A Beginners Guide to SEO Part 1

If you are in the online space you probably heard of SEO. Now SEO can get really complex, there are even dedicated jobs just for SEO experts. But the purpose of this blog is not to make you feel overwhelmed by all the information out there, and trust me there are loads! 

My goal for you, by the end of reading this short summary, is for you to have gained a better understanding of what it is, why it is important, how it can help your website perform better so more people find your content and what little steps you can take now. So let’s get to grips with the basics of SEO!

What is SEO? 

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process of increasing your website’s visibility on search engines when their bots crawl and rank your content – thereby determining on which page in the search engine your webpage will appear, if at all. Using smart SEO will get you free traffic to your website, otherwise known as organic traffic.

Why it is Important?

To understand the importance of SEO you have to know what it’s goal is, which is very simple – to get your website or blog to appear on page 1 of Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Why is this important? “The first page of Google captures 71% of search traffic clicks and has been reported to be as high as 92% in recent years.” This is according to the Forbes website with insights from the top ranking SEO agency MOZ, you can read their article here for more info.

This means when SEO is done correctly (smart SEO) your website can show up in the top search results when someone searches for a particular keyword or phrase that applies to your business, we will discuss more about keywords and phrases in the next section – How it Works.  Therefore the higher you are in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) the more ideal clients or customers can be sent to your website. 

Benefits of SEO

SEO yields long term benefits.  When you use paid ads whether that be online or printed, rewards are short-term. However, when you continue to invest in applying SEO to your website, therefore optimizing your website, the higher your online presence increases and continues to stay. This in turn will help you see a continual increase in traffic, which should then increase your sales too resulting in a more profitable return on investment (ROI)! 

In addition, applying SEO doesn’t need to cost you much in terms of financial costs. There are a lot of free tools out there to help you find keywords and phrases you can use on your website or in your blog posts. Then as you become more profitable you can invest in more of the expensive tools out there to further increase your reach and investment. 

Now keywords or phrases are just one of the methods of applying SEO to your website. There is a lot of basic SEO you can apply which won’t cost you anything but a bit of your time. 

SEO can also help to add credibility to your business. Most people are conditioned to believe that businesses that appear on the first page of a search engine and ranked at the top are the better businesses – though this may not necessarily be true of that business. However when your website is ranked higher your ideal customer or client will perceive your business to be more favourable. This in turn leads to an increase in sales, conversions and brand recognition.

Lastly, SEO can help you get ahead of your competitors and show you what keywords they are using in their website. By continuing to implement SEO and other online marketing strategies into your business you’ll ensure that you keep ahead of your competitors who haven’t implemented these techniques, thus reaching that desirable SERP position.

What Steps You Can Take

There are a lot of little actions you can do to implement SEO into your website that will make a huge difference to help you reach that coveted spot on Google SERP and attract your right clients and customers. We’ll take a look at a few here, which are:

• Keyword Research
• On Page Optimisation
• Off Page Optimisation 

In this post we will cover keyword research only and I’ll have a follow up post that will cover SEO optimisation.

Keyword Research 

This involves using specific keywords and phrases in your web pages that your targeted customer or client would use when searching for something that relates to your business. 

How to search for keywords on Google

There are a plethora of tools both paid and free that can help you determine the best keywords to use to drive traffic to your website. I’m currently testing out a couple of free keyword search tools and will provide an update to this blog with my findings after I have given them a thorough test. 

A very simple way of searching for keywords is to simply type a word into Google which will then tell you the volume of searches done for that particular keyword. (See screenshot below) 

But that’s not all Google tells us, if you scroll down to the bottom of the search page you will come to a section called “Related searches”. (See second screenshot) Here Google will give you a list of related keywords or phrases people also use when searching for that particular item. 

Let’s take a look at an example using the word microphone. If I type microphone into Google search at the time of writing this post under the search bar it will tell me that the word microphone has been searched 942,000,000 in a month.

Now let’s take a look at the section called “Related searches”. Here is the list of related keywords or phrases people also typed when searching for that particular item.

So by just doing a simple keyword search in Google you can start building a list of related keywords or phrases that you can use in your blog posts or webpage. Pro tip: you’ll get a better chance of getting to the top of the search results by using those long keyword phrases rather than just one particular keyword like microphone. 

Hopefully you will have learned some new information about SEO and the little steps you can take to help you boost your website’s traffic and get to that coveted spot on search engines. 

Just a little note: the benefits of SEO don’t happen overnight, so don’t be discouraged if after making some changes that your website isn’t showing up on page 1 of Google or any other search engine you may be using. SEO takes time but the benefits will come and keep coming which is the great thing about SEO. 

To learn more about SEO optimisation check out my follow up post here.

Another helpful note: 

Blog posts regarding technology can come with a whole lot of terminology that may be unknown to a reader and therefore can defeat the purpose of the article if left unexplained. Fear not I have a quick solution for you! 

Check out my free pdf on Tech Terminology in my free Resource Library. This document is constantly being updated with new terms and explanations and hopefully will be a valuable resource for you.