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Determining where to initiate is the toughest part of unleashing an SEO (search engine optimization) campaign, whether starting from scratch or seeking a fresh approach.
If you find SEO and its techniques confusing. Don’t worry this blog will help you understand how to learn SEO from scratch.
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Learn SEO in 6 Easy Steps
Unlock the power of SEO with our user-friendly website. Learn the fundamentals and advanced techniques in 6 simple steps. Start optimizing your website now!
Understand How Search Engines Work
When somebody performs a search for your content or business, you want your page to appear at the top. SEO aims to keep moving your pages up the search engine results list.
Google sends out crawlers or bots that consume the web’s content. It indexes your pages, i.e., adds them to a database. Further, it ranks your web pages and website based on multiple factors to provide the best answers for its users’ searches.
When your page matches a user’s search, Google produces your page from its database. Therefore, the first vital step of SEO is ensuring Google can find and crawl your website quickly, which helps to have a clear site architecture. In other words, your website must be laid out so that users and Google bots can navigate easily your home page links to category pages, which link to relevant sub-pages.
Once you have a good site architecture, generate a sitemap, a list of links detailing this structure. And other significant details, such as when each page was last updated. Later, submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure Google has the most up-to-date view of your site and its architecture.
Get to Grips with Google Ranking Factors
Ranking factors are the features Google uses to assess the relevancy and quality of your pages for a given search. These decide your number on SERPs (search engine results pages).
Refrain from being daunted by this or getting too bogged down with individual ranking factors. All you need to know is that in the recent SEO landscape. Google wants comprehensive results from trustworthy sources. And that users want a good experience with your site. These are the critical concepts for you to focus on to upsurge SEO.
Search Engine Journal considers the following as the top ranking factors:
- High-quality Content — Content must be latest, relevant to the search in query, and engaging, keeping the user on the page.
- Mobile-first — Most searches are done on mobile, so your website’s design and usability must prioritize the mobile experience.
- Page Experience — Your site must be easy to navigate, secure, and interact with.
- Page Speed — When pages load slowly, users get frustrated and leave the site, which doesn’t represent a good user experience. Therefore, it’s best to ensure page load speeds are fast.
- On-page Optimization — Pages are laid out in a clear and easy-to-follow structure. Additionally, all the behind-the-scenes technical SEO is in order.
- Internal Links — Linking from one web page to the other has a structure, makes sense, and flows well for users navigating your website.
- External Links — When sites with authority link to yours, it acts as a trust signal and a sign for Google that your content displays depth and quality.
Learn to do Keyword Research
Keyword research means identifying and analyzing the phrases, terms, and questions searchers search for on Google. Using Semrush or Ahrefs SEO tools. You can find the keywords users search for most. How often they are searched, related keywords, how much competition there is for them, etc. This data informs which keywords you must target and your broader SEO strategies.
One keyword technique is to target long-tail keywords. As they have a lower search volume but are more accessible to rank for. As you climb up your rankings for these lower-volume keywords, ranking for the higher-volume keywords becomes easier.
Another well-known keyword strategy is to target keyword clusters with content. Initially, create a broad pillar post targeting a high-volume keyword. Later, cover subtopics targeting long-tail keywords and link them from the pillar post to your subtopics.
For instance, your pillar content may target “Android mobile application development,” while cluster content targets “Android mobile application development software,” “Android mobile application development cost,” and so on. This proves to Google that your website is the go-to resource for subjects related to a keyword since it covers it extensively. You are the expert and deserve a higher ranking in the search engine results pages.
Master Technical SEO
There are 2 fundamental sides to SEO: one involves keywords and content. And the other is technical SEO, which represents optimizing your site to make it easier for Google to crawl and understand it.
Below are some of the most critical technical optimizations:
- Use HTTPS — This encrypts the connection to the website and makes it super secure. Google Chrome even flags websites that don’t use it as unsafe.
- Improve Core Web Vitals — These break down elements of website speed. Such as the time it takes for the most prominent element to load. E.g., video and images, or the time it takes for the site to become interactive, e.g., when a person clicks on something.
- Fix Broken Links and Pages — When visitors click on them, they generate an error page, representing a bad user experience for Google.
- Add Structured Data — This is code added to the pages to make Google’s display of search results more useful. For example, structured data adds a star rating underneath your search engine results page link.
- Fix Crawl Errors — Find and fix pages that Google cannot crawl. For example, when there’s a duplicate page, Google’s crawlers are unsure which to index.
Learn Link Building
Link building involves using marketing strategies to encourage influencers, bloggers, thought leaders, and influential sites to link to your site. The more links you build, the more authority and trust are passed onto your site, boosting search engine rankings.
To kickstart link building, analyze your competitor’s backlink profiles. The sites listed represent the link prospects. You can also use multiple strategies to acquire links on those sites. For example, you may write a guest post for the website that includes links to your site. You may also find any broken links on their site, so provide your content as a replacement.
The foundation of any link-building strategy is having something worth linking to. Prospects are unlikely to link to your homepage. They may link to a helpful resource, original research, in-depth content, or infographic on your site. Send personalized emails to your link prospects. Influential website owners receive multiple requests daily. Therefore, you must prove that you have something valuable and a good match for their site.
Stay Current with the Rightful Resources
The rules surrounding SEO change often. Google tweaks its algorithms to rank websites regularly. However, the core principles representing the modern SEO landscape will likely remain the same. These must prove that your site is trustworthy, easy to navigate, has quality content, etc.
However, it is vital to keep up-to-date with any news from Google that may affect your SEO performance. And to continue learning the best techniques and strategies to outrank your competitors.
A few handy resources for continued learning on SEO are:
- Google Search Central — It has a bunch of basic and advanced guides by Google experts. Also, there’s a blog on which Google releases critical news regarding search.
- SEO News Sites — Sites like Moz and Search Engine Land swiftly share and comment on current SEO developments.
- SEO Blogs — These more likely offer an extensive guide to SEO, tool reviews and comparisons, step-by-step walkthroughs, etc.
- Online Courses—You can take SEO course from professionals who have accreditation at the end of them.
Conclusion
Hope you have got the most out of this guide. SEO doesn’t always require help from a specialist. Anyone can learn SEO practically with best practices and use SEO tools to optimize the website in-house.
If you are a beginner in SEO, it is best to start learning it step by step. This is the best approach to learning SEO for beginners. Because it lets you learn search engine optimization completely, in detail, and correctly. Your desire to learn SEO marketing is exceeded only by your willingness to execute and test concepts.