Let’s say you just started a website and you want to get all the settings right so that future visitors will be able to find you with ease. Applying these SEO for beginners concepts fill go a long way to help you achieve your goals online.
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym standing for Search Engine Optimization.
When you are optimizing your website you are establishing a few things…
- You own the site
- Your site is a legitimate source of great content
- Your site is being represented properly within search engine results
- Your site is connected to active social media accounts
- Your pages or posts is targeting specific words or phrases one may use to look for your content (keywords)
To Optimize your Website for Search engines involves doing a few things to your site as a whole, to each page and post, with external accounts (such as google and Social media) and marketing techniques on other websites.
To your website as a whole
If you are using WordPress, you are in luck. Without any plugins WordPress organizes your information in such a way that works well with search engine websites like google. However, There is a lot you can do to boost this dramatically. You can install a plugin or a series of plugins that will assist you in Optimizing your website as a whole but also guide you on what steps to take on each page or post to fully optimize your content.
Each page and post
Search engines do not view your site as a whole when it comes to keywords. Each of your pages and posts are competing against each other. This means that you should not target the same keyword or keyword phrases for every post or page you produce. This gives you the opportunity to target multiple keywords or keyword phrases throughout your entire site and see what gives you the best result. Also if you target the same keyword on multiple pages it will confuse search engines.
Be strategic with your keyword choices. If you are a florist and you pick the key word “florist” you my have some stiff competition for ranking for that keyword. Keep in mind how many florist websites exist. On the flip side, if you target”Chicago suburbs outdoor spring florist” you may not see any results because you are being too specific. A better keyword phrase would be “Chicago wedding florist” for one page and perhaps a different page for a specific suburb or event.
External accounts
Establishing ownership of your website with Social Media networks lends credibility to your presence online. The go to tool I use to guide me through all of this initial SEO set up for a site is Yoast SEO. There are plenty of video on YouTube and on the Yoast website itself. The websites listed below are some of the ones Yoast SEO walked me through verifying my website with.
Recommended accounts include:
- Google (webmaster)
- Alexa
- Establishing dedicated Social media accounts and verifying your website with them
Why does SEO matter?
The more you do to legitimize your website and target specific keywords the better the odds of your page or post showing up on the first page of a google search. bottom line: more traffic to your site.
What SEO for beginners tools can I use?
What are ongoing ways I can improve my SEO?
Regularly research the keywords you are targeting and make adjustments so that your pages and posts are ranking as well as possible. If you are interested in getting help with the SEO for your WordPress site or you would like to have someone handle it on a monthly basis, I am happy to chat with you about different options over Skype.