A Beginner's Guide to Start Learning SEO (Part 1)

Everyone spends a lot of time online these days. Back in the day if you wanted to learn something, research something or find answers to something, you needed to hit the books in a library. But now, things are different. Almost all the details you need including books are available online. Most people use search engines to search for things online. People use certain keywords to search things online. For example, if you wanted to know how to make a pizza at home, you are most likely to google how to make pizza at home. That’s not all, now you can order almost anything online, from Pizza to books. 

Why should you learn SEO?

If you are looking to grow your online presence as a business or a brand, knowing SEO or search engine optimisation will help you get discovered on search engines like Google. Search engine optimisation is not just about making your brand or business visible online, it is also about learning methods and techniques to ensure that your website or e-commerce site is not only search engine friendly but also human friendly too, because after all humans are the ones who will be reading your articles, subscribing to your newsletters, and buying your products.

Regardless of if you might be a small business owner, an aspiring digital marketer, or just someone who want to know more about Search Engine Optimisation, you are in the right place.

What are Search Engines?

Search engines play a key role in digital marketing. Among all the search engines available Google stands out as the most used followed by other less popular search engines like Bing and Yahoo. These search engines are built around prioritising great user experience by helping users discover information efficiently online.

Search engines like Google crawl tons of web pages and follow links from one to another page. As they go through these pages, they index the content found on these pages and stores this data in databases.

When users search fro something on a search engine, the search engines scan the indexed data to serve the user the most relevant search results in the search engine results page (SERPs)

Search engines use complicated algorithms to rank content. Algorithms are a collection of rules and calculations that analyses different factors of a website such as the relevance of the content, the quality, and the user experience offered. It takes into account factors like keywords, site usability and backlinks.

Search engines update these algorithms from time to time, to make the process of how results are evaluated and presented more relevant to the end user with the aim of providing high quality content.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research provides the foundation for effective SEO. It entails finding the terms and phrases that the potential target audience search for and using these in the content of a website to enhance discoverability and rank higher on search engines like Google.

How to Perform a Keyword Research?

First, start by identifying your topic. List out potential broad topics that are related to your business niche. These topics will help you streamline relevant and specific keywords.

Next, you might want to consider using keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz to gain insights into the search volumes, the level of competition and related searches. These tools are key to uncovering keywords to drive not just high but targeted traffic to your website. 

Try to understand the intent behind searches, such as what the users want to do. For instance are they looking to learn, purchase products or services, or find a particular website. It’s best to adapt  your keyword strategies based on searcher intent. 

Pay attention to long tail keywords as they are more specific, They often have less competition and can be important for SEO.

I hope you found part one of the Beginner's Guide to SEO helpful. If you want to consider hiring me as your content writer, please feel free to reach out to me on Fiverr to find out more about my writing services.