SEO tutorial for noobs
For many businesses, their website is their most valuable brand asset, therefore it must exude authority, trust, and competence.
The basic technique of SEO is optimizing your website to satisfy client demands and exhibit these features.
However, before we get into the nitty-gritty of SEO, you should start conducting a thorough examination of their customer and consumer connections.
Here are 7 steps for beginners to get started.
Build a solid technical foundation
Countless businesses develop excellent long-form content only to have it impeded by page speed or indexation concerns. Google emphasizes technical SEO since it has a significant impact on user experience. For example, if your website is sluggish to load and people tend to bounce, Google will make adjustments based on this information. Google announced its Core Web Vitals project in 2020 to support this. For those in the know, Core Web Vitals measures a website’s:- Largest contentful paint (LCP) - how long a page loads.
- Cumulative layout shift (CLS) - how stable its visuals are.
- First input delay (FID) - how long until a user can interact with the site.
Learn how to properly research keywords
Once your technological base is solid, it's time to move on to the more granular components of SEO: keyword research. In general, keywords are split into two groups that we may utilize to create top-level navigation:- Seed keywords: Seed keywords are broad-match keywords that are brief (1-3 words) and connect to your most significant services, goods, or themes.
- Long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer keywords (>3 words) that relate to specific queries.
Create content that ranks and converts
Creating a content marketing strategy based on keyword research will allow you to establish authority on themes and satisfy user intent throughout your sales funnel. High-quality content development also assists you or your company in becoming thought leaders in their respective sectors. Neil Patel, Brian Dean, and others, for example, have used content to propel their personal and professional brands to the top of our industry. You also need to write content for each stage of the sales funnel. The usual sales funnel is usually broken down into three stages:- Awareness: People are only discovering your website at this point. Traditional blogs, guest posts, Q&As, expert roundups, original research, press releases, ebooks, real books, or anything informative are all examples of awareness content.
- Consideration/Interest: At this point, you will interact with past visitors to generate interest in your company. Ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, and anything else that may attract users to execute an action, such as downloading a PDF or subscribing to a newsletter, are examples of consideration stage content.
- Decision: A potential consumer will decide whether or not to buy from your company at the end of your sales funnel. Some of the same types of content mentioned above may be included in decision stage content, but bundled in an offer tailored to close a sale.
Optimise your web pages for search engines
Sales funnels on a customer relationship management (CRM) platform are frequently far more complex than this, but it should give you a good idea of how you should approach your inbound marketing strategy with content marketing. Once again, on-page SEO essentials include:- Keyword placement
- Semantically-related keywords
- H1 tag
- H2, H3, and H4 tags
- CTA
- Image optimisation
- Share your content through your website's social media networks.
- Use that content as a landing page in ads.
- Share content in appropriate online networks, such as Reddit and other online forums.
- Repurpose content as a video or podcast to broadcast on networks such as Spotify and YouTube.
- Use lead lists to promote your content in an email drip campaign.
- Include material in monthly mailings sent to newsletter subscribers.
- In your social media posts, tag influencers who might be interested in your content.
- Write about influential people or thought leaders and send a copy to them to share.
- Invite guest authors with significant audiences to your website to generate traffic to your blog.
- Republish blog content in an ebook that can be promoted and advertised through your existing outbound/inbound marketing channels.
- In social media posts, including hashtags or trending keywords to assist your material gain awareness.
- Display content that you believe deserves to be seen prominently on your homepage or website.
- Internally link to content to help it rank for specific anchor text and to give link equity to the page.
- Conversion rate: How many people complete desired behaviors, such as purchasing something.
- Bounce rate: How many people leave one website without visiting another?
- Average time on page: How long do people stay on a page? Are they reading my content or just skimming it and moving on?
- Channels: What sources of traffic are there (organic, direct, sponsored), and which should I prioritize?
- Device: Which device are people using to look up my company?
- Location: Is my company's website traffic localized?