[SEO] Search Engine Optimization: The Complete Beginner's Guide

Jomicro Blog
A simple complete SEO guide for beginners: Learn most of the things you need to know about Search Engine Optimization.(SEO)



If you're reading this article, you've probably must have heard about SEO... Right?
Maybe you have a basic understanding that it has something to do with Search Engines. But wondering what exactly SEO is and why it's so powerful in Digital Marketing.

That’s why we wrote this article for you!


Frequently Asked Questions We've Answerd:

  • What is SEO?
  • How can I learn SEO?
  • How does SEO work?
  • How do search engines work?
  • How can I rank my website
  • Why is SEO so important?
  • How long does it take to learn SEO?
  • Do I need SEO tools?

Implementing Things From This Article Is A Great Way To Start Your SEO Journey. 

Key Takeaway: Search Engine Optimization is not something you can learn in a day, week or month. It takes quite usually a long time and great efforts for better results or success.
Mastering SEO largely depends on;
   • Experimenting

   • Reading reliable resources

   • Consistency

   • Practice

   • Patience

SEO is evolving all the time. You should always stay updated with the latest updates and related information about essential SEO elements that keep on changing.


As a beginner, when you start digging deep into SEO, you will definitely come across various common terms or vocabularies.
Some terms are not so important from the practical point of view but it's better we discuss about a few of them so that you can understand their meaning.

Here are some common terms used in SEO that we thought might be the most useful to you as a beginner.

Title Tag: A tag that contains the title of a web page. The title tag is often displayed on the SERP and is one of the most important elements of SEO.

Schema: It's a code used to provide additional information about a web page to search engines.

Meta Tags: These are tags used to provide information about a web page, such as the title, keywords, and description

Spider: A program used by a search engine to crawl the internet and index web pages, also known as a Bot.

ALT: (Alternative Text) This is the text that appears in place of an image on a website if the image fails to load.

Traffic: This is the total number of people who visit your website. Web Traffic can be paid traffic or organic traffic.
Organic traffic simply means you don’t pay directly for traffic. These are mostly people who click through to your website from Google's search results or your media posts.

Links: (usually known as a hyperlinks)
Are clickable items on a webpage that connects one page to another. Links can be shown as text, pictures, or buttons. It's a way for users to navigate between pages on the Internet. Similarly, link building is the process of obtaining or gaining hyperlinks from other websites to yours.

There are mainly 3 major types of SEO links that can affect your rankings. Internal links, Backlinks and External links.

• Internal Links: These are links that point to pages within your website.

• Backlinks: (also called inbound links) These are normally incoming links or references to your website on other sites.

• External Links: (also called outbound Links) Are links on your site that point to external webpages on other sites.

Click Through Rate: The percentage of people who click on a specific link out of the total number of people who see it.

Content Management System(CMS) These are platforms used to create, edit, publish and manage content on the internet.
Popular examples: WordPress and Blogger

Keywords: These are simply phrases or words users type in a Search Engine to find what they're looking for. (Search queries)
If you want your site to be found on SERP, then consider using relevant keywords. People will have a better chance of finding your content among the results.

Types Of Keywords In SEO:
   • Short Tail Keywords

   • Long Tail Keywords 

   • Local keywords

   • Focus Keywords 

   • Sematic Keywords 

   • Generic Keywords

   • Product related Keywords
 
There's still a long list of keyword types not mentioned above. All you need is to use the right Keywords for your SEO strategy.
Keyword research can help you find the most profitable keyword opportunities and plan your content strategy

SiteMap: Also called a website map is a file that contains a list of all important pages on a website. Due to the increasing size and number of websites on the internet, Search Engines may find it difficult to keep track on billions of materials/content on the internet.
It’s highly possible for your content to be buried deep in your website where search engines can’t easily find it.
Sitemaps display important web pages so that search engines can easily find, crawl and index discovered content and information. That's why you need a sitemap, especially if you have a larger website.

There are 2 types of sitemaps and each has a different functionality on websites.
     1.HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language)
     Is a central list of every link on your 
     website that helps you keep track of 
     your pages and subpages.

     2.XML (Extensible Mark-up Language)
     Provides a list of all URLs representing
     your site.

XML and HTML are both coding languages used to create new web pages on CMSs.



WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), can be defined in various ways, but let's take this simple definition! 

SEO is simply described as the process of optimizing your website or blog with the aim of appearing on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) in order to gain more organic traffic.


SEO activities are categorised basing on whether you perform them on the website or off the website. 

On-Page SEO: These are activities you do on your website. Basically, On-Page SEO are all things that you can directly control on your site. (Similar to Technical SEO)
When dealing with On-Page SEO, here's what you normally focus on.
   • Your Web design and layout 

   • Keyword research and analysis

   • Optimizing your content
 
   • Optimizing title tags & meta descriptions

The best way to remain competitive in the SEO world is knowing how to make Search Engines completely understand your content. On-page SEO activities are what help Search Engines understand what your website is all about.

Off-Page SEO: These are mainly activities which involve external optimization practices that happen away(offline) from your site.
What you do on your website(On-page) is only half the effort, Off-Page SEO makes the huge difference on your website because it's all about building reputation.
Experts say that Off-Page SEO can boost or make up to more than 50% of Google's ranking factors.
Normally, this is mostly about getting quality backlinks to show Search Engines that your website or blog has valuable content and can be reliable and trusted.

Off-Page SEO Practices includes, 
    • Brand Mentions
    • Guest blogging

    • Email outreach

    • Influencer marketing

Note: Sometimes Off-page SEO can be a little more difficult or hard because it's entirely not within your control. That's why a good SEO strategy should consist of both On-Page and Off-Page SEO activities.

The difference: On-page SEO describes specific elements of the pages on your website that you control.
Off-page SEO, on the other hand, mostly take place beyond your website.

Local SEO: This is the process of optimizing your site with a aim of gaining more local search rankings. People often prefer searching about things near them and that's why Search Engines can base on locations to show results.


It's important to note that Search Engines like Google penalize websites which participate in using manipulative SEO practices. So it's clever to follow the guidelines while optimizing your site.

We've explained 2 types of SEO so that you can better understand which practices are considered bad or good.

White-Hat SEO(Ethical SEO): Refers to all the regular SEO practices or activities both on or off your website which are in line with the rules and policies set by Search Engines.
It's a long-term strategy in which good rankings are a side-product of good optimization, quality content, and a user-oriented approach.
Implementing White Hat SEO practices is the best way to create an ethical, sustainably successful website and business online. 

Black-Hat SEO(Unethical SEO): A set of activities aimed at manipulating or violating Search Engines terms of services, guidelines and policies.
These techniques can get you to the top of the Search Engines Results Pages. However, google will most probably penalize and ban the website sooner or later.
And once you've been banned from Google, there's no guarantee that they might ever re-list or rank your site again. A lifetime ban will have tremendous consequences.

It's much better to never get your website into that position at all. Here's a list of some  Black Hat practices you should totally avoid.
  • Keyword Stuffing
  • Manipulating Links on your site 
  • Publishing pages with malicious content
  • Hiding Links and content


The Black hat and white hat thing originated in ascent Western movies. Where black hats were used to represent bad guys and white hats definitely represented the good guys.
You may have probably seen black hats used to describe those who perform unethical actions with computers. (Hackers)



HOW SEO AND SEARCH ENGINES WORK:
Yes! You must have probably understood what SEO is, but do you know how it really works? Let's Dive a Little Deep. 

Basically, SEO focuses only on organic search results or organic traffic. It works by optimizing a website's content, conducting keyword research, and link building in order to increase a content’s ranking and the website’s visibility on a Search Engine.

A Search Engine is an online tool that people use to search for information on the internet. 
A typical example is Google and when we talk about Search Engines in this article, we mostly mean Google because honestly, it's the common example you need to know.

When people have a query and are looking up or searching for something online and you provide answers or solutions to what they are looking for, google looks for clues to give searchers the exact results they are looking for. There are three steps it needs to take: (1)Crawling (2)Indexing and (3)Ranking 

1.Crawling: This is the first step or process. Google sends out robots(crawlers or spiders) to follow hyperlinks and discover new content and webpages on the internet. 

Crawlers will then gather all the information about your webpages and report back to google what they've discovered.

2.Indexing: After crawling, the information about your webpages will be stored in a huge database known as "Search Index" where it can later be retrieved.

The information may include discovered URLs, images, videos or documents.

3.Ranking: Once your site has been crawled and indexed, the ranking process begins.
This is when Google will determine where to place a particular web page on it's Results Page. (SERP)

Google organizes results from most relevant to least relevant.They aim at providing users with the most relevant information.

In general, Google wants to show searchers the highest quality and most trustworthy content at the top of the result page.

So, in order for your website to show up on the first page of Google, you have to provide top quality and relevant answers to what people search for.



BEST SEO TOOLS YOU SHOULD BE USING.
It's needles to invest a lot of money in order to gain traffic and If you’re serious about SEO, you shouldn’t neglect the useful data and insights provided by these tools.

That's why we've given you access to these powerful SEO Tools, broken down into the following Categories:

Keyword Research Tools:

Tracking and Analytics Tools:
• Semrush
Link Building Tools:
• Ahrefs

SiteMap Generating Tools:

User Experience (UX)
• Pingdom



WHY SEO IS SO CRUCIAL AND IMPORTANT. 

Remember, your site is the center-piece of your digital marketing activities. Your main goal is to be easily found and reached online, and that's where SEO comes in.

Now, Here's Why SEO Is So Important:
Our top reasons why you need SEO.

Visibility and Ranking: SEO is the major key to increasing your visibility and ranking on Search Engines, the higher you rank, the more likely prospects will be able to click through your website. Definitely a great opportunity to generate valuable leads and sales.

With a proper SEO Strategy, it's possible to push your website to the forefront of Search Engines like Google, enabling you to generate organic traffic.

Here are some crucial ranking factors you should definitely know. (Some confirmed ranking factors have a small impact on your website while others are not yet confirmed but it's so important to put all these factors into consideration and implement them)
 • Adjusting your website speed

 • Obtaining quality backlinks

 • Making sure your content can be Crawled

 • Publishing unique and fresh content

 • Website must work on any device

 • Use of https and Having a Sitemap 

 • Creating well structured pages and content

If you provide prove that you're an authority in your field and you create high quality content that can be trusted, you will definitely earn better rankings on search engines.

Organic Traffic: Organic traffic is one of the main goals of SEO, This means you don't need to pay any single coin to be on top of the SERP. Google Analytics is a perfect tool you can use to examine and monitor the general performance or traffic of your site. 

Credibility and Authority: Authority means that your website can be trusted and can be reliable with quality and relevant content highly useful to visitors. 

In SEO, Page Authority(PA) scores from the range of 0–100 and the higher your score, the more authority your site will have. You can find your PA ratings by using tools like Google Search Console.

Builds Trust and User Experience: SEO will help you build organic trust for your business and User Experience (UX) is how your visitors interact with your website.

This includes how well your visitors can navigate through your website. A good web design, tone, and a faster page load speed will reduce your bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend longer times on your site.

If your site has a good User Experience (UX) and you provide what visitors are looking for, you often become a trusted source they can rely on. Whether you provide answers to questions, products or services.

Furthermore, SEO practices or activities which adjust User Experience (UX) benefits your website to rank better on Google.
Customers or visitors know exactly what they're looking for, If your website doesn’t meet user standards, Google will know it and you might get left behind.
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