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Beginners Guide To SEO

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I know I have published a previous beginners guide to SEO (search engine optimization) however I have other ideas to share that might make it easier to understand.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can drive visitors to your website at a fraction of the cost of paid advertising. People often neglect SEO or some even think they are doing it. Other webmasters have told me to look at their websites and I can see no SEO when they claim they have mastered that area.
People send me articles that have no SEO in them at all! In fact, I read the articles and wonder to myself what the hell the post is about? If I am doing this then how do you think the search engines will find this content?

SEO is based on a few simple rules you can start applying to your website today. Here is my version of a beginners guide to SEO.

What Is SEO?

SEO is one way you help people find your website. It’s similar to how retailers put their stores in the busiest part of town so that customers frequently drive by their location. Every time you drive by a McDonald’s, there’s a chance you might stop in for a burger. Similarly, every time you see a search result from a particular organization, you might visit their site to read an article or buy an item.

The busy part of the Internet—the best place for your online location—is in the search engines listings over a billion people read every day. You can survive without  Google traffic but it is much easier when you get that free traffic cream.

There are two ways to make your site appear in search engines listings: search engine optimization and advertising. Advertising is expensive, but if it works for you, you don’t need to give it up—you can combine it with SEO to increase your traffic. (For example, Amazon.com, a company with lots of Internet savvy, uses both SEO and advertising to boost their sales.)

But skipping ads altogether and using just SEO has one huge advantage: it’s practically free. All you need is to learn a few simple techniques that help search engines find your website content.

Onpage search engine optimization

On page SEO is all about optimising the content or the article on your website. For example you need to have the right keyword targeted in the first place, then you need to have the right keyword density scattered in the article, and then you need to have related keywords mentioned in the article. It is also recommended that you use the keyword in your title, your URL, your tags and descriptions. I might have missed a few steps here so please forgive me. You must know I use SEOPressor to keep me on the right track with Onpage SEO.

Off page search engine optimization

This is all about everything that leads back to your website. Of course it is all centered around the keywords that you chose in the first place. Basically search engine optimization is all about keywords and this is how we choose the anchor text that will link back to our website. This anchor text tells the search engines what our page is about. If you are putting the wrong anchor text out onto the Internet you are telling the search engines the wrong message.

SEO = Keywords

You must create content that people want to see and you must have the right words that can match what the humans are typing into the search engines. This is not easy to understand so I have a video about researching keywords.

Do I Really Need SEO?

Not in all cases—you can use other techniques to drive visitors to your website. Advertising, affiliate programs, and referrals all continue to work for numerous websites. It really depends on what type of blog or website you have. They are all individuals and require different attention. But here is the thing.. Would you be satisfied with 5 visits a day to your article or page or would you like 200? This is the difference between a post or page that has no SEO and one that has.

The best thing for you to do is to try a little SEO on your website and see how much it helps. I believe that my tips to dominate Google will increase your traffic to about 80% of its maximum level, but we all know that this is genuine hard work.

Too much optimization can also yield diminishing results, although it might be important in competitive markets. People often have no idea when to stop doing SEO. I like to do a bit and then see the results. For example to promote a page or pillar article I would start with:

  • 5 incoming links (guest posts, ezine articles, free blogs)
  • 3 incoming links (forums, yahoo answers)
  • 5 keyword comments (on sites using Commentluv)

This is just a basic example of what you can do and everyone does this different. To tell the truth I do not use commenting too much, only probably by accident, as I am more for submitting articles.

How Much Does SEO Cost?

This is perhaps the best part about SEO—you can apply all of the most important SEO principles to any existing website for free. All you need to do is learn these SEO techniques and spend 5–10 minutes on each page of your website. Since over half of all websites on the Internet have less than 6 pages, you can probably optimize your website in less than an hour.

For bigger blogs you might need some help from a professional SEO. The SEO cost of such services varies. If you are not sure what to do then an easy way to get some SEO done is to get someone to help you submit articles.

What Software Do You Need for SEO?

You don’t need any special software, but I do highly recommend two applications. The first is a Web traffic analysis program such as Google Analytics. Traffic analysis will tell you if SEO is working.

If you apply SEO methods correctly, you should see your traffic increase during the month or two after you start using SEO. But even more important—you’ll notice if traffic decreases because something went wrong.

The other application I recommend is a keyword research tool. There are several paid research tools, but I personally use the free keyword tool from Google. Log into your Google account, sign up for AdWords (it’s free if you don’t buy ads), and launch the research tool. Type in keywords related to your website to see how popular they are.

I do use Keyword Elite occasionally and probably should do more often as it does save a lot of precious time.

SEO Basics: How Search Engines See Your Site

The most important thing to remember during SEO is that search engines aren’t people. They’re robots. They won’t rank your website higher because you have nice wallpaper or a video of cute kittens. In fact, search engine robots can’t even see wallpaper or videos. Newbies find it hard to understand how SEO works and it is only when they see direct results from their SEO actions

Search engine robots (also called spiders) deal almost exclusively with the text on your website. They look at the title of your page, its headers, its paragraph text, and its links—but they ignore almost everything else. For more details see our previous article about what search engine bots see.

Take a moment to look at your website the way robots see it. Go to your favorite page on your website and copy all the text (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C on most Web browsers). Then open Windows Notepad and paste in all the text (Ctrl-V).

Now, looking at your page the way robots see it, can you quickly figure out what your website is about? Or is the important part of your website buried under unnecessary information and menus?

Getting The Top Spot In Search Results

Studies have shown that the majority of search engine traffic goes to the top three sites listed in a search result. That’s where you want your site to appear.

To get your site in the top results, you need to do three things:

  1. Choose a keyword (use the Google keyword research tool)
  2. Make sure the keyword appears on your page where robots will see it (use the Notepad trick)
  3. Make sure other people link to your website (18 link building techniques might help)

How People See Search Results

It isn’t enough to get the top spot in search results—you also need to get people to click the link to your site.

Think about how you use search results. If you’re like most people, you focus on the page titles in search results. Those titles come straight from the webpages, so now take a look at the titles of your own webpages and ask yourself, “would I click on a page with that title?”

If your titles are boring or irrelevant, getting the top spot in a search engine listing is useless because nobody will click links to your site.

Another thing people will see is the description you have used for you page. You should make this interesting and also sprinkle one or two keywords amongst it.

Can SEO Plugins Help?

To answer this question depends greatly on what WordPress theme you are using. Mostly all premium WordPress themes have the basic SEO requirements included. For example both Thesis and Elegant Themes have areas for SEO to be added.

I am using the Thesis theme so it has a spot for me to add a description, SEO title, and keywords. I am also using the free Yoast WordPress SEO plugin and SEOPressor. With this combination I see fantastic results.

Your SEO Goal

To get started with SEO, set a goal. For example, “by the end of the month, my website will appear in the top 10 listings for at least one of the 10 keywords I choose.”

Then do the following:

  1. Think of ten things visitors to your website will search for
  2. Boil those things down into keywords
  3. Check to see if you have the best keyword possible in Google Adwords keyword tool
  4. Make sure pages on your website include the keywords
  5. Gather high-quality links to your website (note—you can’t use links from Facebook, Twitter, and many other popular sites because they use a linking technique called “nofollow” to cut down on abuse)
  6. Make sure every page on your website has at least one link from another page on your website. (But try to avoid putting more than 100 links on any one page)
  7. Make sure every page on your site has an interesting title
  8. Watch your traffic stats and search for your keywords every week or two to see if your SEO is working

One final tip: I like to think of SEO as an experiment where I test out various techniques to see what works. For this, I highly recommend the scientist’s best friend—the composition book. Every time you make a change to your website, write a quick note plus how much traffic you receive—and date it. Then every week, make a quick note about whether traffic went up, down, or stayed roughly the same. From these quick, simple notes, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t, so that you can advance beyond beginners’ SEO.

Beginners Guide To SEO – Where Does SEO Fit into the Picture?

SEO is just one of the many factors that make up this business. You cannot create killer content and not apply SEO to it as it would be a crime. You cannot have great content that is SEOed onpage without the offpage boxes ticked too. You cannot entice website traffic to your blog with no navigation for them to travel through your offerings. Everything hand in hand works well together.

Download a free PDF report about SEO for beginners.

Comments

  1. Hey Mitz,
    Nice post and Thanks for sharing this post with us. SEO is the most important factor in blogging and also the most difficult thing to understand. I learned lots of good things from this post.
    Sudipto recently posted..Free Messaging Apps For Android

    • I believe that good content has the keywords in it anyway, otherwise you are not covering the subject correctly. 🙂 SEOpressor stops you from spamming and keeps you on track.

  8. I feel that SEO used to be important years before, now its very diffcult for everyday bloggers to do anything about SEO. Google is trying to kill everything from Article Marketing to Guest Posting.

    Every efforts of ours is going in vain. What we have in our hands is our website content. A great content will always lead to more traffic and conversions. There are many bloggers who do not depend on Google.
    Rohan Shankar recently posted..Ultimate List of Top 25 Online Shopping Websites in India

    • Yes it does feel like that sometimes but the basics of SEO is still needed. I am not really sure what Google is doing now but it seems that the people pumping out the content are winning. The new changes on May 22nd are tougher than ever but they haven’t blackbanned guest posting yet. I really do not think they can. 🙂
      mitz recently posted..How SEO Works Under the Hood of your WordPress Website

  9. I have been running my car valeting website for around a year I still class myself as a beginner. So reading this sort of information is great. The only question I have is why do i find my site going up and down the SERPS all the time. While others dont seem to move
    Richard recently posted..Cleaning Leather Interiors

  10. Great article even if it was written a few years ago but the principles are still the same, there are just a lot more tools one could use

    • SEO is completely a bit slow but a continued term process. In the field of SEO, quality has always scored above quantity and delivering exclusive quality of content in a website is always vital to enhance Google SERP rankings.It will surely be beneficial for me especially while doing SEO for any website. Once again thank you, for sharing your knowledge with us.

  11. Great article and still relevant today, except for the issue of Social Media, which is indeed factored into SEO results on Google.

  17. One cheap SEO method that can get you best results is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites. Depending on the websites that you would like to exchange links with, this tool could even cost you nothing at all. This very basic part of SEO is often ignored or not fully appreciated by internet marketers. To implement it does not require any knowledge of the more technical aspects of SEO but the impact on ranking can be considerable. Good SEO requires work and patience. This is why you can find countless SEO companies on the web. The actual process is quite simple but does require effort on a regular basis.

  19. Thanks for sharing this blog post as its a great guide for beginners like me who are more into content but not into seo today i as a blogger feel that without seo its not easy to runa good blog and dude thanks

  20. The organic positioning campaigns on the search engines offer several distinct advantages over pay-per click advertising. For example:
    • Propensity to click – numerous studies have shown that people preferentially click on organic results
    • Trust – other studies indicate that the confidence level for organic results is much higher than that of paid results, and that paid results are seen as a nuisance by some users
    • Relevance – the users consider the organic results of search engines more relevant than paid
    However, I agree with the above article, namely that it is useful to work with SERP positioning and advertising campaign together.
    Luisa recently posted..Straordinari risultati con le cellule staminali

  21. I resemble the crying baby in the pic since I have started trying to rank my website on the web. Thanks for the guidelines. I will follow these.
    Rajnish Anand recently posted..Do Braces Hurt?

      • I know my first couple of weeks I didn’t cry but I was certainly upset! Learning how to write good content on the site, that also had a good amount of keywords on every page was trouble enough. Then reading through debates of Do Follow and No Follow and making it look natural. I’m still trying to understand it all. What’s funny is I’m in the sales department and just took all this for granted. Now I’m learning it and man is it hard work. Keep up the good work Rajnish, you’ll get it.
        Brandon recently posted..Charlotte Search Engine Optimization

  22. Great guide to seo for beginners!

    Because of SEO I get a lot more visitors. I’ve been outsourcing it for a week now, and I pay a lot of money for it. But still I dropep down in ranking because I myself stopped doing the seo and linkbuilding.
    When you get your number 1 spot, you should not stop. Keep working on it to make sure that no one can take that number 1 spot from you. At least if you are in a competitive market.
    Danny recently posted..Black & Decker NPP2018 18-Volt Cordless Electric Pole Chain Saw

    • Yeah I also experienced this that I stopped the SEO and my ranking dropped. So now, I’m back and all is well now. Thanks though to your great post, It will be of great.

  23. Too much advertisements can really ruin your chances of getting any good traffic, much less conversions. So I see its best to maximize the potential of your SEO strategy, meaning highly optimizing your site with an intermixed SEO model available and applicable/favorable to your site’s needs.

  25. Hi mitz, I made a blog yesterday on Blogger (blogspot), I want to start building links on that blog so I will be indexed faster. By the way, is there any SEO plug-in for blogspot?

    • I do not really do SEO on Blogger as it has too many restrictions for me..I do have blogs there but only as linkwheels to promote bigger WordPress websites.

  26. I noticed you say that you use SEOPressor. Do you really think that using extra header tags, bolds, italics and underlines can make a difference. I did that stuff 10 years ago but have since forgotten about it. I’d be interested to hear if anyone thinks that it is worth the $100 they charge.
    Chris recently posted..Ways to Save Money on Food

    • I guess if you are making money then it wouldn’t matter about the cost because SEOpressor has paid for itself 1000 times over for me… There are other options though..there always is..:)

    • That is a pretty broad question that is not easy to answer in a comment. You will need to search for a few more articles to do with SEO. There are heaps on this blog! 🙂

  30. As a rule for myself, I practice using as many SEO techniques I can whenever I build a website.

    That way I develop a good habit to get the website’s presence known on the internet.

    I like SEO. It really make sense, especially when it comes to how the spiders crawl your site.

    I’ve learned that I need to build websites that are human and search engine friendly.
    SteveBalliett recently posted..The Google Sniper Guide

  31. All the words were truly fantastic. I have been using Google Analytic’s and it had really helpful for me to understand the Search term for the sites.
    I have one question, how can i apply seo on a sites which are related to Jokes and Short messages ?
    Rama recently posted..Funny Adult Jokes – Best Idea for…

  33. Seo is important to improve a ranking on a search engine.the major purpose of seo is to show a sites in users in easy way.it helps to boost your online business.
    harrysom recently posted..Detox Pro

  34. SEO is the real key to the success of any online business. While SEO holds such an important place in the online business, this is what most internet marketing newbies ignore, owing to lack of knowledge. Lack of SEO knowledge can hit them right from choosing the domain name, keywords and products to promote.

    This is an awesome website, a kind of an online guide for newbies who can implement these strategies and make their first sale.
    Hendrik recently posted..Welche Link-Quellen nutzen Sie für Ihren Linkaufbau?

  36. Great post, i sort have a handle on all thats on here but again a check list is handy – i esspcially like you idea about the the composition book so i can keep a track of exactly what does what to where…

    Cheers,

    Luke

  37. Hi Mitz!

    This is a great introduction to SEO. I really liked the tip about writing post titles and meta descriptions that would be appealing to the person searching. It’s kind of like writing an ad, isn’t it.

    Also, I was wondering about SEOPressor. How long have you been using it? And did you notice a change in your ability to rank for keywords after you started using it?

    Thanks!

    Todd
    Todd recently posted..Facebook, Friends, And The Power Of “Like” Marketing

    • When I did get SEOPressor I applied it to old posts and saw some amazing results…I would not live without it now..that is how good it is…But of course you can do it yourself but I do not want to have to think anymore than I have to..

  38. This is a wonderful post about SEO. Even i am also working as SEO. But you have provided some productive knowledge about it. Thanks a lot dear.
    Nerissa recently posted..Unlock iPhone 4

  39. Search Engine optimization or SEO is used widely by people who want to increase the traffic to their sites. It is a very effective way to do this but then there are other ways to increase traffic. The tips you have given are great and I have also been more informed on SEO.

  40. Hey Mitz,

    I find it really interesting to learn what specific methods (like your 5-3-5 method) people use for getting backlinks for a blog post that they want to get ranked. I think that a lot of people underestimate the ability for blog commenting to build substantial domain authority as well as page specific links. It is one reason that I love Commentluv so much.
    Ted recently posted..Free Content For Your Blog or Website

    • I agree that sometimes people underestimate commenting as part of search engine optimization. If you like commenting you should do it, if you like submitting articles you should do it. Either way you will get a link and it will count towards your search engine optimization methods.

      Many people often think there is the right way and a wrong way to search engine optimization. You do not need to be perfect you just need to take action. 🙂
      mitz recently posted..10 Point SEO Checklist for New WordPress Webmasters

  41. Great post for beginners – the only thing I’d add is to the software area. Once you do get competent with the basics of SEO, the first thing I went for, and I recommend you go for, is Market Samurai. Really helps with competition analysis and finding backlink opportunities
    Sandip recently posted..Internet Marketing Products

  42. Wow, lots covered here! well done.

    Another really important part of SEO that relates to your point about not having to necessarily continue doing it is that you only have to beat your competitors. You don’t have to implement every single SEO strategy known to man, you just need to out-do your competitors for the keywords.

    Of course it’s important to keep your eyes on your competitors because they will come back at you but it’s a post that is often missed.
    dan recently posted..Small business search engine domination

    • Hi Dan,
      Your right about outdoing your competitors. You should always be checking the rankings because you might have already out rank them and that means you’ve done enough now. A little search engine optimization maintenance would be required but it is relatively easy to keep a position once you get it. 🙂
      mitz recently posted..10 Point SEO Checklist for New WordPress Webmasters

  44. Being a writer, I’ve always liked article submission as a link-building tactic, but didn’t the dreaded Google Panda update reduce the value of links from article directories — even the higher PR ones?
    Nice SEO primer, BTW!

  46. Great post, Mitz. I think that over the long term, there is no substitute for SEO. Paid advertising does help when time is of the essence, so big companies or a product available for a limited period might go that route for anyone seeking a long running positioning in search results, SEO is definitely something they should look at, in addition to paid advertising or what other modes they use alongside.

    -Jean
    Jean recently posted..The risks of driving on worn tires

    • I notice that a lot of big companies neglect the SEO so I can come in and dominate…They do rely on paid advertising and it leaves a big hole for everyone else. 🙂

  48. It’s all about making it as comprehensive as possible. I think if you really know what you are doing, from being the fundamentals to the advanced level, it’s actually pretty easy and it will eventually give you a great result
    Ricardus from recently posted..Oktoberfest with 50% off for Freedom Plan

  49. SEO helps you to attract more visitors to join you on your web. SEO can also help you for your social media. But be sure the keyword and content are not boring.
    Zhyra Bonete recently posted..Rockport Shoes

  50. Very nice guide! A beginner will definitely grasp the meaning of SEO. I really like the part you mentioned “the composition book”, its very true and effective. With that composition book, we can keep track of the changes or updates we made in our site as well as the performance of each tweaks.

  51. Hi Mitz,

    Very interersting article, I like your tip about “Compostition Book” and you can easily find out what actually working for your site and what’s not so you can enhance your traffic.

    I totally agreed that you need to use Title and Description for SEO but also for visitors as if they found it irrelevant they won’t be bother to visit on your site.
    Aaron recently posted..Goa Carnival 2012

    • Hi there Aaron
      I also use a book for tweaking and optimizing for adsense ads or affiliate pages…It has been a lifesaver.

  54. I think a lot of people will like it.SEO can attract to those who are interested..Thanks for sharing great article..

  55. I’ve been doing SEO for quite some time, and despite all the algorithm changes that Google has made, most of the basics that worked well 10 years ago still apply today. These are whitehat techniques that Google has no issue with, so it’s no wonder that they bring great results.

    I always put my keywords in the title tag of each webpage, then make sure to drop them early on in the main content section of the webpage. Then I’ll link to that page with the keywords in the anchor text.

    Staying in whitehat territory means doing SEO in a natural way, so don’t be too aggressive!
    Alan Ishibashi recently posted..How To Increase Search Traffic To YouTube Videos

    • Hi Alan
      Your right about SEO being the same even after all the changes..I think it is all cleaned up and only white hat will work now. It is all pretty basic and and doing SEO the natural way is the way to go! 🙂

  56. Seo is a good technique to get organic searches for a site but patience and natural linking is required. Good contents either they are on site or off site have shown always good results for SEO.
    Azam recently posted..The African Tradition

  57. Hey Mitz,

    Search Engine Optimization is powerful when you know what you’re doing. The ability to drive free targeted traffic to any website is a skill a lot of webmasters want to have. I agree you don’t need any kind of special software for SEO, but you do need a good keyword research tool.

    Keyword Elite is a good one, but I use Market Samurai for my keyword research. Good SEO involves proper on page and off page SEO tactics. Thanks for sharing your insights.
    John recently posted..Beginner Guitar Lessons Online To Get You Started

  59. Hi Mitz,
    Super informative post. The tips and instructions are so easy to understand and follow. As a newbie, I am looking for this kind of information. SEO is like a dark hole. And, you have lightened it so much for me. Thanks so much for sharing. I’m going to read the other articles too!
    Ann recently posted..Paying Off Credit Card Debt

  60. I guess this means bad news for people who hire graphic designers to customize their site to look super flashy and contain very little text content because they think its boring. At least they’ll have the off site SEO right on if people start linking to them.
    Richard Brown recently posted..Choosing the Right Budgeting Methods

  62. You are recommending 18 link building techniques. Are these required to adopt for good ranking of a site under a particular keyword?

    • Hi Azhar
      I always do a certain amount of link building for a website…Then later I promote with guest posts and article marketing. So every site has a set of base links…Then I continue this with more link building through content submission.

    • I would have to say that Thesis probably offers the best SEO. And along with Yoast and SEOpressor. The standard ones do not give you options to add in meta tags and no index details for each page and post..For example you might want to no index your privacy policy or disclaimer page. There is so much more… Other free themes are just for looks. Of course you can find the odd good free theme for SEO but not like Thesis…

  65. But the main goal should be to give value to the visitor not only to get him buy your product (or anything). This will help you feel better about yourself 🙂

    • SEO is not a bad thing though…It is a tool to help us get seen by the search engines. You need to use the tools you have in your trade and giving your visitor value is part of the whole business. 🙂 There is no need to feel bad about SEO.

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