SEO Tips For Beginners

As a beginner in SEO, you need to understand Search engine Optimization is not that hard as people make it to be. Basic SEO settings are easy to implement and can help you to rank your website higher

Here are some tips that can help you to boost your rankings

Target easy-to-rank keywords

Keywords are nothing but words that people use in their queries when searching for a topic, brand, product, and service

• Short tail - one-word keywords
  Example - Shoes
• Medium tail keywords - 2-3 word keywords
  Example - running shoes
• Long tail keyword - 3 or more keywords
  Example - running shoes for men with flat feet

Long tail keywords are usually easier to rank as the difficulty is very low

Pick a primary keyword with a low difficulty score and use secondary keywords to make your content more relevant

Create helpful content that matches with search intent

One of the easiest tips to use is to create high-quality content that solves the query of the user and matches the search intent.

• Answers the query of the user at the beginning of the blog/article.
• The content should be in a correct format if a user wants to see the comparison, include graphs, tables, and other elements to help the user compare products or services
• Include queries that users might use when searching about your service or topic

Use a hierarchical heading structure

Pay special attention to the heading structure as H1, H2, H3, etc ensure that the information in the heading is relevant to the content on the page . Following this can help both user and Google bot understand the topic of the page

• Use bold or italic to draw user attention.
• Dont use H2 for all the headings.
• Write small paragraphs which are easy to understand.
• Use a font size which is readable.

Optimize title tags and meta tags

Optimizing Titles and meta tags should be first on the your list as it's the first thing both user and google botsees.

• Titles should accurately describe the content on the page
• Meta tags should give a small description to the user about the information on the page
• Titles and meta tags should have the targeted keywords in it

Use friendly URLs

URL is shown in the browser address bar.Optimizing your Url is one of the most important on-page SEO tasks that can help Google understand the content on the page.

• Include hyphens "-" between words
• Dont use uppercase in the URLs
• Titles and meta tags should have the targeted keywords in it
• Avoid lengthy URLs
• Add targeted keywords in the URLs

Get backlinks from high authority website

Backlinks are an important part of off-page SEO and is crucial for improving rankings And from experience, link building is a difficult concept for beginners.

• Publish great content on the website which can get you backlinks naturally
• Create data-driven content like SEO industry in 2010 vs 2024
• Link to other website and let webmasters know by emailing them.if they like your content they might link back to you as well

Internal link your content

Interlinking your content means connecting different pages on your website through clickable links. This not only improves navigation for users but also helps search engines understand the relationship between your pages. By linking to related content, you increase your topical authority over a certain topic which provides an informative experience for visitors, encouraging them to explore more of your site. This practice also helps improve your ranking

Optimize page speed and experience

Optimizing your website speed and performance is very important as it’s a huge part of user experience

Your website should load within 2.5 seconds on a desktop and mobile phones and it should also pass the core web vitals test to check this you can visit Page Speed Insight

• Optimize images by compressing them
• Remove unused Javascript and CSS
• Minify Javascript and CSS files
• Use caching plugins

Keep your content fresh and relevant

Regularly updating your website, and blog, with new information ensures that visitors find valuable and up-to-date content. This not only helps your current audience but also attracts new visitors. Fresh content also improves your website's search engine ranking, making it more discoverable. So, whether it's news, articles, or product updates, regularly update your content.

Optimize your images

Google uses the images on the website on the SERP, they are shown in rich results and this can help you get traffic if your images are displayed on the SERP Tips to optimize images

• Add alt text to the images (Alt text tells Google what the image is about)Make sure you write descriptive alt text that makes sense for both users and search engines
• Before publishing your images make sure they are compressed and are in in WEBP format.
• You can use photopea.com It’s a free online tool that helps you compress the images, change the format, and change dimensions also

Add breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs in web design are like a digital trail that shows users where they are on a website. They offer a series of clickable links, making it easy for visitors to navigate back to the homepage or previous pages. Breadcrumbs enhance user experience and simplify website navigation.

Add proper canonical tag

Canonical tag is a hint to Google, not an instruction. You could also say that canonical is the preferred page.

A canonical tag is an HTML file that tells Google which page you prefer among multiple pages with similar content. Even if you do not have pages with similar content you should still add a canonical tag to the page this is called self-referencing canonical.

Canonical tag code for coded website

Create an XML site map

Sitemap is a file that helps crawlers understand your website.

A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site and the relation between them. Sitemaps help the Google bot in navigating the website. Providing a sitemap for a website helps save a Google bot budget

• XML format sitemap makes information machine-readable( this is for crawlers )
• HTML format sitemap makes information user/human-readable ( this is for users ) and this HTML format sitemap is usually in the footer,

To check if a website has a sitemap type the domain/sitemap.xml in the URL.

When you are checking for a sitemap for a website like domain/sitemap.xml you will be redirected to sitemap_index_.xml in the URL this happens because the plugins in wordpress categorizes the sitemap in posts, pages, products, etc and when you click on the categories like pages you will see all the pages on the website and the URL will also become sitemap.xml

In WordPress, we create sitemaps using plugins like Yoast or Rank Math by enabling the sitemap option in the settings of these plugins.

After enabling the sitemap option in plugins you should upload the sitemap to the google search console.

Sitemap for a coded website.

For coded websites, you need to generate the site, upload it in the root folder of the website, and then upload the sitemap in Google Search Console as well.

• Type sitemap generator in Google search (free tools can only generate a sitemap for up to 500 pages if you have more than 500 pages then you have to get the paid version ).
• Download the sitemap after it's generated from the tool.
• Go to the hosting platform like Godaddy, hostinger.
• Go to file manager.
• Select public HTML
• This is the root folder of the website. Upload the sitemap that you downloaded.
• Open a new tab and type the domain/sitemap.xml in the URL of the Google search and copy the resulting URL.
• upload this to the Google Search console.

You can follow this step for both WordPress and coded website.

Robots.txt file

The robots.txt file is a text file on a website that tells google bots which pages they can and cannot visit. Webmasters use it to control how search engines interact with their sites, making sure certain parts are off-limits. It helps manage the way search engines index a website's content. You can check if a website has a robots.txt file or not by adding robots.txt in the URL of the website.

You should upload the sitemap in the root directory of the website so it's easily accessible for the Google crawler.