If you are a small business owner and looking to get started with SEO you may have been a bit overwhelmed with all of the information and resources available out there. It is easy to get confused especially if you are reading something that is full of jargon and not very beginner friendly.
While it may sound scary it doesn’t take too much to wrap your head around the general idea of it and what you should be doing. To help you out we have compiled a list of some SEO tips that are great for beginners trying it out for the first time.
Take a look at your website
One thing you need to do before you branch out and undertake new SEO methods is to have a look at your own website. Search engines and their algorithms are very critical about websites and how they should operate when they are ranking them. An easy way to think about your website is if it is good from a user perspective then chances are the bots will like it as well. For starters the load speed is very important. You can always get someone to take a look at the code of your website to ensure that it is free of errors to ensure that it runs fast and smoothly.
Mobile optimisation is also a big thing that needs to be addressed. Google announced that they will automatically rank websites that are optimised for mobile over the ones that aren’t. This is an easy thing to implement and is a great beginner tip to get your SEO efforts started.
Understand what people search for
SEO is all about capturing an audience through having your website appear higher when they are searching for a particular keyword. Think about some relevant keywords that people would search for when trying to find your business. You can then use that as a base point and use a keyword planner to have some data to back up your decision. There are many tools available online that allow you to see the amount of searches for a particular term. Use this information to be the basis for your content.
It is also important that you consider that there are multiple terms that could be searched that relate to your website. Be sure to have multiple search terms amongst your website to appeal to a wider array of users.
Take a look at your current search traffic
A great starting point for beginners with SEO is to analyse their current search traffic. If you haven’t already done so, you should have Google analytics set up for your website. No stress if you haven’t as it is fairly simple to set up. Although you may want to wait a couple of months to accumulate enough data to make some educated statements about your user base.
Once you are in the analytics platform take a close look at where you traffic is coming from. It is quite extensive even breaking down the search terms people are using to find your website. You can compare this data to the search frequency from the keyword planner. Some keywords may be very popular and no one is finding you from that particular term. That means that you need to start creating content that includes that keyword so people can start finding you from it as well.
There is also metrics to analyse referral links and where people are visiting from previously. This is also an effective measure to judge how successful your backlinking and social media efforts are.
Sarah is the head of guest posts outreach and an SEO expert. Her interests are search engine optimisation, social media and brand management.