SEO For Beginners
If you’re here to learn SEO, welcome! You’ve come to the right place. Whether you’re brand new to SEO with no experience or you’re somewhat-acquainted, this SEO for beginners guide will help you better understand it. In this article you’ll learn:
- How to find what your customers or audience is searching for.
- How to create content around the topics people are searching for online.
- How to put it all together to optimize for your website or online business.
What Is SEO? (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words, it’s a way to optimize the content on your website so it stands out among similar content on search engines. It’s a way of increasing your visibility. To better understand SEO, think about the search engines you use like Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing – even YouTube. When you visit one of these search engines, you type in a question and then an answer to your question pops up, right? Keep your own experience with SEO in the back of your mind as we teach you some strategies to master it.
And if you really want to get a head start to get more website traffic and beat your competitors, you can get my brand new SEO video course by clicking the link below!
How Does SEO Work?
SEO works best when you create content based on the things you know people are searching for. That way YOU can be the website, business or person to provide your market with the answer. So, the question is, how do you figure out what people in your niche are looking for?
In the next section we’re going to delve into two popular, FREE websites that allow you to identify popular search terms and phrases. They are:
AnswerSocrates.com
First up is AnswerSocrates.com. This is an excellent, free tool – and it’s easy to use.
How Does AnswerSocrates.com Work?
- Type in a topic.
- Select the country you want to work within.
- Select the language.
When you press search, your keyword will generate a bunch of phrases, questions, prepositions and comparisons. These are the popular searches people are doing right now. You’ll want to comb through these phrases to figure out which ones apply to your business. Then you can create content around the ones that make the most sense for you and what you want to accomplish.
Let’s look at an example.
Let’s say you work in the field of drug rehabilitation. First off, you decide to use “drug rehab” as your search term. When you press search, dozens of phrases to do with drug rehab populate your screen. Some don’t really have anything to do with your business goals like “can I sue drug rehab?” or “drug rehab marketing” But then you find one that does. “What is drug rehab like?” is not only a good question, it also aligns with some of the goals you have for your business. Plus, you find it to be interesting and think you can offer insight. Now you can begin structuring a video or web-article based on the question.
Ubersuggest.com
Next up is Ubersuggest.com, which will allow you to take the Socialty Pro strategy to the next level. And that’s because this tool gives you actual search volume, meaning the actual number of people per month that are searching for a particular phrase or keyword. The free version of this site has a limited data set; when you pay for the tool it unlocks more information – but the free tool is good enough, especially when you first set out to understand the search terms your industry is most interested in.
How Does Ubersuggest.com Work?
- Type in a keyword
- Select country
- Select language
When you press search, your keyword will generate a bunch of keywords, and you will also see four tabs. They are:
- Search volume: The actual number of people who search for that keyword every month.
- SEO difficulty score: A number, up to 100, that signifies how hard it is to rank for that keyword. (The higher the number, the harder it is to rank.)
- Paid difficulty: How difficult it is to pay to rank.
- Cost per click: Another tool to figure out how much it costs to rank.
Use Ubersuggest.com in your strategy
When something is easier to rank for you’ll see it highlighted in green. Your goal is to find keywords and questions that are consistently searched for but at the same time easier to rank for. Then, you can create web articles around those topics. This is what we call a “proven strategy”.
How Do You Write For SEO?
You need to write for SEO so that you can rank for SEO. Next, we’ll show you some Socialty Pro strategies for writing. Here we’ll discuss all of the items that should be in your content – this includes:
- Your proven SEO topic
- The value you provide
- Proper SEO formatting
Your proven SEO topic
Our strategy for writing SEO is to create a document that keeps you on task. First thing is to keep your keyword, phrase or question front and center. You can literally write the keyword or question you’re building the content based on at the top of the document so it is at the top of your mind and at the top of the searcher’s mind.
Providing value
Remember, ranking for SEO is not just about using keywords that will drive traffic to your page, it’s also about answering a question that your audience is looking for the answer to. It’s about providing your audience with value. AND providing your audience with the next steps, like giving them your contact information or providing them with details for a product you’re selling, etc.
How Do you Format SEO Text?
Now we’ll show you how to format your SEO text so that it makes sense and you can reach the most people possible. Up above we taught you how to use Ubersuggest.com to find the questions people are asking in your niche. Now we’re going to take that one step further.
Back on Ubersuggest.com you can see how others in your market are ranking for the same keyword. Again, we call these proven strategies – because these are the topics and questions we already know are important to your niche. Familiarize yourself with some of the other people, businesses and websites that are ranking for these topics and recreate their pages in your own words.
What should the document entail?
We recommend the following:
- 5 to 6 paragraphs; 200 words per paragraph
- 1,000 words total
These paragraphs should be formatted based on what you think people in your niche are curious about. You can go back to Ubersuggest.com and pull out some of the popular subtopic searches that make sense to what you’re writing.
Let’s look at an example
Let’s again say that your topic is “drug rehab” and that you found out a lot of people want to know “What is drug rehab like” some of your paragraphs might answer other questions, like: “How much does drug rehab cost”.
Optimizing Your Pages For SEO
When you’re done writing out your content you’re going to want to optimize the content for your website. From here on out, everything we’re doing is on the back end. Below are the important pieces you’re going to want to be sure you plug in so that your website is optimized to rank on Google.
Header tags
Every paragraph in your article will have a header tag. These tags are numbered from H1 to H6. The lowest number is the most important. So, your most important question or topic will get the H1 spot.
SEO title and meta description
Your SEO title and meta description are what shows up in Google search. The SEO Title is what viewers see in blue; and the meta description is the description below.
Slug
The Slug is the actual URL.
Embed images and video
*Socialty Pro master HINT* you may want to embed a video within your article. Why? Because it gives the page more depth and richness, plus adding a YouTube video will add synergy by merging multiple search engines. While you’re at it, adding a few photos or images related to the subject is also beneficial.
Alt Text on image
When you’re done, add a complimentary keyword in the alt text; you can even add a descriptive alt text that gives a more in depth look into what’s going on. The purpose of this is to tell Google what the image is about, so they can relay that information to the visually impaired.
We hope you enjoyed this SEO for beginners resource!
About Socialty Pro
Socialty Pro is a full service digital marketing company. We help small and medium-sized businesses, influencers and organizations get to the next level with our digital services, including branding, PR, and marketing. If you want to know more about SEO writing and strategy, we offer a very thorough SEO course. It’s jam packed with master strategies and technical advice. We also offer personalized coaching and monthly strategy packages for businesses that want us to plan their digital marketing – make sure to reach out to Austin Armstrong directly if you’re interested in hearing more. Don’t forget, we also provide FREE hot topics, current trends, and tips to help your business grow on our social media accounts. Make sure you’re following us everywhere so you don’t miss out.
