What Is SEO? A Complete Guide for Beginners
This article will cover the What, Why’s, How’s of search engine optimisation and connected digital marketing methods. To help beginners get a good grasp of why every business needs to optimise there businesses website and content. And how to go about building an SEO strategy that will bring a steady flow of new targeted audiences to there business for years to come.
SEO is essential to making this happen. But what is SEO, anyway? That’s what we’re here to discuss! Read on to learn all about search engine optimisation, how it works, and why it’s crucial to a businesses success.
This article will touch on the different methods used to optimise a website and its content. And explain how they work to give you a good
understanding of what SEO is.
You can then move on to our other articles. To dive deeper into each optimisation method to learn and understand each search engine optimisation method’s finer details.
Why is Search Engine Optimisation Important For Businesses?
If you spend a lot of time online at work or at home. Kicking back on social media at the end of a long day or watch videos online, you’re far from alone.
The web is where people browse, shop, and find services. And answer the questions they have. As a business, to reach your target audience, you need to get your content seen. This means getting to the top of search engines like Google and gaining visibility within your target audience.
Why should I Learn About Search Engine Optimisation?
Search engine optimisation is essential to any business in this day and age. It is key to connecting with your target market and building and introducing a healthy stream of new potential customers to your business.
So whether you are employing an SEO agency to optimise your website, have an in-house digital marketing team, or are looking at tackling it yourself. We think it is essential to have a good grasp of how search engine optimisation works. This way, you understand what is going on.
At SEOi, we want our clients to know what work is being carried out in their SEO campaigns and why. We give a full report on every action. We believe in total transparency and keeping our clients informed in what we have done, why and show the results.
Let’s get started
What Is SEO?
What is SEO? Search engine optimisation is optimising your website and content for the search engines to boost your rankings. It’s a form of content creation that uses professional strategies to build a site that search engine crawlers recognise as reputable and engaging.
When search engines identify high-quality and trustworthy content, they place it higher in the search results, giving your business a chance to make a good impression on your target audience.
How Does It Work?
Search engine optimisation works in numerous ways. However, its underlying principle remains the same. Make Google and the other search engines happy with your content.
Another way to look at this is what does Google want from your content?
Google wants to give its users the best information for their query. Whether that is an answer to a question, a product or a service they are searching for. Googles main goal is to give the user the best content for there search query.
Our job in SEO is to create great content that Google sees as the best answer and content for that search query.
- So we need to write and create great content for our target audience. Make sure we are using the right keywords.
- We need to make it easy for the search engine to find your pages and content on your site. They cant rank it if they can’t find it.
- Let the search engines know your pages and content and the search terms you should be placed in the results for.
- Keep your site speed fast, and user experiences the best they can be.
- Create engaging content that your visitors will love.
- Then we need to build authority and trust with the search engines.
Do this, and Google and the other search engines will reward you by moving you up the search results.
Types Of Search Engine Optimisation
Now that you know the basics of SEO, it’s time to dive into the many ways that you can optimise your website. If you want to attract targeted audiences to your business, SEO has you covered. Read on to learn the many ways that you can use these methods to grow your business by building a planing an excellent digital marketing and SEO strategy.
First, we need to touch on the most critical part of planning your SEO and content strategy. Keyword Research.
What is Keyword And Competition Research?
Keyword research is crucial in SEO and is where all search engine optimisation should start. You need to find the keywords and phrases your target audience uses to search for the things your business offers.
There are many tools out there that can help with your keyword research. You can use these tools and find Keywords, you think your target audience is using to find the services and or products your business offers.
Longtail and short tail keywords
When we talk about keywords, these include short tail keywords like “insurance companies”. these will have a higher monthly search count but will be more competitive.
We also mean longtail keywords. It could be “car insurance companies for under 18”. These are all keywords.
The longer the keyword, the less competitive it generally is. Longtail keywords generally have a higher conversion rate. But it will get a lower monthly search count than the short keywords.
Having a good mix of longtail keywords that you can rank for quickly. And short tail keywords with a high monthly search volume that can keep optimising over time is a good strategy.
Easy Wins
Next, look to see what keywords you are already ranking for. This could be easy wins if you are on page 2 or 3 of the search results. It means the search engine already recognise your content as being related to that search term. With some on-page SEO and off-page SEO, you can move up to the 1st page.
Answer Potential Customers Questions
You can also think about the questions your customers have about your services, products and business. If your customers are asking you these questions, there are probably people searching for the same answers online. These are great opportunities for blog posts and content marketing. Make a list of search terms, and your target audience is asking.
With so much information, online people are researching products and services online before buying in this day and age. People will, on average, seven touchpoints with a business or brand before they make a purchase.
This is where content marketing comes in. Blog posts and email are an excellent way to bring new audiences into your sales pipeline and move your audience down your sales pipeline. Writing blog posts, giving information, and answering questions customers have, you create touchpoints and build trust in the services or products you offer.
Think of the keywords and phrases your customers ask before making a purchase. You can then write blog posts answering the questions and optimising your page for the related keywords and phrase.
When you get a new lead from your website, you can send them an email with links to these articles and answering the questions they may have about your products or services.
Competitors Keywords
See what your competitors are ranking for in the search results. You can look at your competitors and their content, improve your content, and add more content to your site to outrank and beat your competitors.
Make a List of Keywords and Phrases
Make a list of keywords and phrases to optimise your content and pages for. This will be the bedrock of the SEO strategy.
Professionals will use the tools at their disposal to identify the keywords most commonly associated with what you offer. And keywords your website already ranks for. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush will give these professionals the keywords that you currently rank for.
These professional tools are costly and quite intense. You can see the number of times each keyword is searched for monthly and how difficult it will be for your page to rank. By looking at the competition.
We offer an affordable all in one rank tracker tool that provides a keyword research tool and everything a business needs to help them with there SEO.
We also offer a free SEO strategy. Sign up for a free account on SEOi we will carry out keyword research and build you a strategy to follow that we will upload to your dashboard.
What is On-Site SEO
Once the comprehensive research has been carried out, the next stage is to optimise the sites, pages, and content for the search engines, visitors, and keywords and phrases.
Website Structure and Navigation
Internal links and navigation are crucial for a positive user experience and allow search engines and visitors to find and navigate your content and pages. Ensure your pages are organised in a good structure and grouped so that it makes sense to visitors. You don’t want any of your important pages to be any more than two clicks away. It is also best practice to have your content well balanced.
Your URLs
You want to try and add your keywords to your URLs. This will help search engines understand what your page is about and what keywords you should rank for. Remember, shorter URLs do better in page results, so find a good balance between being descriptive and length.
What is Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to making the technical aspects of your website more appealing to search engine crawlers. You want to make your site easier to navigate, faster, semantically understandable to crawlers, and easier to interpret.
Making it easy for search engines to find all your pages and content is a big part of on-Site SEO. Still, it’s generally thought of as its own form of optimisation.
Having appropriate tags, easy-to-read and well-organised code, helpful meta descriptions, and fast run-times are essential to your site. We offer technical SEO and on-page SEO Services as a one time charge to put your website in the best possible place to rank for your target keywords.
Hiring a technical SEO professional is one option, or you can take this on your self. Still, you need to understand how this should be applied. If you are using WordPress, there are many great plugins available to help with technical SEO. You can read more about technical SEO in this article.
On-Page vs Off-Page SEO
On-page and off-page SEO are the primary forms of search engine optimisation.
On-page SEO describes the things you do within your website to get a higher ranking. Including the text and headings, video and images, metadata, external and internal links and related content on the site. All help to Let the search engines know what your page is about. And show it is a good source of information and helps boost your credibility to search engine. And come under on-page SEO.
On the other hand, off-page SEO describes SEO practises that take place outside the confines of your website. That signals to the search engines your site can be trusted, and is an authority in your niche and is a good option in the search results.
What is On-Page SEO
Some aspects of on-page SEO and technical SEO include:
Use of relevant keywords on your website
Production of quality content that engages users
Titles and descriptions
HTML used in web coding (Metadata)
The next thing to do is optimise the pages for given keywords. This is done with meta tags, optimising images, heading and subheadings and many other factors. You can read more in the following article, What is On-Page SEO.
Optimise your metadata
You can add the keywords and related keywords to the metadata, including the title tag and description meta tag on each page. These are what you see in the search results.
Optimise your content and headings
Another way to optimise a page for specific keywords is to add them and related keywords to your headings and content. It is important to write great content. If you are optimising the page for the right keywords, this should happen naturally. You don’t want to stuff in keywords, so it ruins the user experience.
Optimise your image alt tags.
Content Marketing for SEO
Content marketing is a large part of SEO, creating and adding content to your site related to your business. Answering the questions and informing your visitors is crucial to building your authority with the search engines and your target audience.
It shows the search engines that your business is heavily associated with these keywords and boosts your page rankings for your pages.
Your content that you produce must be engaging for users. People decide whether or not to stay on a webpage within 15 seconds of clicking on it, so if the content isn’t immediately engaging, they’ll click away. Your content should keep your visitors engaged by giving them the information they are looking for. Keeping them on your page is essential to your rankings.
Sites that people click away from search engines see this as a negative vote, impacting your rankings on the search engines.
Now you have a good understanding of on-page and technical SEO, let’s take a look at off-page SEO.
What is Off-Page SEO
Off-pages SEO is the signs the search engines pick up from other sites from the internet. That shows them your site can be trusted and is a good source of information for a given search term or keyword, including backlinks from your from other sites to your site. Social Media likes and share are also a way of building trust and authority with the search engines.
Backlink Building
Link building is still the most significant part of what search engines use to rank your site in the search results. Backlinks from other relevant websites build authority and trust with the search engines. Backlinks from relevant, high domain authority sites are like votes from an already trusted site.
Social Media Signals
Social signals that direct users to your page and generating likes and shares on social media. Show the search engines that people like your content and are happy to share it. This sending significant signals to the search engines.
Citations building
Adding your business to trusted citation site and directories and ensures the information is consistent throughout the internet. Business citations are a great way to let the search engines know you are a reputable business and that your information is up to date.
Business citation is a key ranking factor in local SEO.
Online Reviews
Collect business reviews from your clients on google my business page and Facebook, and other review sites. As we touched on before, consumers are researching business, products services online before they buy. Building a good reputation online is key and noted by search engines.
Brand Mentions
Getting your brand mentioned online and in news and other publications is another way to send signals to the search engines. You are a trusted company.
All of the above come under off-page SEO. Another essential part of SEO is local SEO, especially for local and small business or businesses without a large budget for digital marketing. It can be cost-effective and easier to aim for your local keywords.
What is Local SEO
If you’ve heard of SEO before, you likely have also heard of local SEO. But what is local SEO, anyway?
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably searched for services using the term (near me) before. Or when you search for services and include a city or town in the search term. The pages that appear when you make this Smartphone search have optimised for local SEO.
Local SEO Strategy
Local SEO strategies are simply those that make your webpage visible to people who search in your area. You can use local keywords to drive traffic. You can also set things up so that your business is displayed to people who have enabled location on their device and are in a specific radius.
Optimising your pages for local searches is an important way to drive traffic to businesses with brick-and-mortar stores or offices. It’s also critical for those that only ship to certain areas or provide a service specific to the local area.
What is Mobile SEO
Speaking of Smartphone services, over half of the people worldwide make searches almost exclusively from mobile devices. By 2025, this number will have risen to around 72.6%.
Mobile SEO is, as you may have guessed, optimising your content and website to mobile users. When designing your website, your navigation, layout, and content format must cater to mobile users.
Allowing you to reach more people on their mobiles as the design will be appealing to those on iOS and Android devices. It won’t be strange and challenging to navigate the desktop format that causes them to click away.
Google will penalise you in the mobile search results if it finds your site is not optimised for mobile users.
How Can SEO Transform Your Business?
At this point, you likely think that there are an overwhelming amount of ways that SEO can benefit your website and business. “But where do I start”. This where we come in.
Our SEO Platform has everything you need, whether you would like to learn to manage your own SEO campaigns and purchase our SEO packages as you need them.
Or if you would like to use our Managed SEO Service, where we do all the hard work for you. Our SEO platform has everything you need to manage and stay on top of your businesses digital marketing.
Sign up for free and get access to your SEO Managers dashboard. We will carry out a free site audit and build you a knockout SEO strategy for you to follow. You can also access our learning hub and SEO tools to understand where your site needs work and find the most profitable keywords. Book a call for some advice and help on how you can get started.
SEO is the single best way to boost your online visibility. Read on to learn some specific benefits to SEO and why it can change your business for the better.
Boost targeted Web Traffic.
92% of search engine users don’t go past the first page of results after searching. Because of this, sites that are on page 2 and beyond get virtually no traffic.
In fact, we found that the top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks.
Investing in an SEO campaign will help you to place more highly in search engines. Boosts your overall visibility and drives targeted traffic to your website. Once people are on your page, they can browse and learn about your services. It gives you a chance to make an impression and sell your services to users who have actively looked for them online.
Getting more clicks on your website also looks good to search engine crawlers. When these crawlers see that many people are clicking on your page, they believe you to be more relevant and reputable than other sites. In this way, SEO is cyclical. Getting more traffic today means that you’ll get more traffic in the future as well!
Conversion Optimisation To Generate Leads
When more people click on your website, you’ll have the opportunities to convert the visitor into a lead. Make sure you have a call to action on your page landing page. A call to action could be a “contact us” form a “call now” or “sign up for our newsletter”. You can also add a lead magnet. Offer some extra information as a download in return for their name and email. People will enter their name, email address. Allowing you to keep in contact, build trust and move them down your sales funnel.
It also gives you the contact information of people interested in your business, allowing you to reach out to them with exclusive offers.
Integrates With Other Marketing Strategies
As you can see, SEO can allow you to build your other digital marketing strategies. By collecting new followers on social media, creating a engage email list and much more.
SEO allows you to get the most out of your site and engage and build your online audience and reputation.
Invest in Long-Term Success
In order to understand why SEO leads to long-term success, it’s critical to know that every well-optimised page on your site is a doorway for targeted audiences to come through to your business. They will keep bringing target visitors to your business for years to come. The more well researched and optimised content you add, the more doorways you add to your business.
Every page of your site and every blog post is there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for new people to be introduced to your business at no extra cost. Each piece of content is like a sale man selling your business to potential customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Suppose you have a presence on search engines. In that case, you’ll essentially be able to run your business at all hours. Putting you in front of people looking for your products and services—letting people see what you offer if you do an excellent job on your content, you will sell yourself to them without even knowing.
Even if your business is closed for the day (or the week), you can still do business with those who are interested in making a purchase.
24/7 service is, of course, a recipe for success.
Conclusion
In short, SEO is one of the most critical strategies in building and growing any business.
Now that you know what SEO is, how you can use it, and why it’s a critical aspect of business success, it’s time to get started. Please create an account with us to access our free Learning Hub, SEO Resources and SEO tools and other services. Our SEO platform and agency offer world-class SEO solutions to any business and situation.
We look forward to hearing from you soon!