SEO is a big part of digital marketing. There are many steps from making your website to getting organic traffic. But how do you do SEO step by step for a website? Before starting with SEO, we need some basic knowledge.
Table of Contents
- What is SEO
- How does a search engine work?
- Why SEO is important?
- Complete SEO Guide for website
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is a process of ranking a website on search engine results pages naturally without paying money to search engines. SEO helps to get a higher rank on its result pages, which automatically brings users to websites.
Search engines are a set of programs that are used to acquire information on the World Wide Web.
How does a search engine work?
Search engine bots follow a few steps whenever a new website or webpage is included on the web.
1. Crawling
Crawling is the first step to discovering a new page or content on the website.
2. Indexing
It is the process of organizing the data of all the crawled pages. When a user searches for a query, the search engine displays relevant results accordingly without searching through the World Wide Web.
4. Ranking
Ranking is the position of the web pages for a specific keyword in SERP. Search engines rank webpages based on various ranking factors like content relevancy, quality of the content, page authority, backlinks, etc.
Why SEO is important?
The process of SEO explains how it makes a webpage appear on the first page of a search engine. The more it becomes visible, the chances of natural visitors, which is organic traffic, will get higher.
As most businesses unlocked their digital doors, ranking a business page on the result pages of search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing is quite tough.
Ranking high not only brings organic traffic to business but increases click-through rates also.
Now it's clear that if you want to grow your business online, your business webpage must rank high on the first page of the Search engine as if you visit the fifth page of Google.
The foremost thing one needs is a user-friendly website. The next thing is to make sure that Google loves it and shows it to the user for relevant search results.
Here are the steps that we are going to follow.
Complete SEO Guide for Website
1. Plan keywords and content
If you are reading this blog, you must have an interest in digital marketing. So why do you search on Google? To obtain information about a specific topic. The link to the web pages contains relevant content to your query. When you land on a page, that webpage gets traffic. Now, you may want to purchase their premium service. So, they get a sale by providing content on the webpage.
This is how websites grow their business digitally. But how do they know what people are searching for, and how are they providing relevant content?
The answer is a keyword. A user goes to Google and writes something in the search bar. That term is called a keyword. See in the picture; here, 'Animal food' is the keyword.
We can see three types of keywords.
Short tail keywords
These keywords contain one or two words. Too many people search for short-tail keywords, and it is highly competitive because so many websites have targeted these keywords before us. Example: pet food
Medium tail keywords
These keywords have 2-4 words and are competitive for a newbie website. Example: Top 10 pet food.
Long-tail keywords
These are more specific. Long-tail keywords consist of more than four words. These are less competitive and believed to be best for new websites.
Example: 5 best dog foods on the budget.
a. Decide your niche
Niche is what your business or service is about. For example, you have a business in pet food. So, pet food or animal food is your niche. Your customers are animal owners or pet owners. If any pet owner wants to get any information regarding animal food, you must have wanted that user to come up to your webpage, as the user may buy pet food from you.
Now, your goal is to provide content related to animal food or necessary items for pets.
For making content, the first thing is finding relevant keywords for your niche.
b. Finding Keywords
The easiest solution to knowing what people are searching for is Google.
Use Google auto suggestions and related searches, and people also ask sections to get a fair idea about keywords.
The next step is to analyze the monthly search volume and keyword difficulty of each of the keywords.
Monthly search volume is how many people search for that term in one month.
Keyword difficulty is how tough it is to rank in the first position for that same term.
You can get this information by using a few free and paid SEO tools.
- Google keyword planner
Sign in with your website and discover keyword data like search volume, competition, etc.
You can decide which keyword you should target. Google guidelines tell us to pick keywords with low search volume and low competition to rank better.
- SEMRUSH
- AHREFS
Ahrefs is a fantastic tool that has a free keyword generator providing updated data regarding any keyword in various locations. We can see animal food keyword has a search volume of almost 1.5K, and one has to beat 37 websites to rank in the first position in SERP for this keyword.
- UBER SUGGESTS
Providing High-quality Content
Content is information in different forms. It can be blog posts, social media posts, E-books, journals, or videos. But generally, here, we are talking about written content.
Google tells us a few key points about high-quality content.
- Content should be well-researched and relevant to the niche and keyword.
- It should be easy to understand and read.
- The content structure must be well maintained.
- Using high-resolution images and infographics can level up the quality of the content.
You can get ideas from already published content in your niche. If you want to rank your page, you need to maintain the quality of ranking pages of Google in your content.
As of now, you have published quality content, and it's time to indulge in on-page SEO.
2. On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is one of the important parts. We have learned before that search engines crawl and index every page of a website.
On-page means optimizing web pages rather than the content. Here is another way Google can save us. It provides a checklist for on-page SEO.
Title Tag
The title tag is the hook that ensures that organic traffic comes to your site. It is the line that tells the user what the content is about without landing on the webpage.
By looking at the above image, one can easily know what the web pages are about. The lines in blue are the title tag. From the page titles, both search engines and human beings can understand the content.
The user can understand whether the content inside is useful or not. If you don't optimize your title tags, you won't be able to get traffic.
Keyword placement
The main keywords should be placed properly according to Google's terms and conditions.
Primary keywords should be placed in the title and first paragraph. But we should be aware of keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing means the overuse of a keyword in content. It has negative impacts on the website.
Meta Description
The meta description is the short information that provides a glance at the content in the SERPS. An attractive meta description can compel users to visit your site.
Look at the two websites in the image above. The meta description of NewYork magazine is ''Best overall dog food...of the 13 veterinaries we spoke to, ten said royal canin dog food is their top pick.'' So we can extract that the inside content is a few best dog foods suggested by vets, and one of those is royal canin.
Now, users are assured that vets recommend all dog foods. If they want to know more, they will visit the webpage.
H1-H6 tag placement
Header 1 to Header 6 are very useful for structuring the content.
The main heading must be in the H1 tag. But the H1 tag should be used only one time in the whole content. Then comes H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 tags. these tags should be used chronologically. It helps the search engine to understand the structure and steps of the topic.
Image Optimization
Great visuals can make dull content attractive. However, search engine bots can not understand image information. To make an image SEO-friendly, you need to optimize it.
1. Image alt text
Humans can see the image, but search engines do not. This tag helps search engines understand the subject of the image and content.
If you use an image of a corgi, the search engine can not decipher the image. You have to put alt text like image src='' baby the corgi puppy'' as an indicator for blind search engines.
2. File name
Another important thing is the image file name. When you upload a file with a random name like "2454jgundgh.JPEG'' can google even get a hint about the topic of the image? No. If you upload an image of a black puppy eating dog food and you name the image file ''Black puppy eating food", then anyone can understand the image without seeing it.
3. URL structure
URL is Uniform Resource Locator. Every webpage has a unique URL. During crawling a website, crawlers move through these URLs. It's good practice if crawlers can get an idea about the topic of the page. You can use your targeted keyword in the URL. For instance, your page is about the 10 best dog foods on the market.
Now your page URL is animalfood.com/127884-hdjfhjj/
How can google bots understand the page content? It is better to use Animalfood.com/10-best-dog-foods-in-the-market/
Internal linking
Internal linking is creating links from one page to another page of the same website. When you create content, talk about a certain topic that you have already created a content on. You can link the old content with the new one. It will help search engine bots index your site. The word through which the link is created is called anchor text.
We can see that the above image contains an eggless chocolate cake recipe. This recipe is from indianhealthyrecipies.com. Now, look at the second image.
This image is from the same recipe for an eggless chocolate cake. But look at the deep red text(anchor text): Black forest cake. They also mention the post of other content through internal linking. If anyone clicks in the deep red text, he will land on the recipe for black forest cake.
Mobile-friendliness
The number of mobile users is bigger than PC users. So most of the traffic comes from mobile. If your website is not mobile-friendly, visitors naturally bounce from it. Make your website mobile-friendly. User experience matters beyond your content quality. If users can not easily go through your site, they will not read your content. The following image tells us that most of the customers in the e-commerce industry are coming from mobile devices.
3. Off-Page SEO
Till now, you have worked on your website to make sure search engines love it. Now comes the promotion of your website. It is called off-page SEO in the language of digital marketing.
The main part of off-page SEO is building links to your site on other websites. How can you get these links?
Guest post
Guest posts are the best link-building strategy. There are several websites available that welcome guest authors to write on their websites.
You have to search Google for your keyword+guest post/keyword+guest blog, etc. And get websites of similar niches. Remember, the website you are approaching for a guest post must have a higher domain authority than you. Then, only link juice passes from that website to your site.
When a website allows guest posts, it also wants to maintain its content quality. So, your content for guest posts must be of high quality.
This way, you get a part of their traffic through link-building on other people's websites.
Share and promote your content
Creating content without sharing makes no sense at all. If people did not know about you, why would they visit your site?
Use social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Tumbler, and Facebook to promote your Business.
Grow online communities like Quora and Reddit and talk about your business.
Answer relevant questions about your business on Quora and Reddit. Leave a link to a certain post and website in your answer.
Make useful content.
Providing useful content that everyone wants to mention is the goal. It can be online tools, infographics, charts, surveys, etc, that people can use. While using it, users automatically mention the brand.
Monitor your website
After these important steps, you need to track your website ranking, traffic, and faults. For that, Google is providing free tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
4. Google search console
Google Search Console is an amazing tool for website owners. It provides many features to improve a website's visibility and performance on Google Search. Here's a more detailed knowledge of some of the key functions and benefits of using Search Console:
Site Ownership Verification
Before you can access the data in the Search Console, you need to verify your ownership of the website.
Crawling and Indexing Insights
Search Console provides information on how Google's web crawlers (often called Google bots) are interacting with your website. It shows which pages have been crawled, indexed, or have issues. This information is important to ensure that Google can find and read your content.
Sitemap Submission
A sitemap is a structured file that lists all the important pages on your website, helping search engines understand your site's structure and content.
Performance Monitoring
The Search performance report provides valuable insights into how your website is performing on Google Search.
Traffic Analysis
With the Search performance report, you can analyze trends in impressions and clicks for specific queries, pages, and even geographic locations.
Mobile Usability and Page Speed Insights
Search Console also offers tools to check your website's mobile usability and page loading speed, which are crucial factors for SEO and user experience.
5. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is like a tool for website owners to understand how their websites are doing. It helps them see where their visitors come from, how well their marketing is working, and what people do on their site. It helps people to understand page visits, page sessions, trends, clicks, and impressions on webpages. Google Analytics gives the impression of your site to users and the search console helps to identify the impression of the search engine.
Last but not the least
As we have come up with the last task of SEO strategy after monitoring your site performance, we can now rectify the problematic pages of the website.
We have provided step by step guide on how to do SEO. Just follow these steps religiously and wait for three to four months. Keep updating your content regularly to be relevant with time.
