The Basics of SEO

The Basics of SEO

SEO might be a completely foreign concept to a lot of people, but all it just stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and essentially is a set of practices that are designed to help a website perform well on either Google or any of the other major Search Engines.

So performing well means getting your website to reach the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and getting lots of clicks i.e. you need to increase your CTR (click-through rate).

But how precisely do you go about this?
What are the key things you need to be doing as a website owner?

Let’s jump into the very basics and give you enough information to start doing SEO right, without paying for an expert or spending years reading about SEO.

The Basics

In order to be successful with SEO, you need to create a website that Google can find and understand and a website that Google thinks is of high quality. To make a website Google can find and understand, you need to make sure lots of websites are pointing at your page and ideally, websites that are in the same niche (subject matter) as you.

At the same time, you need to think about what you want people to search for in order to find your website, and you need to subtly include that term in your website pages and content. You should also make sure that your website is structured with lots of internal links, and that you fill out such things as your meta description.

Don't overuse your keywords as this can make it look as though you are trying to “game” the system and trick Google!

For the second part, demonstrating that your site is high quality, you need to try and keep visitors on your page for as long as possible, and you need to include lots of good content. You should also ensure your site loads quickly and that it is easy to use on any device.

Finally, getting lots of high-quality links to your page will help with this as well, because it will show to Google that other people are recommending your website.

So What Are the Steps

Keeping all this in mind, there are a number of simple steps you will need to follow if you want to conduct good SEO:

✔️ Research popular search terms (also known as your keywords).

✔️ Write posts around these subjects and attempt to use the search terms with a density of around 1-3% (meaning that percentage of your content is made up from them).

✔️ Keep content fairly long, between 800-1,500 words, but no less than 500 words as a minimum.

✔️ Post regularly!

✔️ Place your search terms in your title, header, and the first and last paragraph of your post wherever possible.

✔️ Put the search term in your meta description.

✔️ Write blogs for other sites where possible and ask them to link back to you in return.

✔️ Choose sites that are popular with Google and that appear in their featured and news sections.

All this will help you to conduct good SEO and put you on the right path. From there, you can start looking into more advanced techniques of SEO.