SEO Basics: The Essential SEO for Beginners Guide

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:

• B2B vs. B2C Content Marketing: What's The Difference?
• The Beginner's Guide to Using AI for Topic Clustering
• 9 Strategies for Web and Landing Page Content Optimization
• 5 of the Best AI SEO Tools to Increase Your Organic Traffic