Mastering the Basics of Effective Online SEO Strategy

If you want to expand your technology skills set and add SEO to the list, you will find a plethora of material on the internet. However, much of the content available can be unorganized and without a clear starting point or direction. So to help you jumpstart your SEO journey, learn about what SEO is, what terminologies a marketer should know, how search engines work, how to do keyword research and rank your website, and how to optimize your content.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website to boost organic web traffic and improve rankings in search results. SEO only focuses on organic search results and is a part of search engine marketing, a process which includes link building, keyword research, content creation, and technical audits.

Three Key Aspects of SEO

Every website owner should learn search engine optimization regardless of whether they're selling a product or service. To cover the basics of SEO in order to rank your website on Google and other search engines, there are three things you should always focus on: technicalities, high-quality content, and quality backlinks.

SEO Vocabulary You Should Know

When you start learning about SEO, you'll come across a lot of terminologies that may seem confusing. While you don't need to memorize their definitions, it is important to have a basic understanding about them to avoid confusion.

On-Page and Off-Page SEO: These terms categorize the activities you perform on your website, and you will encounter them multiple times. On-page SEO focuses on showing what the page is about to the search engines; and it refers to the activities you do on the website like keyword research, page performance optimization, tag optimization, content optimization, and internal linking. Off-page SEO focuses on building website authority and trust, and it involves activities related to acquiring quality backlinks such as link building through guest blogging, broken link building, and email outreach which show the search engine the authority and value of your website. The focus of every successful SEO strategy includes both on-page and off-page activities. You can utilize the free website availability check to assess the impact of these on-page and off-page SEO activities on your site's overall performance.
White Hat SEO: Like in western movies, black and white represent the bad guys and good guys; and likewise, SEO uses these terms to describe two groups of SEOs—the ones who stick to rules written by Google's Webmaster guidelines and the ones who don't. White hat SEO refers to the SEO techniques that adhere to the guidelines set by the search engine. It's a long-term strategy that uses quality content, optimization, and a user-oriented approach to drive good rankings.
Black Hat SEO: Black hat SEO is a set of practices that are used to improve ranking unethically. They work in ranking your websites at the top in a short time, but search engines catch onto such stuff quickly and penalize or ban the website.

Search Engines

Google is the most popular search engine internet users use to search for information on the internet. So when you're trying to improve the ranking of your website, you need to know how the Google search algorithm works and how search engines in general work. Three elements of a search engine include:

Crawling: Crawling is the process by which a search engine continuously scans each webpage on the internet using programs called bots or crawlers. These crawlers find new pages by following hyperlinks.
Indexing: The information found after crawling the website is then indexed. The search engine learns and understands the web pages, analyzes them, categorizes them, and then stores them in the search engine index which is an enormous and vast library of information found on all crawled websites. The purpose is to make the information available to the users quickly in the form of search results.
Picking: Once the information is crawled and indexed, it is then picked out as a search result when a user searches up a query. The list of results is called the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. Google's Search Algorithm is a broad term that covers several technologies, algorithms, and machine learning systems that Google uses to rank the websites. The algorithm considers factors like content quality, query meaning, page relevancy, page usability, context, and settings to deliver the best results. The Google algorithm is updated and tweaked on a regular basis, just like any other technology system. These updates are always announced by Google and strike a buzz in the SEO community.

Ranking Factors

Search engines don't disclose much about the exact calculations that go into ranking websites, but most ranking factors are well known by now in the SEO community. Listed below are ten critical Google success factors.

Quality links and quantity of links
Crawl-able web pages
User-oriented content
Tailored quality content
Original content
EAT | Expertise, Authority, Trust
Content optimization
Click-through rate
Mobile optimization
Website speed

Other factors that improve web rankings are image optimization, social sharing, HTTPS status, and topical authority.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is an important part of the SEO journey, especially when finding new content ideas and learning about your niche. You can find keywords in various ways including:

Google Suggestions: Google displays a number of suggestions on its SERPs and provides helpful features like People Also Ask, Google Autocomplete, and Related Searches to suggest relevant keyword ideas. Just enter the seed keyword (the phrase you will use to generate more keywords) into the search bar and allow Google Autocomplete to suggest you different keywords. Pair different letters with your seed keyword to find more autocomplete keyword ideas.
Keyword Tools: You will find a variety of keyword tools and apps to help you generate keyword ideas based on seed keywords. You can invest in paid keyword tools to enjoy unlimited quality keywords. You can enter the competitor's URL or the seed keyword to start your keyword research with a keyword tool. These keyword tools also help you understand the SERP and the ranking for the keywords too.

Keyword Metrics

The quality of your keyword research should be supported by the relevancy of the keyword, the search volume, and the rankability of the keyword. These metrics are an important part of conversion in SEO.

Search Volume: Up until a few years ago, content creators understood the importance of finding keywords with high search volumes; so they would use them in their content to trick the algorithm. So much so, that keyword research has become ten times more complex and secure. The search volume nowadays consists of web traffic that comes from long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and use more words to ensure low difficulty and a high conversion rate.
Keyword Difficulty: Once you have narrowed down the keywords you will use to rank the website, you should evaluate the competition to understand where your website can rank on the first SERP. The higher the keyword difficulty, the harder it is to rank the keyword on the first SERP.
Keyword Relevance: The relevancy of the keyword you include in your content matters a lot. Conduct a SERP analysis to know the search intent behind the query (transactional, informational, navigational, or commercial) and the competition you are up against in the first SERP.

Content Optimization

You've probably heard about the phrase content is king at least once. SEO and content go hand in hand. Right after you've come up with relevant keywords, you should come up with relevant topics too. The keyword itself can be a topic; but while the words differ on the SERP, they are talking about the same thing. Group multiple keywords in one topic and use each of the keywords to rank the website. Pick a keyword that represents your topic the best, as that will be your focus keyword. Your content strategy should structure content to cover the most important keywords systematically, provide value to your readers, and boost your authority in your niche topics.

Focus Keyword Optimization

When you've found the focus keyword you want to use, you must optimize it for better website performance. Use it in:

Body text
Title tag
URL
Meta description
Heading
Subheading
Image Metadata
Anchor text of internal links

Focus on improving content quality, content length, and content freshness to keep the content relevant and top of the SERPs.

Link Building and Backlinks

A backlink (a link from one web page to another) is an important ranking factor. If page A includes a link that redirects a user to page B, it's said that page B has a backlink from page A. The search engines believe that a page is trustworthy and valuable when it includes a high number of quality backlinks. The algorithm used by Google PageRank determines the relativity of the quantity and quality of backlinks and the importance of webpages on the SERPs. It considers factors like the number of links of the linking page, the number of backlinks, and the PageRank of the linking page.

Type of Links

You should know about the two types of links for starters:

Internal and External Links: An internal link is a link on a webpage that redirects to another page within the same website. An external link is one that redirects the user to another website.
Do-Follow and No-Follow Links: A no-follow link does not pass equity to the linked page and contains a rel=nofollow comment in its HTML code. These links can be sponsored and affiliate links, links in comments, and links to websites you don't want to validate.

Link Profile

A link profile is the collection of all the links that lead to your website. The ranking of your website is directly related to the quality of your link profile. A profile that includes a diverse mix of different types of links and quality backlinks makes a good link profile.

Creating a Valuable Backlink

A valuable backlink should have the following qualities:

Relevancy
Belongs to an authoritative website
Unique
Placed at the top in the body text

All of this information just barely taps the the surface of learning SEO. This guide will equip you with the basics of SEO, but there are many topics that are yet to be covered. To dive deep into the world of SEO, plan to invest a substantial amount of time and effort while utilizing a good fiber internet connection like Rise Broadband internet and you can certainly become an proficient marketer.