SEO Basics: The Complete Beginner’s Guide To SEO
Want to get to grips with the basics of search engine optimization (SEO)?
You’re in the right place.
This isn’t an exhaustive SEO guide. You won’t find advanced tactics here and that’s the point.
Instead, we’ll keep this simple yet informative. And by the end, you’ll learn how to get started with SEO. Even as a beginner.
Let’s get started.
What is SEO (and why is it important)?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of getting your website’s pages to appear in search engines like Google.
Most importantly, it’s about getting your pages ranking at the top of these search engines.
According to the latest findings in Advanced Web Ranking’s Google Organic SERP CTR Curve, the first page appearing on search engine results pages (SERPs) has a 38.16% click-through rate. In comparison, the second and third spots generate 16% and 8.98% of clicks, respectively.
For example, if your page ranks first in search results for a query that generates roughly 10,000 searches a month, expect your page to receive around 3,800 monthly visitors (38.16 x 10,000).
SEO applies to all search engines, but Google is the biggest search engine to focus on. And if you rank in Google, you’ll likely find that you rank on other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo as well. Not to mention the other aggregators and platforms fed by Google’s index.
Google has roughly 86 billion monthly users. That’s a big opportunity. Just a tiny slice of that could result in a huge amount of traffic and visibility for your business.
But if you’re going to capitalize on this opportunity, you’re going to have to master the basics of SEO and understand how search engines work.
Search engines crawl the web, render, and then index content ready to display to users. They then use a variety of ranking factors to decide whether or not to display that content, where to rank that content, and which keywords the content should rank for.
If your site meets Google’s quality guidelines, there’s a good chance its site pages can and will rank on Google search results.
The challenge is that Google is constantly moving the dials on its search engine algorithm. They roll out numerous updates each year. Some large, some small.
It’s these algorithms which dictate how Google ranks web pages on organic search results.
The tactics that helped you rank now might be considered irrelevant or spammy after the update, causing your website to drop its keyword rankings and lose its organic traffic without warning.
This may seem chaotic and unpredictable. And it is. This is the price we pay to play in Google’s backyard. Given the vast amount of potential traffic and visibility, it’s a price worth paying.
I say this not to put you off SEO but to ensure that you’re aware of the risks going in.
Google has a monopoly over the search industry and they’re not transparent about algorithm changes. Their guidance for publishers and their PR campaigns both seem to be designed to confuse everyone.
This is why you must learn how to do SEO correctly, follow best practices, and be prepared to adapt. This will help to protect you from algorithm changes in the future.
The most important consideration is that SEO must be one of many marketing channels that you pursue. Relying solely on Google as a traffic source creates a single point of failure for your business. That’s a mistake no business should make.
The benefits of SEO
Despite its drawbacks and challenges, there are numerous benefits of using SEO as a marketing channel.
One of the reasons SEO is so effective is because it offers the potential to acquire buyer-intent traffic over the long term without having to pay for ads.
It’ll take a while to start seeing results, but once that happens, it becomes quite cost-effective.
Once you start ranking on top of SERPs for your target keywords, expect to stay there for a long time providing you maintain the quality of your content.
That means you can drive organic traffic and conversions from Google even while you’re sleeping!
You also need to set up paid campaigns to keep your site visible to more people on search engines and social media.
Of course, you will have to spend time maintaining your rankings over time, or you can decide to do them yourself. But the costs of SEO pale in comparison to pay-per-click (PPC) and paid social media initiatives.
So, how long can it take to rank?
While there’s no exact timetable for when your site will appear on SERPs, expect to wait months—if not years—to rank for your search queries.
It all depends on the time and effort you invest in building your site.
One important consideration is your site’s authority. The more links it has, and the more traffic it has, the more likely your site will be to rank. And the longer your site has been around, the better.
How newbies can do SEO: A step-by-step process
Now that you’re aware of the value that ranking at the top of search engines brings, it’s time to build an SEO strategy from the ground up that suits your business.
Whether you’re still deciding on building a site or already have one but don’t know what to do, we’ll guide you through the entire process.
Choosing a domain
One rule of thumb to keep when selecting a domain name is to make it brandable.
Avoid including your target keyword in the domain URL. It was a ranking factor back in the day, but it no longer is. More importantly, it limits your site’s topic coverage and prevents your site from expanding to other related topics.
Also, Google prioritizes brands to show up in organic searches. Positioning your site as a brand instead of just a niche or content site helps make your site more resistant to algorithm changes.
Use ChatGPT to help you develop brandable domain names for your site.
For example, if you want to create a Warhammer 4K site that talks about the miniature wargame, maybe consider brainstorming for miniature wargame domain names instead.
At the same time, make sure that the domain hasn’t been registered yet.
Use Namecheap to verify the domain and whether you can purchase it.
Ideally, you want to buy the .com domain extension since it’s the most recognizable.
You may also want to consider buying other domain extensions and domains for possible spelling mistakes of your brand name.
Use a trusted hosting provider
Your choice of hosting provider will dictate how fast and efficiently your website will load.
Search engines rank sites that provide visitors with a seamless user experience. Your hosting company should do this and keep your site online with little to no downtime.
This way, you don’t have to worry about your site being inaccessible when users visit it, preventing them from engaging with and buying from your website.
Outside of SEO, you want a hosting provider that addresses your issues quickly so you can avoid downtime.
WPX Hosting is a trusted hosting service with proven track records and excellent customer service. It’s a good option for most small to medium traffic websites.
They include a CDN, malware scanning, and malware removal in their service.
It’s also very beginner-friendly, as its helpful customer support will help you set up your website even if you don’t know how.
WPX Hosting isn’t ideal for high traffic websites, unfortunately.
So, for advanced users and sites that generate a lot of traffic, we recommend Cloudways.
It’s a managed offering that allows you to choose which cloud servers to use, and provides a highly flexible dashboard. It’s not as simple as WPX Hosting but you can scale your servers at the click of a button, and the dashboard offers a lot more control.
Build your website with WordPress
You’ll need to choose a content management system (CMS). For that, we recommend the self hosted version of WordPress.
It powers around 40% of the web so it’s pretty popular.
First, many hosting providers (including the ones above) offer dedicated WordPress hosting solutions. This typically means that your website will run faster and their support team can provide better support.
Flexibility and customization are also part of why WordPress is so popular.
Using this CMS, you can create a simple blog or a complex SaaS platform. Its open-source code lets you and developers tweak its functionalities to provide site features that help you achieve your goals and objectives.
Not a developer? No problem. There’s a vast amount of free themes you can choose from and lots of plugins that can extend functionality.
From collecting email lists to creating checkout and payment processing pages, you can guarantee that there’s a plugin for that!
Now, you might be wondering why am I talking about using WordPress in a post about SEO? That’s partly because most high ranking websites run on WordPress. And when combined with an SEO plugin, you’ll be able to do everything you need from an SEO standpoint.
Most other content management systems are fairly limited in terms of SEO functionality and custom CMS builds are expensive.
We will discuss the different plugins to help improve your site’s SEO in more detail later.
Related reading: WordPress SEO: The Complete Guide for Beginners
Make your site secure
SSL certificates encrypt data transferred between the user and your website and you need to install one on your own site.
This isn’t optional anymore. I can’t remember the last time I even saw a website ranking in Google without SSL. It’s essential whatever you’re doing.
But the good news is that most web hosts offer SSL certificates for free via Let’s Encrypt and they’re easy to install.
So, in Cloudways, for example, we’d go to SSL Certificate, add our domain name, make sure auto renewal is enabled, and click save.
Get a lightweight theme
Most WordPress themes have poor code and are bloated with features that you don’t need.
Therefore, setting up an SEO-friendly website means using a theme with optimized code for faster loading speed and better performance.
A good example is Kadence. That’s the theme we use here at Search Endurance.
Kadence is an easy-to-use lightweight WordPress theme that’s highly customizable. You have the option of building a website from scratch, using a pre-built template, or using AI. There’s also a blocks plugin (Kadence Blocks) with an extensive library of block templates for the WordPress editor.
Install WordPress plugins
Now, there will undoubtedly be a bunch of plugins you’ll need to install on your site. We won’t cover all of them here because it’s beyond the scope of this post.
But, you will need an SEO plugin to help you optimize your WordPress website. This will help you rank better in search engines like Google.
Then, there are some other plugins that are relevant to SEO as well.
SEO
SEOPress is an all-in-one SEO plugin. It ensures your site observes the best on-page SEO practices and covers technical SEO basics, improving the crawlability of your site pages.
Critical features of the free SEOPress plugin include adding SEO meta tags to all your pages, creating an XML sitemap, and more.
There is a premium version should you need it.
SEOPress Pro is jam-packed with premium features like leveraging AI to generate meta titles and descriptions, schema markup, and integrating Google Analytics from the dashboard, to name a few.
Caching
I say caching but really most caching plugins are really performance plugins that offer various optimizations that will speed up your website. This includes caching.
Speed is important. Google won’t give you a bump in rankings for eeking out a few extra milliseconds of speed, but if your page load times are stupidly slow, that will be an issue.
It’s also important for users. A slow website will cost you sales.
So, to speed up your WordPress website, we recommend WP Rocket.
It’s the best dedicated WordPress plugin for the job.
All its features are designed to help improve your site’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) scores and increase your keyword rankings on SERPs.
Image optimization
For image-heavy websites like ecommerce stores, you need to compress all your images. This process decreases the image file size without compromising quality.
ShortPixel is a plugin that can do this for you and then some.
You can change the images from JPG or PNG to next-gen formats like WEBP for better image quality.
More importantly, you can set the plugin to automatically compress the images as they’re being uploaded to your site. You can also optimize existing images in your media library to improve your site’s loading speed even further!
Security
SSL is just a protective layer that helps to protect your site and its users but it’s not enough to protect your site from hackers and other malicious actors.
That’s why you need a security plugin or platform to keep your WordPress site secure. Something that offers a firewall, website backups, malware scanning, malware removal, etc.
MalCare can take care of all of this for you and more.
Sure, some web hosts will offer some of these features but these are bolt-on features. They don’t usually have in-house expertise for this sort of thing. And you always need backups that you can control.
But what we particularly like about MalCare is that it doesn’t run on your server. You install a plugin to connect it but it works in the cloud. This means no resource hog slowing down your site!
Conduct keyword research
Now that you’ve set up your WordPress site, it’s time to delve deeper into SEO, starting with keyword research.
You want to research search queries relevant to your topic to optimize your website.
However, you need to use tools to help you vet these keywords and choose which ones to prioritize in your campaign.
There are a bunch of these types of tools but we’re quite fond of SE Ranking.
It’s not a free tool but they do offer a free trial.
Once you’ve got your account, just type your topic or seed keyword from the search bar to access keyword metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, etc.
Next, click on the detailed report to see a list of related keywords to target.
The goal is to find keywords with the highest search volume and lowest keyword difficulty to optimize for your site so you can rank on top faster and generate more traffic.
Observe on-page SEO practices
Once you’ve chosen your keywords, you need to observe the best on-page optimization practices for each page.
SEOPress’s Content analysis feature helps you optimize a post or page for your target keyword. Enter and analyze the keyword to receive SEO suggestions on which elements on your site to improve.
This is a fairly basic approach but it’s a good start.
Note: You can enter a meta description but that doesn’t mean it will be displayed in Google’s search results. Google usually displays whatever it thinks is best. Not that what they show is usually right. It’s often nonsensical.
Create optimized content
If you want to give your content the best chance of ranking in organic search results, you’ll need to do more in-depth content optimization.
We like Frase for this task.
Frase lists natural language processing (NLP) keywords related to your search phrase that you can mention in your content. It also helps to ensure you don’t over optimize your content.
SE Ranking has its own version of this feature which is similar to what Frase offers.
Another great thing about these tools is they help you structure your content by providing the average number of words, paragraphs, and images used in the top-ranking content for your keywords.
By including the NLP keywords and following the similar page structure, you can make your content more topically relevant and rank higher on Google Search.
Build backlinks
Backlinks help search engines understand how authoritative your website truly is.
Think of them as personal recommendations. Nobody would take Joe Schmoe’s recommendation of your site as gospel. But glowing remarks about your website from celebrities and trusted people will make them think twice!
However, link building is one of the more difficult tasks in SEO, as you have to contact and compel website owners to link to your website. Or create content so great that people will naturally link to it.
The quality of the backlink is super important. So, you’ll want:
- Links from high traffic pages
- Links from sites that are more difficult to get
- Links from sites that don’t link out to spam sites
- Do follow links (nofollow links are still useful but not quite as good)
- Links pointing to your homepage and priority pages (both matter)
For new sites, building foundational links will still be helpful. These are known as pillow links. These include links from social media and online directories. The latter is specifically for local businesses.
Foundational links are easy to build since you have complete control over how to link to your site from these profiles. They’re also natural links so that Google won’t penalize you.
Note: There was a time when Google would algorithmically penalize websites for acquiring spammy links. But now they tend to just demote spam links instead. You can disavow spam links but it’s not recommended. It is worth noting that link spam can still trigger a manual penalty although it’s unlikely.
Track website SEO performance
Over time, you should check how your site is performing in search results based on the number of keywords you’re ranking for and the traffic you’re getting from each.
Using Google Search Console, go to Performance > Search results to view how many clicks and impressions your site received from Google.
If you click on the page and then on the Queries tab, you should see the keywords driving the most organic traffic to these pages.
You can also use SE Ranking to track your keyword ranking and compare its progress over time.
From the data you’ll gather from these tools, identify pages you need to optimize to improve their ranking or delete and redirect to a different page on your site.
Conclusion
Let’s face it, unpacking SEO for beginners is like cutting the head of a hydra – once you cut one, two heads pop up!
Ironically, that’s the fun part of optimizing for search engines. There are new challenges to overcome daily and new tactics and strategies to discover and employ.
With this guide, however, we’ve barely scratched the surface!
But at the very least, it should spark inspiration to learn more about its practices so you can establish your site as a trustworthy brand that Google can safely rank on SERPs.
Next, I’d recommend reading our article on 14 SEO principles all beginners should know.
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