SEO Basics: How to Do SEO for Beginners
Use Semrush’s Link Building Tool to start building quality backlinks. Apply SEO best practices to make your site easier to find, navigate, and rank higher in search results. These steps will strengthen your SEO foundation, whether you’re starting fresh or improving existing efforts.
Technical SEO Terminology
Google holds a number of patents related to how their search works in order to prevent manipulating search results and copying the secret formula of their multibillion-dollar business. To illustrate, our blog generates an estimated 572K visits per month from Google. Without SEO, we’d have to spend over $0.5M on ads to get that traffic. Overall, SEO benefits include free, sustainable, and passive traffic to your website month after month.
This module provides a foundational understanding of search engine optimization (SEO), covering key concepts and ranking factors. Explore the core components of SEO—on-page, off-page, content, and technical SEO. You will also explore how search engines crawl, index, and rank websites and the best practices for optimizing web pages.
Learn SEO right now with these free resources
Google Analytics and most rank trackers will allow you to create annotations to add context to your analytics dashboards. That’s why it’s always good to look at the bigger picture rather than obsessing about every little change on a daily basis. Besides seeing the performance of your pages, it is also very important to know where your traffic comes from. The All Pages report is the most basic report and one of the main reasons most people use Google Analytics – to see how much traffic their pages get. But the truth is, the vast majority of beginner users will do just fine with sticking to a couple of basic reports.
To find topics that meet both criteria, you need a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Moz is a full-service, all-around powerhouse tool, whether you are looking for keyword suggestions or want to crawl the website. Keyword research tutorial, explore online resources like Moz’s guide or Google’s Keyword Planner tutorial for BHS Links effective strategies and techniques.
You can ask questions and receive answers from both community members and Tim Stoddart. Both search engine crawlers and users need to be able to access the most important pages on your website. Writers always need sources to back their claims, so publishing original research, data, and statistics on your blog is an effective method to organically attract links. For example, if you sell cybersecurity software, you’ll see that CrowdStrike is currently ranking for the keyword “what is malware,” but the post is old and isn’t in the top position.
Work on external links
- Getting mentioned in news articles and industry publications is one of the best ways to build powerful links.
- Learn how to resolve duplicate content issues with Meghan in this Whiteboard Friday episode.
- On-page optimization means optimizing elements directly on your website through keywords, meta descriptions, tags, schema markup, internal linking, speed enhancements, and more.
- If your page has a really high bounce rate, this might be a sign that users aren’t finding what they’re looking for.
Paid tools and services, such as keyword research tools, analytics platforms, and professional consulting, can also assist with SEO. Search engines prioritize websites that are fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses — and careers. The more high-quality, relevant links you acquire, the higher your site will likely rank for related key terms. Rather than buying links, I’d recommend starting with our guide to link building. On top of that, you need to follow some simple on-page SEO best practices.
Title tags might be the most impactful part of your search appearance, and they’re also a small ranking factor! Google is known to rewrite a lot of title tags, but there are a number of best practices you can use to help your SEO. A good SEO audit tool such as Moz Pro’s Site Crawl will find issues such as broken pages, links that don’t work, duplicate content issues, and other technical SEO problems. Other good crawlers we recommend include Screaming Frog and Sitebulb. To be clear, registering your site with search engines doesn’t necessarily get you more traffic, but it can give you access to special tools to help you get there.
That’s why, when talking about SEO, most people are talking about Google SEO. The higher your pages appear in search results, the greater the chance they are discovered and clicked on. The objective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to attract website visitors who can turn into customers, clients, or a loyal audience that consistently returns.
