Beginner's Guide to SEO in 2020

As an entrepreNERD, you’ve surely heard a lot of acronyms thrown about the digital marketing space, but one that has jumped up the most is undoubtably SEO.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of optimising content to be discovered through a search engine’s search results. You’ve come across SEO whenever you search something on Google or Bing. For example, let’s say you type a word or phrase into Google’s search bar (the main search engine we’ll use as reference) that describes what you’re looking for.

Then, out of these 180,000,000 results you pick the result that seems the most useful for your search. You’re most likely to choose one of the links located at the top, and not likely to go beyond the first page of results.

Research shows that 95% of people only look at the first page of search results and 50% of clicks go to the first 3 results.

Clearly, in order to capture as much traffic and clicks on your website as possible, you want your link to be at the top of the first search page. However, it’s not easy to reach this top position…which is why you need to consider a number of factors. These factors determine if Google will rank your website as the 3rd result on the 1st page, or the 1st result on the 43rd page. We’ll discuss these factors that will help you formulate your SEO strategy after we quickly dive into why SEO is so important.

What are the benefits of SEO?

An effective search engine optimisation strategy will increase both the quality and quantity of website traffic through organic search results. This means that while marketing tools such as paid advertising can be effective, ranking high in Google is ultimately ‘free advertising.’ Furthermore, the majority of traffic is still driven by search engines. With Google receiving 2.3 trillion searches in 2020 so far, people are actively searching for solutions to their problems- possibly searching for your product or service… but how can they easily find you?

So how do you actually optimise your site?

There are three main components to SEO: Technical SEO, On-page SEO and Off-Page SEO. Let’s walk through each of them so that your website can rank high on search engine results page (SERPs).

TECHNICAL SEO

Firstly, Google has to find your website by crawling through the web. This is when Googlebots analyse the content and codes on web pages. Once it’s found, Google indexes your page, which means that your website is eligible to show up on Google search results. So, to actually get your website indexed faster, you must ensure the following:

- Make sure that search engines can access and index your website without any problems

- Have high-quality content that is relevant to the searcher’s intentions

- Give search engine crawlers the right signals to understand the structure of your website

- Help search engine bots/ spiders understand the meaning of your content

- Give search engine algorithms reasons to trust your website and rank it higher than other websites

A great way to help Googlebots quickly index your website is by using Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmasters Tool) which is not only an awesome tool for analyzing your SEO strategy, but allows you to see your website as how users would see it on Google! The platform instantly helps you to create a sitemap (literally a roadmap of pages on your site) and to submit a metatag, which is a snippet of HTML code that tells Google information, like how they should display your site to visitors. These steps, among others, are essential to getting your website and webpages indexed on Google. Read our post for a step-by-step guide of how to set up and index your website on Google Search Console.

ON-PAGE SEO

This stage of On-site SEO is mainly to do with the content and other elements found on your actual web pages. The purpose of this process is to provide search engine bots with enough signals so that when they crawl your page, they can understand the meaning and context of your content. In order to do this, you must use the following techniques which will not only aid in getting your search rank higher, but improve the usability and credibility of your website/ blog.

1. Publish high-quality content

A website with good content will not only perform better in terms of SEO, but will also ensure the longevity of your business. So what is considered high-quality content?

a) Original and Exclusive Content (articles, images, videos, infographics, comments, etc.) Don’t copy or rewrite content of existing articles... even if they’re your own. If it’s been published on another website, then it’s not original or exclusive.

b) Useful Content: Try not to publish content just for the sake of publishing. When planning your content, reflect if it adds value to your readers and website.

c) Well researched Content: Make sure your content is well thought out and logically structured. Long articles have also been proven to rank better than short articles.

2. SEO keywords

When you optimise your content around words and phrases that people search for, your website will rank higher for those terms.

A big tip is not to target short, one-word keywords which are highly competitive e.g. ‘digital marketing’ or ‘entrepreneur’. Although it is possible to rank for single-word SEO keywords like that, it is VERY difficult. That’s why we recommend focusing on long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are long (usually 4+ words) terms that searchers enter in search engines e.g. ‘Digital Marketing tips for entrepreneurs.’ Mox Keyword, SEMRush and AnswerThePublic are good free tools to determine what long tail keywords you can use. So is Google Autocomplete! For example:

Type in ‘digital marketing tools’ and you’ll get a list of long tail keywords suggestions

Now you’ve identified your target SEO keywords, the best practices for optimisation is by using these keywords in:

a) Page titles/ Headings: These show up as the first line of Google search entries to tell searchers what the page is about.

Also, make sure your page is appropriately structured. Headings help search engines and site visitors to understand your content. There is a straightforward hierarchy to follow i.e. H1 is for your main heading, H2 for section titles, H3 for sub-section titles etc.

b) Meta Descriptions: This shows up as the second part of a search results entry. This helps Google determine how relevant your content is to what people are searching for. It also helps searchers decide whether to click on your page to see the full content on your website.

c) Subheadings: Subheadings help provide structure and makes your content scannable, so be sure to use keywords in at least some of your subheadings.

d) Content: Content is one of the top SEO ranking factors, so ensure that you optimise it in your articles, interviews, comments etc. But BEWARE of poor keyword usage, as this can hurt your search ranking. Avoid keyword stuffing i.e. putting keywords in every sentence, as your content will incur Google penalties, plus... it will drive your readers crazy. Our top tip Is to use your keyword in the first few sentences of your content and then use variations of your keyword throughout the content.

3. Image SEO: Yes, your images are indexed too! So how can you use keywords for SEO in images? Firstly, ensure the images you use are relevant to your content. Then, give them a file name that includes keywords to emphasise its relevance. Don’t forget to use SEO keywords in titles for your images which are the snippets of text that pop up when you hover your mouse over the image. Finally, use SEO keywords in alt-text. This is the written copy that helps describe the image to bots, but isn’t visible to your readers. The tip here is to make it descriptive and concise; don’t just use the keyword. In most content management systems (CMS) e.g. Wix, clicking on the settings of an image allows you to change the image title and alt-text.

4. Internal Links: Anchor texts are one of the key ingredients to SEO! These are the clickable text that are highlighted as a link. You can use these links to redirect readers to other pages on your site, and drive both traffic and search ranking.

But, in order to avoid being penalised by Google who may think it’s a black hat SEO scheme (unethical tactics used to manipulate bots), vary your anchor text by using different words to describe the topic of the link.

OFF-PAGE SEO

These off-site SEO techniques are often to do with promotion methods, and go beyond website design. These are the most important activities you should perform outside your website to improve the position of your website on SERPs as well as generate greater exposure for your business.

1. Link Building: This is the most popular off-page SEO technique, as building links to your website tells Google that your page is reputable and has good information. However, this can be an easy way to engage in black hat SEO, and because this was so common in the past, Google has become very intelligent in detecting these black hat techniques with their new algorithmic updates.

So, you need to understand that in terms of link building, quality AND quantity matter. For example, a link from a normal blog doesn’t hold the same ‘value’ as a link from big names such the New York Times or Sydney Morning Herald. So, how do you build these links? The first step is to publish link-worthy content that other people genuinely want to link to. Guest blogging is also a valid way to build links, provided that you don’t do it solely to build links. Read our post about how to effectively guest blog to get your link building strategy started!

Another trick you can use is the ‘nofollow link’ technique where you can tell search engines not to count a particular external link that you’ve included in your page as a ‘vote of trust’. This can be done in the settings feature of the CMS you use.

2. Social Media Marketing: This is an effective way to direct traffic to your website as part of off-site SEO. Social media mentions and shares are increasingly contributing to SEO ranking factors, and essentially act as link building. Using keywords in your hashtags and linking your website in your bio also help build visibility for your content, which ultimately tells Google that your website is popular and relevant.

3. Brand Mentions: Brand mentions are an amazing way to increase your website’s expertise, authority and trustworthiness- which are top factors for SEO. Google prefers to rank branded websites at the top of SERPs as they are viewed as being more reliable and likely to be trusted by users. Brand mentions are not necessarily links but can be mentions of your brand in forums, social media networks, articles and reviews. Google bot crawlers can detect these signals and evaluate them to create an accurate picture of how other people perceive your brand. As you already know, the first step is creating high-quality. Next, you should pursue positive mentions of your website or authors, and make sure you respond to negative or misleading comments.

Now that you understand the components of how to get your SEO strategy rolling, you can start getting the traffic and exposure your website deserves! At the end of the day, make sure you have high-quality content, set up a Google Search Console account to begin indexing your pages, and take into account the power of In and Off-site SEO. All these factors contribute to how well your page ranks, so make sure you optimise each technique appropriately and frequently.

Good luck EntrepreNERDS, we can’t wait to see your websites up on the web! Let us know if this article helped you with your SEO strategy or ask us any questions in the comments below or our discussion forum!