What is SEO? 10 Tips for Beginners

Article/information written for a client who wanted to explain the very basic conceptc of SEO to their team.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of making your webpages as “readable” as possible – both to people, and search engines.

Google uses “crawlers” to scan pages on the internet and rank them based on their readability. When people google a phrase, Google shows them the websites with high rankings first. This means those websites “rank higher” on the search engine results pages (SERP).

Note that Amazon and Euroflorist, companies with highly professional SEO practices, appear first. Smaller florists with less readable websites may be on the 2nd, 3rd, or even 45th page depending on ranking, and are rarely discovered by searchers.

90% of googlers do not look past the first page of search results, so appearing on the first page is a high prioirty. The goal of this is driving “organic traffic” (clicks from new visitors who found you on Google, as opposed to paid advertising). So, just how do people do this?

Understand your audience’s questions.

The primary way to rank higher on the SERP is to answer the questions people are Googling. If someone googles “where can I rent a tent”, pages which use this phrase and the keywords (“rent, tent”) will appear higher up.

Identify and target keywords.

Go to Keyword Rank Checker, and search the keywords you think relate to your website. You can find out where your webpage “ranks” compared to others, i.e, where it will appear on the SERP if someone searches this keyword. Check if a keyword is “longtail” or “short-tail”- this tells you how many competitors you have, and how easy it will be to “rank high” for it. For example, ranking high for “shoes” would be very difficult (longtail) as there are many, many websites selling shoes. However, ranking for “parking near Green Street” (short tail) receives fewer searches but has few competitors, and is easier to rank for.

User experience.

Make sure your website is well lined out, easy to navigate, and helpful. A high “bounce rate” (people who click in to your site, read for just a few seconds, find it unhelpful, and go bck to Google) will lower your rating.

Landing page.

Make sure your landing page has a fast page load speed and that all sections of your website are accessible from it.

Original content. 

Avoid copy and pasting content form other websites. Google prioritises pages with unique content which directly answers the search question. Pages with plenty of relevant content (aticles, videos or other information) rank higher. Googl’e mission is to connect people with the answers they want, so Google prioritises the pages it feels can do this. 

Use headings, subheadings, paragraphs, and bullet points.

Google prefers readable formats. Lists (especially of 3, 5, or 10 points) are deemed most readable by the algorithm. Ensure you use headings (h1), subheadings (h2), etc. Optimising these so the page is broken in to more readable parts is just one aspect of on-page SEO. Use bold font for primary keywords.

Short paragraphs and mixed length sentences.

Keep paragraphs short, and make sure all information is snappy and well-written. Google also prefers paragraphs with some short and some long sentences. This is considered more readable.

Images.

Include images, but make sure you always provide the copyright and description. The description cna be found in the image’s code and describes the image content for Google’s crawlers (it is also what is read allowed to blind computer users).

Backlinks.

Google prefers pages which link to many other pages on the internet. You can also include links to other pages or articles in your domain. Google prioritises this “connectedness” as it is more likely to direct searchers to the answers they requested. Page ranking also increases if you receive a lot of backlinks, especially when these backlinks come from highly-ranked pages. Fix pages which have “broken backlinks” (links which lead to the wrong page or pages which java been deleted), as you will be penalised for this.