We designed this beginner’s SEO guide to discuss all the essential parts of SEO. To get the basic idea of SEO, you can read this article till the end. Exploring more pages from here will help you to dive into the realm of search engine optimization. The checklist is the most essential thing for SEO and you should not miss it.
Beginners Guide To SEO
User experience, compelling content, attractive features and a lot of things impact SEO indirectly. And keyword research, its implementation, and link building are the most popular practices in SEO. Here are some chapters to start with-
01: SEO 101
If you have no ideas about SEO, you should learn from the beginning. You need to know what is SEO, how it works, and how Google ranks a webpage. SEO- search engine optimization is a process that helps Google to understand the relevance and quality of a web page. Your job is to know what Google wants and how they work to show results when people search for something.
02: Ranking Factors
These are some factors that Google uses to rank a website. And show them according to relevant order in search results. Google never fully discloses its ranking factors. But there are many SEO expert companies that constantly do research and analysis on Google results and try to find a correlation. Quality and consistency are the most common factors. Most people believe there are 200+ factors that Google uses.
03: On-Page SEO
These are the practices that a website owner should do inside their website. Internal Linking, keyword implementation, image optimization, responsive design of the website, loading speed, etc, are some of the on-page SEO factors. You also can use some tools for on-page SEO.
04: Off-Page SEO
The practices that website owners should do outside their websites. It is mostly external link building and brand mentions. In many ways, you can do off-page SEO. Creating guest posts, social media pages, Google my business listings, and a lot of things included in Off-page SEO. You can use some inbound link checker tools to do off-page SEO.
05: Technical SEO
Modern search engines have some technical requirements. It is mandatory for website owners to meet those requirements. You need to use XML sitemaps, structured data, hreflang tag, robot.txt, etc, to meet the requirements. To increase the page speed you may need to compress the codes and images. You can try the schema generator tool to make structured data easier.
06: Local SEO
Local searches are not the same as global searches on Google. You sometimes search for ‘restaurants near me. Someone from Texas and someone from London doesn’t want to see the same result. There are some On page, Off page, and technical aspects of local SEO. You need to know in detail to do local SEO.
07: Ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce websites are becoming more popular day by day all over the world. The e-commerce products are listed on the websites. Google requires more information to categorize them and show them on search results. So, you need to use the meta description, title, keyword, local optimization, etc, for e-commerce SEO.
SEO Checklist For A New Website
This checklist will work for every website. You can simply follow those short checklists to do SEO of your website. Sometimes people focus more on technical SEO. But you should focus on some practices that will directly affect your site’s ranking. Because your goal is to rank higher and get more traffic. Here are the things you must do-
1. Setting Up SEO Goals
What do you want to achieve from SEO? You should know your goal very well. Sometimes webmasters want to get more visitors to their site, and sometimes they want to get more sales for their business. Whatever you want to achieve, you can set up 3 months goal, 6 months goal, 1-year goal. Before starting, you should have proper knowledge and plan.
2. Domain & Hosting
For creating a website, you should choose a good web hosting service. Website speed is one of the most important SEO factors. To achieve a better and faster server response, you can choose a server near your target location. In addition, you can use Cloudflare or, VPS hosting. Your website domain should reflect your business. You need to know SEO for a domain.
3. Website Design
The design of the website affects user experience(UX) and user interface(UI). So, you need to hire a web designer who knows the basics of SEO. A responsive and lightweight design also has a positive impact on the overall SEO of the website. So, you should keep it simple and usable to users from all devices.
4. Topical Research
Nowadays, Google has improved a lot as a search engine. They focus more on the topical authority of a website. So, you need to do your topical research. You should make a plan and analysis on the topic you choose for your website. And it will be best to cover each and every part of the topic.
5. Keyword Research
Keyword research comes after topic research. Keywords are search terms. People search on Google. Google and other SEO tools keep track of the search terms. These terms are known as keywords or, keyphrases. There are free and paid tools for keyword research(we will give you a list later in this article). You can use the keyword cluster tool to make a cluster of keywords.
6. Content Creation
This is one of the most crucial parts of SEO. If you plan to hire content writers, make sure that they know about basic SEO practices. Compelling content can do 80% of SEO. Google has a strong algorithm to detect the best available content online. The behavior of the users and topical authority plays a big role. So, focus on creating a lot of high-quality content on related topics.
7. Competitor Analysis
You have to create better content than your competitors. So, it is obvious that you need to do competitor analysis. You can analyze the authority of the top competitor and the content on their page. Creating more words than the competitors will never help you. So, you have to focus on making a better piece of content. Learn how to write an SEO article.
8. Link building
This is the best part of Off Page SEO. There are two types of links- do follow and no follow. Nofollow links don’t have any direct SEO benefits. But do-follow links pass link juice to the web page which increases the authority of a website. You can create a better piece of content, use infographics, attract visitors and create sharable content to earn
9. Analysis Of Traffic & Content
There is a correlation between website traffic and content. An increase in topical authority can increase the number of visitors to a website. So, you have to create a lot of relevant content. In addition, you can edit the old content to make it more relevant, and you can add more relevant information to the old posts. Keeping a close eye on the Google search console can help you find out some interesting relationships between the content and the traffic of your website.
10. EAT Build Up
E- Expertise,
A- Authoritativeness,
T- Trustworthiness
It is extremely essential for you to focus on building the EAT of your website. If your website has a higher EAT, the new posts from your website will automatically get a higher ranking. There are many ways to know the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of a website.
Extended Checklist For SEO- Technical Part
This is a list of technical things. It is essential and you must do these things. But you need to focus on increasing the topical authority and EAT building. Here are some technical things-
- Website Submission On Search Engines: You need to submit your website first. Therefore, the search engines will index your website and all the pages gradually. To submit your site to a search engine, you may have to use the meta tag, file upload, or, DNS option. Google is the best search engine. So, you can submit your site on the Google search console. Also, you can submit it on the bing webmaster tool.
- Sitemap Creation: A sitemap is a map of your website. To submit the map of your website, you can use an XML sitemap. It helps search engines to know details about the website architecture.
- Robot.txt file creation: It helps you to decide which crawler you will give access to crawl your website. You can give access to search engine crawlers and disallow the spammy crawlers to crawl your website.
- Schema Markup: It is a form of microdata. Google and other search engine use schema markup to show data inside a web page. To increase the search visibility you should use schema markup. It will surely help you.
- Image Alt Tag: The image alt tag gives a description of the image. Google bot can not understand the exact topic of the image. So, you need to use an alt tag to say to google that it is about this or, that.
- Gain Natural Backlinks: You can get backlinks using guest posts, directory listings, and a lot of things. But Google suggests getting it naturally. So, you should focus on creating compelling content instead of trying other things.
You should spend more time creating high-quality content. Because content is the king. At the same time, you should do the technical SEO properly. It is mandatory.
List Of SEO Tools
Free Tools
WordPress Website Optimization
Most Effective Tools
Content Management Tool
AI Writing Tool
Hiring Freelancers For SEO
It is a wonderful idea to hire freelancers for SEO purposes. You can find a lot of freelancers on the most popular freelancing sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancers, etc. For hiring a freelancer, you have to see their ratings and previous work. Sometimes, new freelancers also can provide a better service at a lower cost.
