Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of getting your website and blog posts to appear in search results.
A search engine is, well, it’s the internet – Google, Bing, and Yahoo are examples of search engines. Type something into a search engine (Google something) and related results will pop up. These results are usually website articles.
Visibility = traffic. Getting your content indexed and ranked by search engines is essential if you want your target audience to find you.
Without the knowledge of SEO, you are likely to fail dramatically when it comes to reaching all those people out there on the internet who are searching for the type of content your site is focused on.
Your blog content needs to be SEO-friendly and in this post, we’re going to be explaining in a step-by-step way how SEO works so that you can attract organic traffic to your website.
Our first step will be to explain indexing and ranking.
The Indexing and Ranking Process Explained
Your goal as a blogger is to get your content to earn a high place in search engine results pages (SERPs).
To do that you need to understand the process of:
- Indexing
- Ranking
Indexing is the process of having your content added to the search engine database.
The way that this happens is that once you publish a piece of content, Google will examine it. This is called crawling your site and content.
Other terms for crawlers are spiders, Googlebots, and Google robots.
Their job is to do a sweep of your website and gather information. Crawlers examine and analyse things like:
- Text
- Images
- Links
- Structure
- Meta tags
- Overall user experience
- And other elements
With this information a crawler will then first of all decide whether or not it should index the site or webpage at all.
If it does not index the content, it usually means that you need to make some adjustments and improvements to it so that the search engine will decide to index it.
You can see how your website and each of your posts are doing by using Google Search Console.
If the crawler does decide to index a website article, the next step will be to decide where to rank it.
Ranking is the process of your content being assigned a specific position in SERPs, the higher of course, being the better. For example, Page 1, Position 5. This is a good, high ranking.
Again, if your site is connected to Google Search Console, you’ll be able to see how well your posts are ranking and identify any issues they may have.
Once you understand the basics of ranking, your next task is to implement a strategy that will give all your content the best chances of ranking well in search engines.
Something to note is that people do sometimes confuse indexing with ranking. Some get excited when it comes to their attention that some of their content has been indexed by Google. Sure, indexing is absolutely essential. But an indexed post that doesn’t rank is useless.
Also, it’s easy to rank for certain things for example, I could probably rank easily for a keyword such as this:
‘Pink Rabbits having a picnic on Mars.’
With a keyword like this, I may well rank on page 1, position 1 of Google. But that’s because there’s no competition there. No one else is writing about that and no one on the planet is typing in that search term: ‘pink rabbits having a picnic on Mars.’ So, it would be pointless to write an article using that as the focus keyword.
Let’s now look at on-page and off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
To optimise your content for search engines, you need to do what’s called on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO, also called on-site SEO is the practice of optimising or preparing your webpage for search engines and users.
It means taking care things such as:
- Title and headings (make them engaging and relevant to your content)
- Target keyword
- Having your keyword in your text but avoid keyword stuffing
- Having a good meta description and meta tags
- Improve navigation using internal links
- Add engaging visual content
- Check that your content is mobile-friendly
- And other things
Another way to get ideas for good on-page SEO is to look at other sites that rank at the top of Google and take note of what they are doing to optimise their web pages for search engines and for people who visit their site.
Our next step is to look at off-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO involves taking care of generating backlinks and linking out to other reputable and high-profile sources.
A backlink is a link to your site from somewhere else on the internet. Backlinks are part of creating trust and bringing authority to your website. This is great for SEO and for your website visitors.
Places you could start linking out to are:
- Facebook (such as a Facebook Page of yours)
- YouTube
- Twiter
- Pintrest
- Tik Tok (if you have a minium of 1000 followers)
- Quora
- Other sites you trust (or own)
Backlinks make your site more authoritative.
An authority site ranks better and gets more traffic.
The more links there are from other sources leading to to your site, the better.
However, you don’t want links from dodgy or untrustworthy places.
You can see backlink information in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools where you will also be able to disavow backlinks if you deem them to be suspicious or hurtful to your website.
Some bloggers buy backlinks as an off-page SEO strategy.
This article talks about buying backlinks and lists places where you can buy high quality backlinks for your site.
Our next step to learning SEO is to make sure you keep an eye on algorithm updates.
Search Engine Algorithm Updates:
Another thing you need to keep an eye on as a blogger is Google algorithm updates.
These updates come out every now and then with the object of improving the search engine algorithm.
Somtimes it is to improve user experience by making sure search results are accurate and relevant and other times it may be to counter any problems that may have been detected with the system, such as:
- Users manupulating the algorithm to gain an unfair advantage
- Users not conforming to acceptable standards set by algorithm developers
What you are doing now may be fine today, but need correcting in the future as further updates roll out.
If you notice a sudden drop in traffic to your site, always remember that it may be due to an algorithm update.
You then need to find out what you’re doing wrong and correct it. You also need to avoid repeating anything that Google is likely to punish you for in the future.
Other Resources
I hope you have found these SEO beginner’s guidelines to have been useful.
Always feel free to leave any thoughts down below in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!
Here is some other content that you might be interested in if you are a running an SEO focused business with blogging and affiliate marketing: