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SEO Basics: The Essential SEO for Beginners Guide

Want to learn SEO but not sure where to start? This helpful beginner's guide features SEO basics, including SEO terms, keyword research, content optimization and more.

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Trusted By Industry Leaders

Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

So you’ve completed your website. You’ve written your content, you’ve refined your design, and you’re ready to publish and start ranking. 

Now what? 

SEO or search engine optimization is an entire discipline in and of itself, but don’t let that overwhelm you! 

With this easy-to-follow beginner’s guide, you’ll not only learn key SEO basics to help you rank quickly, but you’ll also gain crucial skills that will set you up for better rankings over time. 

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  • SEO or search engine optimization is the practice of focusing on improving website visibility and increasing organic traffic.
  • SEO includes: keyword research, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.
  • The process of optimizing a website is a long-term project, so monitoring analytics and metrics, staying up to date with the latest algorithm changes, and refreshing content are essential.

Get a best-in-class Predictive SEO Tool to streamline your content optimization strategy, then review your site for AI content in 1 click with the Originality.ai Site Scan.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of improving a website’s visibility in the search engine results pages. The goal of SEO is to attract organic (non-paid) traffic to your website. 

There are lots of individual pieces that make up the big picture of SEO, but the most important thing you can do is take the time to get each step right. Then, follow up on them consistently to help your pages rank better over time. 

What’s Actually Happening When I Search? 

You may be surprised at all of the things that go on behind the scenes when you search. Whenever a user does a search, the search engine (whether it’s Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other) goes to work, analyzing billions of pages. These pages are generally ranked in terms of how well they answer three main questions:

  1. How relevant is this content to the user’s search?
  2. How credible is the website?
  3. Is the site fast? Mobile friendly? Easy to use?

Of course, there are many other factors that go into ranking a site, and every search engine is different, but generally, if it has those three points covered, it’s already starting out right. 

Why Does SEO Matter? 

SEO matters because it’s a method of getting free website traffic. If your SEO is good, it can help you optimize your marketing budget and reduce paid traffic spend.

That way, you can take advantage of all of the benefits of having a top-ranked site, including:

  • Enjoying the vast amount of traffic that comes with being ranked at or near the top of the search engine results organically.
  • Delivering a standout user experience that keeps people coming back again and again.
  • Making your brand a recognized authority or credible resource in your field or niche.
  • Surpassing your competitors who are trying to rank for the same or similar keywords.

Now that you better understand the SEO basics, let’s take a look at how to actually get started ranking your pages for the best possible results. 

Keyword Research: A Foundation of SEO Efforts

Getting started with SEO basics typically means beginning with keyword research. Keywords are the words or phrases that people type into Google or other search engines. 

In order to increase the chances that your pages will show up in the search rankings, you have to identify and target relevant keywords

The good news is that there are keyword research tools that will do this. 

Originality.ai’s Content Optimizer can help you identify relevant keywords and optimize your content with intelligent AI SEO suggestions. Plus, it’s designed to resist manipulation tactics like keyword stuffing.

When researching keywords, you’re going to want to do so with a focus on user intent. User intent boils down to four main categories: 

  1. Informational (“how to, step-by-step guide, etc.”) 
  2. Navigational (“login here”) 
  3. Transactional (“buy [product] online”) 
  4. Commercial (“best [product] under [price point]”) 

You’ll also want to target keywords that are much more in-depth than single-word terms or short-tail keywords

Example: instead of “laptops”, which is searched a lot but may fall into at least three of the aforementioned categories, it’s better to target what are called “long tail keywords,” since they may be searched less, but the people searching are much more likely to buy. 

You’re more likely to get a sale by targeting a long-tail keyword like “best laptops for developers under [price point]” than a more generic term. 

In doing keyword research (depending on the tool), you’ll also typically see columns for search volume (which tells you how often the term is searched) and difficulty (which tells you how easy or hard the term is to rank for). 

Choose keywords that have a good balance of high search volume and low competition. 

You can also use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to see which keywords your competitors rank for and get a good starting point for what to focus on. 

On-Page SEO: Focusing on Your Website’s Optimization 

On-page SEO refers to the things on your website that you can optimize, such as your content, headings, and page structure. 

There are several on-page factors you can adjust in order to make them more appealing to your readers and search engines alike: 

Title tags and meta descriptions

Use primary keywords at the start of the title, for example, “Digital Marketing Basics: The Definitive Digital Marketing Guide.

Then, write a compelling summary between 150-160 characters for your meta description. Meta descriptions appear in addition to the title and are designed to let users know what they can expect by clicking. 

URL structure

Keep URLs short and to the point, and use hyphens instead of underscores for easier readability. 

By default, some content management systems (CMS) will automatically name your page something like /?p=38794; however, you can and should change this to be more descriptive of what your page is actually about. 

For example, going back to the digital marketing theme, a URL for “Digital Marketing Basics: The Definitive Digital Marketing Guide” might be: /digital-marketing-basics

Header tags

Your header tags (H1, H2, H3) serve as headings for your page and to break up information. The H1 tag should be the main topic of the page, while H2 and H3 tags serve as subheadlines to make the page more readable. 

Internal links

Link to related content on your page to keep users engaged and make it easier for search engines to find and index more of your content. 

For instance, if you’re writing a blog post about the “digital marketing basics”, it would make sense to link to another page on your site about “digital marketing analytics” or “digital marketing strategies.”

Image optimization

Compressed images load faster, and less load time for a website is a good thing. Don’t forget to add alt text for accessibility and optimization benefits. 

Mobile optimization

More and more of your users will be reading your content on a mobile device. In addition, Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites. Make sure that the template or layout you’re using is mobile-responsive. 

It’s a good idea to preview your pages on mobile devices as well to make sure that your content can be easily read, buttons are clickable, and images adjust accordingly. 

Off-Page SEO: Building Authority With High-Value Content

Beyond optimizing different aspects of your own pages, there’s also off-page SEO, which involves building high-quality, relevant backlinks from other websites to yours. There are several ways to do this, including: 

  • Guest blogging for industry-leading blogs
  • Creating high-value content with unique research to naturally encourage backlinks
  • Collaborating with bloggers, journalists, and influencers in your niche

All of these are well-known strategies for getting backlinks. However, avoid link strategies that don’t comply with Google’s spam policies, which could negatively impact rankings.

Technical SEO: Fine-Tuning Website Performance

Beyond on-page and off-page SEO, there’s also the technical side of things:

  • Page speed is one of the biggest factors that can improve your site and ranking. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can tell you what’s slowing down your pages.
  • Help Google and other search engines index your site more efficiently by creating a sitemap.
  • Use Google Search Console to check your website for any crawl errors that could prevent Google from indexing your pages. 

Measuring and Tracking SEO Efforts

After you’ve optimized your on-page, off-page, and technical SEO, it’s time to measure and track your efforts over time to see how they’re paying off. 

Keep in mind that SEO isn’t a once-and-done thing but rather an ongoing process. 

There are tools that can help you see how your page is ranking, including:

  • Google Analytics: Track website traffic and metrics like bounce rate (how many people come to your page but leave without navigating further to other pages).
  • Google Search Console: Monitor indexing issues and mobile usability.
  • Originality.ai Predictive SEO Tool: Check content optimization scores to refresh and update content, and compare optimization scores for top-ranking competitors.
  • SEMrush / Ahrefs / Moz: Analyze backlinks, see your positioning for various keywords, and compare your site to the competition. 

Important metrics to track 

  • Organic Traffic: the number of visitors from search engines.
  • Keyword Rankings: How your site ranks for various keywords.
  • Click-through Rate: The percentage of users who click on your content in search results.
  • Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who leave your page without interacting.
  • Domain Authority (DA): A score from 0-100 that measures your site’s authority

Getting Started with SEO: Your Next Steps

Now that you better understand the basics, there’s one more important point to keep in mind — organic SEO is a long-term investment. 

It can take weeks or even months to see significant improvement. The good news is that all your hard work will pay off with ongoing organic traffic and growth over time. 

Keep in mind that SEO is also always evolving. Search engines are always updating their algorithms, so staying informed is important to your long-term success. 

Also, remember that content quality matters more than quantity. Focus on creating valuable content and earning high-authority backlinks. Good SEO requires consistency, ongoing content optimization and patience. 

Be sure to check the Originality.ai blog often as we continue to create more helpful guides for content professionals looking to improve their rankings and excel in content marketing:

Sherice Jacob

Sherice Jacob is a seasoned copywriter and content professional fluent in English, Spanish, and Catalan, with over 25 years of experience crafting high-converting copy. Passionate about AI, she enjoys exploring the new innovations and possibilities it brings to the world of content creation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

rockcontent.com

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

analyticsinsight.net

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

Software License Agreement

Copyright © 2023, Originality.ai

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

  1. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Will My Data Be Shared?

This table below shows a heat map of features on other sites compared to ours as you can see we almost have greens across the board!

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