The beginners often hear the word SEO. What is SEO and how does it work? The SEO is an art of ranking your web property. It could be a blog or a video, you need to work on the SEO. Now, see how it works. In the earlier post, we have quoted SEO as one of the way to get free traffic. Do you think that SEO can be handled only by the agencies? No, SEO is not a rocket science. However, you need to understand the basics. We have come up with the SEO basics for bloggers & beginners.
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What Is SEO?
The SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a science to rank the websites organically. What does it mean? The SEO helps to get your brand noticed in the search engines. When you optimize your content well, it increases the chances of ranking better. It applies to all types of websites; company, ecommerce, personal and blogs.
The people do many types of searches : information, weather, prices, maps, topics, questions, businesses and many.
One must optimize their sites based on the searches. Identify your property first. If it is a blog, then you need to optimize according to the searches that people made. Look at the topics that you had chosen. Then make your content optimized so that it matches with the visitors keywords.
Why SEO?
We need SEO for only one purpose, traffic. The traffic that generates from the search engines is called organic. Be it a Google or Bing, we need traffic from the search engines for various reasons. For revenue generation, you need organic traffic.
You can drive traffic to your blog in 2 ways : Free and paid. The SEO comes under the free category. While, the PPC and SMM campaigns comes under the paid category. You may ask us when SEO is free, then why do agencies charge money. We will explain it. The SEO takes very longer time for ranking and getting traffic. While your blog can get fast traffic by running paid campaigns. However it costs you high. Many bloggers do not know SEO. So, they hire experts for optimizing their sites. These days tens of hundreds of SEO experts are working on millions of websites.
With SEO you can generate ten folds organic traffic compared to that of paid. Trust us, the SEO traffic is reliable and targeted. Once they find your content informative, they will come to your blog regularly.
If you ask us, is it better to hire someone for SEO or do it yourself, then it depends on the site you are dealing with. We know the pain of a new blogger. It is better to acquire the basic SEO knowledge than going to an agency. The on-page optimization comes under the basics. You don’t need to have any technical knowledge.
Have a look at these SEO basics :
1. Keywords :
Without keywords, there is no SEO. The whole game of SEO revolves around the keywords. One must research the behavior and queries of the users.
Before going for the keyword research, you should get the answers to these questions :
- What are they searching for?
- Why are they searching for it?
- How do the results help them?
- In what way will they get benefited?
Do proper keyword research using a free tool called Answerthepublic. Come up with the 4-5 keywords. Use them well in the content. Please do not overuse them or else Google will penalize your blog. The keywords should be appealing to both humans as well as search engines. They should look natural. Remember that people mostly use long tail keywords while searching. Say for example, What is SEO and how does it work?
The Google has made a lot of changes in search. You may be aware that the mobile users have increased rapidly. For their convenience, they have come up with the voice search. One should target to rank for the long tail keywords. Many SEO experts have concluded that choosing high traffic volume and low competitive keywords will rank easily. You can find them by using the Ubersuggest tool. It is free. You can also use this tool for the keyword research.
Learn how to choose the high volume and low competition keywords.
If you have a budget, then try premium tools like SEMRush and Moz.
2. Titles :
Once you find the keywords, use them in the title. However, do not stuff them for the sake of rankings. The title should not be misleading. It should match exactly with the content. Create a catchy title so that the user has to open it at any cost. Learn how to increase traffic to your blog with catchy titles.
The title tag should not exceed 60 characters. Some say 70, this rule keeps on changing. The title should describe the topic. Include keywords that you are targeting. The users and search engines will know about your page by its title. One must take care of the page’s URL too. Say for example, look at this blog post URL : https://www.way2blogger.com/why-blogging-is-a-best-career-option. We included keywords in the URL link. It can be understandable by both users and search engines. The length of the URL should not exceed 75 characters.
3. Meta Description :
The meta description tag is mainly used to attract the users. However the search engines will also know about your page. The more creative you write, the more clicks you get from the people. But, do not over hype it. You should describe about your page well. Write what exactly your page tells. The ideal length is 160 words. But, it keeps on changing. Make it short and simple. Include focus keywords in the description. This is how the title and meta description looks in the results.
4. Headings
The headings are very important for ranking any page. The post title comes between <H1> and </H1>. Whereas H2 and H3 tags are used for the sub-headings.
5. Alt Tag :
You may all use relevant images in the posts, right. Is using images enough? No, you must use alt tag for every image. It helps in ranking images. Not only alt tag, one must also put title name for an image. You may know that people also use image search in the Google. When you use title and alt text, the images will rank well.
6. Text Formatting (Bold, italic, color, underline) :
These factors also plays good role in the on-page SEO. Using bold text will tell the importance to the search engines. However, do not over use them.
7. Internal Links & External Links :
Always try to quote your old blog posts in the new articles. The internal links increases credibility as well as traffic. The Google will rank those sites that use adequate interlinking.
Make sure to use external links wherever necessary. One must use both internal and external links for the ranking.
8. Page Speed :
The search engines have included page speed as the ranking factor. You should make your blog load faster. The slow loading sites will not get ranked. Not only search engines, it harms your traffic too. The people can’t tolerate the slow loading pages. Use PageSpeed tool by the Google to check the loading speed.
9. AMP :
The AMP stands for the accelerated mobile pages. These days the mobile traffic is equally important. You should use AMP to tackle the mobile traffic. The AMP pages load faster. It comes with the /amp extension to the URL link.
10. HTTPS :
The https sites rank well in the search engines compared to the http. All the search engines have taken security as the ranking factor. When an user opens a http site, the browser will warn them. If at all you are using http, it is time to migrate.
If you are a WordPress user, then learn how to migrate from http to https for free.
SEO For WordPress :
Are you using WordPress? Then, there are plugins like Yoast and All In One SEO that cares of the optimization. If you want more features, then go with the Yoast paid plan.
Tip : Once you write the content, proofread it. Make sure there would be no grammatical errors.
What Are The Final Words?
These are the SEO basics for the beginners. These things work only when you create a great content. Please do not ignore old posts. Try to optimize them too. What are your on-page SEO strategies? If you have any ideas or suggestions, then please share with us. Did you love this article? If yes, then please share it with your friends.
Happy blogging!!!