First few look on the complicated world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be scary, especially for those who haven’t had the chance to learn it from an experienced professional. But put aside the fear as with the right tools and resources at your disposal, mastering the basics of SEO becomes achievable over time. In this post, we’ll look into crucial tools and resources that beginners can start using to elevate their SEO activities.
Keyword Research: Laying the Foundation
Keyword research is the bedrock of your SEO journey. Take the Keyword as thought on your potential customer’s mind which needs an answer that you are about to provide. It’s about understanding the phrases your target audience uses when searching for information. For beginners, two tools stand out:
1.Google Keyword Planner (Free): Dive into this user-friendly tool to discover search volume, competition, and related keywords. There are other free and premium tools but as you will mostly start to optimize for Google SERP, Google Keyword Planner will be a good tool to start with.
Benefits: By grasping the right keywords, you ensure your content speaks directly to your audience, resulting in higher search engine rankings and engagement.
On-Page Optimization: Crafting Relevant Content
In the world of SEO, on-page optimization is the art of tailoring your content to align with selected keywords. For WordPress users, the Yoast SEO Plugin, Rank Math, All in One SEO are the free perls in the wordpress plugin directory.
2. Yoast SEO Plugin (Free): This plugin provides real-time analysis, suggestions, and readability checks as you craft your content.
Benefits: Beginners gain a tool that guides them through optimizing elements like headings, meta descriptions, and keyword usage.
Backlink Analysis: Building Authority
Building a website’s authority is pivotal for SEO success. Quality backlinks are important for search engines to increase the indexability and to increase the Domain Authority of your site.Understanding and securing quality backlinks plays a substantial role. Few malpractices such as link buying or link sharing, creating link-ring can be penalized by search engines however creating quality content, sharing it and communicating with other site owners is the only way to go for a proper backlink profile creation. Often times, social media is found to be really helpful for SEO to distribute content and collect quality backlinks. Communication can be done through blog commenting, emails, forum participation and few other techniques.
3.Google Search Console (Free): With this resource, dive into your website’s backlinks, identify opportunities for enhancement, and monitor your growth.
Benefits: By tracking backlinks, beginners can gauge their website’s credibility, troubleshoot potential issues, and devise a robust backlink strategy.
Technical SEO: Ensuring Seamless Functionality
Technical SEO underpins a website’s health and performance. Keeping your site’s technical aspects in check is vital. Using minimized js and css codes in your site can help to load your site faster. Using a proper reliable content delivery network is also another way to make imporve your load time along with using a few server tools. Improving accessibility by providing proper Alt Texts for images is also important for technical SEO and the architecture of the site is also important. If you are just starting a new site, it may not be an issue but if your site has broken links, that should also be checked and fixed. One freemium tool that most people find helpful is Screaming Frog.
4. Google PageSpeed Insights (Free): This tool evaluates your website’s speed and suggests optimizations for quicker loading times. Make sure to check both the load times and scores for your mobile and desktop devices when you use your Google PageSpeed Insights.
Benefits: Swift loading times enrich user experience, diminish bounce rates, and positively influence your search engine rankings.
Competitor Analysis: Learning from Peers
Understanding competitors’ strategies unveils actionable insights. Starting to analyse from the load time of your competitor’s website, to diving in deeper to the content organization, identifying intent keywords and their usage in your competitor’s strategy will be a huge benefit. The more you practice doing it, the better you get and so will your search engine rankings. Beginners can turn to “SEMrush” (Free version available):
5. SEMrush (Free version available): This versatile tool facilitates competitive analysis, keyword research, and backlink exploration. Some prefer Ahrefs and some still stick to MOZ, but feel free to use whichever you feel comfortable with.
Benefits: With SEMrush, newcomers identify competitor tactics, unveil valuable keywords, and spot gaps in their own SEO strategies.
Content Creation: Engaging and Educating
Content reigns supreme, but it should also be relevant. Crafting high-quality content is essential for user engagement and search engine rankings. Alongside that, you should stick to your niche and dive deeper, dive horizontal or vertical but we suggest not to jump the categories. For example, you bought a domain for hotel in XYZ location, continued to add content for hotel amenities and went forward to craft content about the owners of the hotel, the location around, travel plans in the location. Now don’t jump to start adding contents related to insurance company owned by one of the owner of the hotel. That will be an epic mismatch of the content association.
6.AnswerThePublic (Free version available): Generate content ideas by visualizing questions users pose online. However, this site offers most of the questions which you can use to create content, but as per the Google guidelines related to FAQs and How to articles 8th August 2023, we recommend you to be thoughtful when creating your content calendar.
Benefits: AnswerThePublic empowers beginners to create content that directly addresses user queries, enhancing engagement and visibility. And it takes the main load off your shoulders – What do the public want to know about?
Conclusion: Your SEO Journey Unveiled
For SEO beginners, arming themselves with the right tools, guidelines and resources is of utmost importance. The journey starts with keyword research moves on to on-page optimization then backlink analysis and technical SEO, further competitor assessment, and engaging content creation and the process goes on. The tools mentioned in this guide serve as your starting point, aiming to help you to put your best foot forward in world of SEO.
Remember, SEO requires consistent effort and a learning curve. By adeptly utilizing these resources, beginners can enhance website visibility, drive organic traffic, and accomplish their SEO objectives. Master these tools, and let you will win your SEO game while learning through the nooks and corners of this magnificient world.
Your journey toward mastering SEO has just begun and we wish you a very good luck!