SEO for Beginners from the team at Elevate SEO Perth.
The Aim –
A quick guide to taking you from knowing absolutely nothing about getting a website from the wastelands of pages 2 to 10 all the way to the first page of google. Ideally, not just the first page but the first 2 or 3 in the rankings as this is where the vast majority of the traffic will go.
What is SEO?
It is the process of increasing your ranking for a keyword in a search engine (usually Google) by “tweaking” the site to become more relevant in the search engines opinion.
How does it work?
Whenever you search for any keyword in a search engine, the search engine will scan every page on the entire internet and bring up a list of the most relevant sites all in under a second. The way this is done is by scanning every site continuously (done by things known as bots or spiders) and using a secret formula that ranks these sites in order of relevance so that when the search request is made then a list appears instantly. Obviously, the higher the ranking, the higher the websites “relevance score” and this is where the skill lies.
There really are two main areas of SEO that are needed to be done correctly. They are an on-page and off-page and really are no more complicated than literally being the work you do on the website page and the work you do behind the scenes or off of the page.
On-Page –
This is the stuff you can do on the actual website and while some parts rely on a little experience and knowledge, for the most part, anyone can do it to perfection by ticking off the following list
1- Begin title with keyword – Easy, the closer to the beginning the better.
2- Make the title a little more specific – By including a term like ‘best’ or ‘cheapest’ you can target a keyword with slightly less competition but more relevance to what you want to target
3- Wrap your title in a <h1> tag – This is what will indicate to the search engine that this is the headline.
4- Include multimedia – By including interesting video, images, and diagrams visitors will tend to stay longer and not leave immediately which are both vital to rankings.
5- Sub Headings in <h2> tags – Put your keyword in at least one of your subheadings.
6- Keyword in the first 100 words
7- Responsive design – Tailor your website to each device that it could be viewed on, this has been given a high relevance by google and it will only become more important.
8- Outbound links – If you link out to sites that are in your field in some way then this is a great way to prove your relevance within the industry to the search engine.
9- Internal links
10- Site speed – There is a huge drop off in site visitors returning to sites that take too long to load by simply correcting this traffic flow will increase.
11- LSI words – Nothing fancy here, just use synonyms to your keywords and once again this will prove legitimacy to the search engines.
12- Image optimization – Simply include your keyword in your image tagging.
13- Use Social sharing buttons – This is not directly related to relevancy but will increase your traffic which will have a flow-on effect and reinforce all your link work
14- Post long content – Your writing should always be more than 300 words but at Elevate SEO Perth we like a range of between 1500 and 2500 words.
15- Site landing time – There is a lot of importance placed on the time spent on the site and the ‘bounce’ rate of visitors leaving immediately.
Off-Page
This is where it can get a little tricky and where an expert in SEO like Elevate SEO Perth can be worth their weight in gold. For the sake of this blog, we will simplify it right down.
1 – Link Building – This simply reinforces the legitimacy of your website. The more backlinks your site has, the more ‘votes’ your website will achieve to a search engine. This used to be a way that was exploited by unscrupulous operators by backlinking thousands of spam sites but the penalties given if caught are severe and we can’t stress enough not to entertain the idea. The algorithms are far more geared to quality linking and content and this should be the prime focus.
2 – Social media – On the surface, this may not appear to hold a large amount of relevance for linking but is gaining importance of rank rapidly. Therefore a complete social media profile and marketing plan should be an integral part of your off-page plan.
3 – Social bookmarking – Losing popularity but will generate more traffic to your site. A good example of this type of work is to post content to a large site like reddit.com and linking back to your website.
Why is all this important?
The reason why having your website on the first page of a keyword search is so important is that it is dynamite for exposing your business. At no other time has a company been able to promote their product or service and know that nearly every eye that falls upon their site is interested in its wares. This ability to siphon highly targeted traffic to your site leads to a very high conversion rate in sales as customers are literally landing on the exact site that they are looking for to solve their particular problem. There is one final kicker to all this as well, as a general rule ‘search clients’ are higher-paying clients which are fantastic for margins.
Once we achieve your goal of appearing on the first page of Google ( let’s face it, Google is the one that counts) then we will see a dramatic increase in traffic. That is where the fun begins by using analytical software (with many high-quality products being free such as Google Analytics) you will be able to really streamline your marketing and get insights into nearly anything you can think of! But that is a topic for another day!
Conclusion
The team at Elevate SEO Perth are experts in achieving a high organic ranking but with a sound basic knowledge of the above the client will not only be able to really crank up the quality of the content of their website but they will also be able to give advice and guidance on what is important to their business needs.