SEO, you might have targeted keywords with high competition and might be wondering why your website is having a hard time ranking. Since you are targeting keywords with high competition, you may need more than just your SEO efforts.
It is also important to take into account LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) used by Google search, the technology used to understand what your content is about. Back in the day, keyword stuffing was used to help Google search to understand what a website is about. However, as search engines grow they learn how to identify your website by the related keywords in your content.
Knowing what battles to fight and battles to avoid is like knowing what keywords to use and not to use. This can be a winning SEO strategy. There are several keyword tools available to use, some of them are free to use while others are paid tools. Below are some of the SEO keyword research tools we recommend you use.
Google Keyword Planner. This is a free SEO tool under Google Ads. It lets you input a keyword or sets of keyword, then you can choose what country you wish to know the metrics like average monthly searches, competition, keyword ideas, and more.
Shine Ranker. It has a keyword tool that lets you find high search volume and low SEO competition keywords.
SEMRush. SEMRush's Keyword Research tool lets you do competition keyword analysis and generate a combination of words from one seed keyword.
3. Understand Long-Tail and Short-Tail Keywords
Short Tail and Long Tail Keyword Comparison
Short-Tail keywords consist of 1 or 2 words while Long-Tail keyword has 3 to 4 words or more. Long-tail keywords are usually used by web users to search for more relevant results while short-tail is about a specific topic.
Beginners in SEO can be tempted to use short tail keyword since it has a high search volume compared with long-tail keywords. It is also easy to find since they are quite popular and trending. However, these short-tail keywords are also in the high competition section, which means that if you try to rank with these keywords it is likely you will have a hard time.
An example of this would be "SEO" as your short tail. If you notice, the indexed results to a very high number but if you replaced it with a long-tail keyword such as "SEO tips for beginners", look at how the number drops. You get to rank on a specific topic where web users will likely discover your content.
4. Understanding Your Audience
One of the things you should learn when doing SEO is understanding "User Intent". This is the intention of a person using the search engine. User intent now plays a factor in search engine optimization and certain search engines like Google will return results based on the relevance of the user's queries.
User Intent can either be informational, transactional, or navigational. If a user is searching with the aim of learning or wants to get an idea about something then this is an informational intent. If someone searches with the goal of buying, then this is transactional. If a person is looking where is the nearest e.g. restaurant, then this type of intent is navigational.
Knowing which keywords to target depends on your understanding of these intents. A blog post, for example, could need an instructional keyword like "How to conduct SEO as a beginner," but a service or product page might need a transactional term like "Hire an SEO expert."
5. Create Longer Post
Google's Panda Update aimed to lower the ranking of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites". With the implementation of this update in 2012, search engines credit long-form content more than short-form content. At that time, it was reported that rankings of almost 12 percent of search results were affected by this Google update.
Long-form content is characterized by having around 1200 words or more, while short-form content ranges from 500-800 words. It is also advisable to match your content depending on your topic and your audience.
An example would be if you are a blog discussing how to do something, the post naturally should be a long-form post since you have some other sub-topics to discuss.
If your post is about describing a product e.g. a backpack, it is not right to have over 2,000 words describing it. It really would depend on what you are writing such as a landing page, blog, or product page. Always take into account the purpose of your content.
6. Good Content Means Better SEO
We often hear the saying "Content is King". Well, it is actually true since your content is what drives visitors to your website. Having good content is one of the things you can do to improve organic traffic although having half-assed content may let you get away from the web crawlers but your site's reader will not. They will start not to visit your website and eventually hurt your SEO ranking leading to decreased traffic and sales.
How Do We Make A Good Content?
Now we know that quality content is one of the factors that search engines use to rank on their results page, so how do we make one? We have listed below some SEO tips and guidelines that you may use for making good content.
Is the topic relevant to the content? -First, you make sure that your content is answering the question or your topic at hand. Your website readers will leave your website if they don't find what they are looking for. An example is your topic is about "How to Make a Cake" but the content is about making bread or something different. Your visitors will leave immediately making an impression to the search engines that your content is not relevant to what they are searching for.
Make sure to check for grammar errors, spelling, and correct punctuation. -2nd is proofreading your work before publishing it. A typo error or incorrect grammar can leave a notion to your readers that you have not made properly your work. It can also give a different meaning to others who are reading your article.
Implement proper English. For someone that is not native English, it can be a bit to get used to writing good English. Knowing when to put an "a" or not can make good content into a bad one.
Make your content readable. Typically paragraphs should be no longer than 5 sentences. Seeing a big chunk of text will turn off your site users from further reading your content. You can also do bullet points to itemize things in your content so that it is easier to look for and read.
Adding media to your post. You can either add images or videos to make your content more appealing to your readers. There is also a chance your content might be shared on different social media like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Add some citations. If you are discussing something that is not common knowledge, you can add some citations from websites with authority like .edu or .gov domains. If you are discussing some numbers or information based on research, you can cite the links to provide more information for your readers.
By following the above SEO tips, you can make your good content into great content.
7. Optimize Your Heading Tags
Heading tags are used to emphasize the importance of a topic. It lets your reader know what the content below the header is about and lets you arrange your content based on importance. Understanding how to correctly control headers is one of the SEO tips a beginner should know.
Headers are also used to aid in the creation of a hierarchical framework for your information so that it is easier for people to browse through it. You have to put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be, just like how you prepare an outline for a long paper and correctly decide the placement of the heading tags.
The heading tags are numbered 1 to 4 from major importance to least importance. Below are best practices in optimizing your headers.
Place your title in the H1 tag
Use only one H1 for every webpage
Use H2 in important headings of your content
Use H3 - H4 to define sub-headings for your page
Use relevant keywords in your subheadings
Avoid lengthy headings in your content
8. Optimize Your Title Tag And Meta Description
After you have done great and quality content, don't forget to add your primary keyword or phrase on your page title tag and meta description. We will discuss why it is important to optimize them and how it can help search engines and your users understand what your content is about.
Title Tags
Every content you make has title tags you can modify and edit to your liking. However, only relevant keywords should be entered here. You can make it direct to the point or catchy depending on how you would want it to show in Google search results.
Please also take note that you should limit the number of characters inputted in title tags to 65 characters. Although Google does not mention this, most desktop and mobile browsers are only able to show at most 65 characters. By keeping your title tag within this limit you are ensuring that your title tags will show up complete, otherwise, search engines will just cut the titles displayed in their search results.
Below are guidelines on what to keep in mind when doing your title tags.
Choose your title text that best describes the webpage content.
Your title tag for each of your webpage should be unique and different from one another.
Use brief and descriptive words, avoid lengthy title tags.
Meta Descriptions
Compared to a title tag that has to be short and concise, a meta description allows you to write a few sentences to a paragraph. Meta description tags are essential because Google can use them as snippets for your webpage in Google search results.
Meta description tags have a character limit like title tags. If you search on the web, you will find the most answers the limit is 160 characters. However, some website builders like SquareSpace suggest a much lower number which is 128 characters for their meta descriptions. They do have a note that meta descriptions can be displayed from 50 - 300 characters depending on major search engines.
Below are guidelines on what to follow in making your meta tags.
Write a meta tag description that can accurately describe your content and at the same time pick the interest of users reading your snippet in major search results. You can add call-to-action words like "read more" and "subscribe to get a free item".
Use unique meta description tags for every content on your website.
Avoid writing more than the suggested character limit as the Google search engine will just cut your snippet.
9. Make A Content Suitable For Mobile-use
One of the basic SEO tips for beginners is optimizing your content for mobile use. In 2021, the number of traffic coming from mobile usage is already at par with desktop traffic. With over 48 percent market share in the United States, it is important that we take advantage and optimize to boost our content's search engine rankings.
There are several ways on how you can make your content mobile-friendly such as the following:
Optimizing your media (e.g. images & videos)
Adjusting the font sizes of your headings to fit in mobile display
Adjusting the paragraphs for better layout in mobile use
10. Optimize Your URL
URL setting at SquareSpace
Optimizing a URL is another SEO tip for beginners. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is defined as the address of a given unique resource on the internet. Most of the content creators does not pay attention much to URL when making their article. URLs are automatically generated by your webpage builder and we tend to forget that this can be edited and optimized. However if you do change it, be sure to follow some best practices for your URLs.
Keep URLs as simple as possible
Your main keyword, title, or a variation of the two can be your URL
No keyword stuffing
Use hyphens to separate words
Use lowercase on your URL
If you change your current URL to a new one, don't forget to do a 301 (permanent) redirect
11. Changing Your Permanent Link Structure
WordPress Permalink Structure Settings
Aside from renaming your URLs, you can change how your URL is structured by adjusting the Permanent Link Structure. A permanent link structure or permalink is the full URL you see for your post on a website. Permalinks should be SEO friendly as this is important not only to search engines but also to your site visitors. It should be easy to understand.
If you are a WordPress user, the first thing you need to do when you set up your website is to change the permanent link structure. The permanent link structure of a default WordPress site is not SEO-friendly. Ideally, you should change it to something like in the above image since it is easier to understand.
12. Creating Internal, External, and Link Building
Links are important in search engine optimization. It is an essential ranking factor in Google's algorithm. There are three ways you can do with links such as linking your own content, linking others' webpage, or getting a link from another website.
Backlinks
Backlinks or Link Building are other crucial components of basic SEO. Backlinks are links from another website that are directed back to your blog post, homepage, call-to-action page, and more. While backlinks are an important deciding factor in your website's ranking, they should come from high-quality websites that are linked to the topic of your content.
Backlinks are like votes from other website owners that your content is useful. Because they have proven themselves as credible sources, the higher the domain rating of a website, the more value their backlink or "vote" has. High-quality backlinks can rapidly catapult your rating and they should be one of your top SEO concerns.
External Linking
External links are URLs that go to other websites from your page. When you employ outbound or external links, you provide readers the opportunity to learn more about the subject you're discussing. It can make your content more convincing and authoritative in a sense to the readers. Seeing you have done your research, it can make your article more credible.
However, you should only link to reputable sources from your website. If you link websites to low-quality content, your SEO rating may suffer. Sending your readers to a low-quality page can damage their perception of your website. It can also make Google question your site's integrity. Always think not only about your reputation but also about the readers. You should value your visitor’s trust in your website because once it has been broken, it is difficult to restore.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is an SEO strategy you can use to help you rank your website in search results. Internal links are links in your own domain and they go from one relevant page to another further discussing a topic. This creates a topic cluster that lets you reduce your bounce rate by having your visitors continue reading and browsing.
It also gives the impression to search engines that your topic is authoritative and relevant thus increasing your organic search rankings. Below is a guideline you can follow when doing internal linking.
Make sure to link useful content for your readers
Avoid using anchor text such as "read more" or "click here"
Make anchor text easy to understand for your readers and SEO-friendly for search engines
Avoid making too many internal links per page
13. Creating A Navigation For Your Website
Navigation plays an important factor in your SEO. It is important to search engines as it helps in determining what content the website owner thinks is essential. Aside from that, it is also a useful addition to your visitor as it helps them quickly find what they are looking for. Below are several ways you can do the navigation for your website.
Create A Navigation In Your Homepage
Some websites only show a couple of menus in their header, it can be that they want their site visitors to focus more on the content of their homepage. This can be a bit disappointing if you are looking for other details or information on their website.
If you are the owner of this kind of website, one way to address this kind of situation is to put the complete navigation in your footer section. In that way, you still get the goal of having a simple layout at the top, letting your readers focus only on the topic at hand. If they have finished reading and want to look for more, the navigation in your footer section can get them to where they need.
Using Breadcrumb Lists
Another way is to use breadcrumbs. A breadcrumb list or breadcrumb trail is a navigational aid for your website that lets you know your location on the website. It can help your site visitors navigate more effectively by keeping track and displaying the history of pages they viewed.
By having breadcrumb navigation, it can reduce the "bounce rate" of visitors for your site thus, helping your SEO. You can use codes to add breadcrumb navigation to your website. If you are a WordPress user, there are several plugins that let you automate doing this. We recommend using RankMath to make breadcrumb navigation for your website.
14. Get Your Post Indexed
Now that you have your post and have published you can either do two things. Do nothing and wait for it to show up in the SERP or have it indexed by your search engine. Google provides a free SEO tool called Google Search Console.
If you are a new website owner and happen to be using WordPress, you can do this first before you get your website or content indexed. However, if you are using a different website builder, you can move past this instruction.
Under the WordPress dashboard, go to "Settings"
Go to "Reading"
See if the Search Engine Visibility is unchecked
Getting indexed in Google, you need to follow these steps.
Go to Google Search Console
You will need to verify the website is yours by either adding a meta tag or uploading an HTML file to your website.
Look for the URL inspection tool
Paste the URL of the website or post you like for Google to get indexed
Click the "Request indexing" button
15. Track Your Results
For us to know if all our SEO efforts are making results, we need to have tools to measure data such as traffic demographics, bounce rate, and more. Google has a free SEO tool we could use and is called Google Analytics. Since this tool is free, it is important that we take advantage of and use it to help us understand and optimize our website.
Google Analytics lets you understand your website better by the data provided. By having these types of data, you can analyze and make necessary changes and optimization for your website.
The volume of traffic to your website
Learning where most of your traffics are coming from (demographics)
Learning how they found your website (either by organic, referral links and more)
The time your user spend per page
The page they visit after
Your conversion rate from visitors to either subscriber or customer
There are other SEO data analytics also available on the web which you could use. We recommend using Mangools. Mangools has an SEO tool called SiteProfiler which lets you identify the content in your website that generates the most traffic.
16. Know Your Search Engines' Rules
Like in our society, following the rules and regulations can get you out of trouble. The same applies to doing SEO in the digital marketing field. Knowing at least the basics of "White-Hat SEO" and "Black-Hat SEO" can help you be on the right track. By avoiding tactics that are not within Google's guidelines can help your website get a better ranking in the SERP.
As an SEO beginner, eventually, you will come across these terms as you study and learn more. Once you get the level of SEO mastery you will learn about "Grey-Hat SEO". There is a certain grey area between White-Hat and Black-hat SEO which you can explore. You just need to know how to play within the limits and remember to always do things in moderation.
17. Benchmark Your Page With Your Competitor
The last SEO tip for beginners we will discuss is benchmarking your content with the top web pages in the SERP. You can do this by searching your primary keyword in the search engine and seeing the results however, the only thing you can analyze here is the ranking of your competitor's website.
There are several tools you can use with comparing your URL to top competitors and we recommend using SurferSEO. SurferSEO has a SERP Analyzer which you can input your content's URL and compare it to the top pages in the SERP. It can show you several useful metrics you can use to optimize your content such as word count, content score, domain score, missing common words & phrases, and more.
Conclusion
I know this is a lot of information for someone just starting to learn search engine optimization. There are more SEO tips, however, these basic SEO tips discussed can already help you kickstart your journey. As you stay longer in the SEO industry, you will eventually learn more advanced techniques. You can eventually make an SEO checklist when making an article and optimize it to make your work easy.
Once you have done a couple of SEO for contents, the next ones start to get a lot easy. You may not fully understand all of the topics discussed however as you start doing SEO. this guide can help you. The topics discussed are arranged from start to finish as to how I do my SEO. You can make this your own or customize it to your liking.
If you like the content please feel free to comment below, any comments good or bad are welcomed. We have a free SEO checklist if you like. You can also email or call us if you have any other concerns.