SEO
9
min read

The ultimate SEO Starter Guide for 2024

Learn the basics of SEO with the SEO Starter Guide 2024. Follow those 8 simple steps to improve your website's ranking on search engines (like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and others.), including finding relevant keywords, incorporating them into your page title and URL, creating keyword-rich content, and more.
Written by
Josselin Liebe
Published on
April 20, 2023
Updated on
January 3, 2024
Readers rating
54
votes

What is the process of SEO?

By utilizing technical, on-page, and off-page SEO techniques, marketers effectively explain to search engines what their website revolves around and why this must appear high in search engine results pages. Understanding three essential elements is necessary to achieve that awareness.

  • What kinds of content do your clients and search engine users prefer or need?
  • How search engine results pages are generated, and how content is found, indexed, and served.
  • How to effectively advertise and optimize your website to give search engines more information about it.

Even though technology and search engines are constantly changing, some fundamental SEO principles haven't altered since the beginning. To clarify SEO for aspiring SEO professionals and explain how search engine optimization actually functions today, we developed these in-depth summaries and training in partnership with some of the field's leading scholars as well as professionals.

The field of SEO is competitive and quick-moving. That can occasionally be annoying, particularly if you're still using old strategies that don't work. Hence, if you want to perform better, you need to keep learning and increase awareness. Search engines continually improve their algorithms in order to provide their consumers with high-quality search results.

Artificial intelligence is constantly improving algorithms to provide better user experiences. As a result, SEO seems to be more challenging than ever. Marketers must continue their education in SEO in order to stay up to date on which methods are still successful as well as which ones should already be eliminated from your search marketing approach. To raise your organic search rankings and make your company or brand more visible, it takes more than just developing links, establishing any old material, and including a few keywords.

You must be aware of and comprehend:

  • Newest trends (e.g., voice search)
  • Newly developed search-related features in applications and goods (e.g., Search Console)
  • Technological progress (e.g., machine learning)
  • The audience (e.g., behavior and goals of individuals)

How then do you create an SEO plan to outperform your competitors in Google and other search engines?

Because SEO is essentially a lot more than obtaining your website found on search engines and generating traffic. Giving a fantastic experience while producing leads and money is what it's all about. Users need to do more than just target the proper keywords if they want to provide a great user experience and earn leads from searches. In order to offer content that meets the searcher's concerns, you must understand their motivation. When you know what your searchers are looking for, you can make content that appeals to their requirements while also being easy for search engines to find and index.

What makes SEO important?

There are countless individuals who conduct searches. Not only is there a lot of traffic, but there is a lot of targeted, high-intent traffic, which can be incredibly strong for a business. If you sell blue widgets, would you rather appear when someone searches for "buy blue widgets" everywhere in the world or purchase a hoarding so anybody driving by regardless of whether they will ever be interested in blue widgets or not, your neighborhood sees your advertisement? They are standing up and exhibiting a want to buy something you have to offer, indicating their business goal, thus it is more probable the latter.

Keyword Intent
Keyword Intent

Consumers are looking for all kinds of things that are highly applicable to your company. Also, a number of topics with only a tenuous link to your business are being researched by your prospects in addition to the other themes mentioned above. They give even more chances to get in touch with those people, assist them in finding solutions to their issues, and establish themselves as a reliable resource for them.

How does the search engine traffic work perfectly?

It's important to keep in mind that Google receives the largest of worldwide search engine traffic (even if the real statistics are always fluctuating). Google is most likely the key participant in the search results that your business or website is seeking to show up in, however, this may differ by topic. The best practices indicated in this book will assist position your site and it’s content to rank in other search engines as well.

US Search Market Share
US Search Market Share

Search results are always improving, no matter what search engine you use. Due to Google's modifications to how they rank webpages using a number of animal names, many of the most straightforward and affordable strategies for getting your pages to rank in search results have altered significantly in recent years.

Then what does? How does Google choose the pages to display in reaction to user's searches? How can you get your website to receive so much useful traffic?

  • Regarding the searcher's inquiry, Google seeks out web pages that offer reliable, crucial data.
  • They "crawl" (or scan) your website's content to establish its relevance by assessing (algorithmically) if it is pertinent to the searcher's query, primarily according to the search terms it includes.
  • One of the most crucial factors they consider when determining "reliability" is the number and reliability of other websites linking to your page and your entire site. Simply put: My site will be more reliable (and perceived as being of higher quality) than yours if it receives links from reliable websites that are commonly linked to, like CNN.com, whereas your blue widget site receives links exclusively from blogs that nobody else on the Internet has connected to.

Google's algorithm is progressively taking into account other factors to determine where your website will rank, such as:

  • The way visitors engage with your website (do they find what they're looking for and stay on your site, or do they leave and return to the search results page, where they click on another link? Or perhaps when viewing your item in search results, they never actually click through?
  • The quickness with which your website loads and its "mobile-friendliness"
  • What proportion of your material is original (as opposed to very "thin" low-quality or duplicate content)

In response to searches, the Google algorithm considers hundreds of ranking factors and is always being updated and enhanced.

SEO Starter Guide Step by Step:

Step 1 - Find keywords

To conduct keyword research, you just need to compile a list of terms and phrases that are relevant to your business. Concentrate on the words that will most likely lead individuals to take the action you want them to (visit your website and submit a form). It's better to begin by selecting your keywords based on intuition, even though you can use a specialist keyword research tool. You might choose "roasted coffee," "Colombian coffee," and "local coffee roaster" if you sell roasted coffee, for instance. Create a spreadsheet or document with a list of these keywords that you can use to keep track of them. Choose a single word or phrase, and utilize it on only one page of your website. To put it another way, avoid using many keywords on the same page. One term, as well as any keywords it has meaningful ties to, should be your focus. For instance, you could make a page for a "local coffee roaster." To find this page, you can search for phrases like "local coffee," "coffee roaster near me," "coffee roaster [city name]," and "locally roasted coffee."

Step 2 - Add relevant keywords to the page title

As soon as you've made your pick, it's time to start utilizing your chosen keyword. Your web page's title should be entered first. The page title is one of the most important elements that Google and other search engines take into account when figuring out what is on a web page. That is what appears first on your website's search engine results page (SERPs). Note how the following business incorporated the term "Atlanta Coffee Roaster" into its page title:

Add relevant keyword

Remember to make it brief. Using 65 characters or less can stop search engines from reducing your title, as demonstrated in the following search result:

Max 65 characters
Max 65 characters

Keep in mind that the title of your website is limited to a certain number of characters, such as a brand name.

Step 3 - The page URL should contain keywords

The text of a web page's URL is examined by Google and other search engines to determine its content. You must effectively use your keyword or phrase in the slug. And slug is the portion of the URL that designates the specific page's address. The slug follows the domain and any applicable subdirectories at the end of the URL.

URL Structure
URL Structure
Avoid going overboard, though. For instance, if you sell coffee, avoid making a slug like this: mycoffeecompany.com/coffee-atlanta-near-me-fulton-county-greater-atlanta-area-coffee. Maintain brevity, simplicity, and descriptiveness. An efficient illustration would be: mycoffeecompany.com/atlanta-coffee-roaster

If you're using WordPress, here's how to change the backend slugs for your web pages.

Step 4 - Make sure your Meta description contains keywords

Although it is not nearly as important as it once was, metadata still matters. Use it by putting in your phrase or keyword. The keyword metadata should concentrate on your keyword or phrase, and the description must be understandable to a human. Be it brief; more often than not, less is more.

Step 5 - Include keywords in your H1 paragraph

Typically, the article title or some other large, bold text appears as the H1 text on your page. This results in the words in the H1 text receiving higher importance from Google and other search engines. Ensure that your phrase or keyword is there.

Step 6 - Provide Keyword-Rich Material on the Page

A crucial component of your on-page SEO approach is using your target keywords in your content. Why? As a result, search engines will be informed that the website is genuinely about the keyword and should appear in search results. The recommended number of times to use your term varies between 4-6 and 10-12, according to "experts." One recommendation is to simply write naturally while carefully avoiding black-hat strategies like keyword stuffing. To put it another way, refrain from saying something like this:

The best coffee roasting firm in Atlanta, Georgia, is Atlanta Coffee Roasters. In addition to selling locally roasted coffee from Atlanta, our coffee shop also services the greater Atlanta region.

Just illegible, that. It can be contrasted to the details offered by the nearby coffee roasting business: Here at Peach Coffee Roasters, passionate about single-origin coffees and well-crafted blends. Three trained Coffee Q-Graders select the best coffees from across the world and roast them to perfection. This obsession with perfection permeates every step of the procedure, from buying raw coffee through small-batch roasting and only using the best processing methods each time.

What is on-page SEO

The method for enhancing different front-end and back-end elements of your website so that it ranks in search engines and attracts new traffic is known as on-page SEO, sometimes known as on-site SEO. On-page SEO consists of content components, site architectural elements, including HTML elements. Google's algorithm ranks websites based on three main factors: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.

  • Next, go through on-page SEO components.
  • External links, social media sharing, and other elements are all part of off-page SEO.
  • The more technical aspects of SEO, such as structured data, site speed, and mobile compatibility, are referred to as technical SEO. Technical SEO encompasses all the SEO components that are not covered by on-page and off-page tactics.

Importance of on-page SEO

Importance of on-page SEO
Importance of on-page SEO

On-page SEO is essential since it tells Google about your website and how you create value for clients and visitors. Both search engine robots and human users will benefit from the optimization of your website. Together with building and publishing your website, you must also optimize it for Google and other search engines in order to rank well and bring in new visitors.

Visitors to your website can see the adjustments and modifications you make to optimize it, unlike off-page and technical SEO elements, which aren't always apparent. On-page SEO is known as "on-page" SEO for this reason. It's crucial that you carry out on-page SEO correctly because it's all up to you. The elements of on-page SEO will now be discussed.

Keyword stuffing

The act of writing low-quality content with a frequency of the same keyword that is higher than the norm is known as keyword stuffing. Using too many keywords on a page will deceive search engines like Google into giving it a better ranking in the search engine results pages. This underhanded strategy is ineffective today.

Black-hat

A group of techniques known as "black hat SEO" are employed to boost a website's or page's position in search results by abusing the terms of service of the major search engines.

Step 7 - Create Links To Your Website

In order to increase referral traffic, improve domain authority, and improve search engine rankings, link building entails boosting the amount and quality of inbound connections to your website.

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks, also known as inbound links and incoming links, is an off-page SEO technique in which you obtain links from other websites that point users to your own website. The one who refers to a link as a backlink is the one who is getting it. Backlinks are distinct from internal links and outward links, which are links that point from your website to another website (links from one page on your website to another). The appropriate backlinks can benefit your website in two important ways:

  • These may increase website visitors. If someone links to your website on their blog or website, their viewers may click on it, which will bring you referral traffic.
  • These may raise your search engine ranking. The more backlinks you receive from high-quality, high-authority websites, the more search engines will recognize your website as an authority on a certain topic. As a result, the higher you may rank your website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

A quality inbound link contains natural anchor text and originates from an established website. Simply put, anchor text is the hyperlinked text copy. For instance, the anchor text for a link to our blog post about backlink techniques would be "backlink strategies." You are not just hyperlinking keywords left and right when you use natural anchor text. Generic "learn more" and "click here" anchor text can be just as effective as anchor text that has been customized for specific keywords because Google recognizes the context of a link.

Strategies for Link Building:

  • Keep up a regular blog with quality information.
  • In your blog, make links to other blogs.
  • Write a post as a guest on a blog.
  • Establish and distribute lists of useful resources.
  • Build relationships by conducting expert roundups.
  • Create news jack articles.
  • Write case studies highlighting your standout clientele.
  • Make a case study participation offer.
  • Conduct surveys.
  • Review books in writing.
  • Organize free webinars and post the records online.
  • Make open-source tools.
  • Make templates that can be shared.
  • Make engaging infographics.
  • Make additional graphic materials.

Step 8 - Observe Your Ranking

The time has come to assess how well your initiatives have worked, last but not least. After giving the search engines some time (a few weeks to a few months) to work their magic, constantly check your rank to see what is modified and to track your progress. Whether you're new to SEO, you may manually check this rank by running a Google search for the term you want to rank for. To view your rankings for free, we also recommend utilizing Google Search Console. You can upgrade to an official SEO monitoring tool to track the most pertinent keywords and regularly develop tactics to increase your performance because GSC has some limitations. In a similar line, you ought to keep an eye on your Google PageRank. Google utilizes your Page Rank to determine how "important" your website is online. If your page rank is higher, your chances of appearing in the top search results are higher.

TO SUM UP

Chart summarizing the steps of the SEO start-up guide
Chart summarizing the steps of the SEO start-up guide

To optimize your SEO and enhance your website's visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) you can follow these eight steps:

  1. Find relevant keywords for your business.
  2. Include these keywords in your page title.
  3. Optimize the URL by using keywords.
  4. Write a concise and keyword-rich meta description.
  5. Use keywords in the H1 paragraph.
  6. Create content rich in target keywords (4-6 times).
  7. Focus on white-hat SEO techniques, avoiding keyword stuffing or black-hat methods.
  8. Observe your ranking on SERPs

This process helps your website rank better and deliver a great user experience.

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