5 EASY SEO STEPS FOR BEGINNERS

DMG’s 5 Easy SEO Steps for Beginners

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Often avoided for ‘being too hard’, SEO is an integral part of a well-ranking business website. In other words, search engines (ie. Google) use SEO to rank your website. Therefore, the better your SEO structure, the higher your website will rank. We broke basic SEO down into 5 easy DIY steps for Beginners.

Understanding SEO can save you money!

In an online industry of information, it can be daunting to find a company you can trust. This is one of the top reasons why our company goal is to support and partner with our clients. In short, many online companies talk big and never deliver, or they charge an arm and a leg. Understanding the basics of SEO, can help you do two things. Firstly, by applying the basics you’ll read about in this article, you are building a strong SEO base for your website. SEO is a long game, the sooner you start, the faster you’ll rank. Doing the easy basics yourself saves you the $$ you would have had to pay an external company.

Secondly, understanding the basics will help you see if you are getting your money’s worth if you’re paying someone to do your SEO. Now, let me be clear. These five steps are not all there is to SEO. However, these are the first steps that will make a big difference in your website ranking.

SEO Basics Step One: KEYWORDS

What is a Keyword?

A Keyword is a word or phrase a potential client puts into a search engine (ie. Google) when searching.

Finding a strong Keyword:
The first step to good SEO is choosing a good, strong keyword. Your Keyword or Key Phrase needs to have limited competition in order to help your website climb the ranks to page one. There are numerous FREE tools online to help you with your Keyword Research otherwise known as Keyword Analysis. Google Trends is one of the easiest. It’s free, and it gives you the option to compare different words and phrases.

When narrowing down a keyword, think about your goal for your page or blog. Are you trying to sell pink shoes? Who would your target be? And what would they type into Google when searching for pink shoes?

Once you’ve narrowed this down, type the Keyword or Key Phrase you want to use into Google Trends (or whichever Keyword Research Tool you are using). A flat line means you should change it up a bit. If it’s through the roof – you also want to change it up a bit. Search Volumes for your keyword or key phrases that are consistently very high, meaning a lot of competition for that keyword – making your chance of ranking on the first page significantly lower. Once you have your Keyword, you are ready to move on to Step 2.

Remember: Find a Powerful unique Keyword, specific to your target Market.

SEO Basics Step Two: TITLES AND CONTENT

H1, H2 & H3 Headers

Titles or Headers

This is one of those ‘secret tips’ a lot of people don’t think about. Simply put, using headers (ie. H2), makes your content easier to read. If your content is easier to read your SEO score will go up. A higher SEO score means a higher ranking. Easy peasy! Headers go up to H6 but the first three – H1, H2 and H3 are the most important ones for SEO. With H2 being the main one.

Remember – headers need to make sense, so don’t just throw H2 headers randomly anywhere. Let’s break that down.

H1 – Your H1 Title should always be at the top of your page. Your exact Keyword or Key Phrase should be in your H1 Title.
H2 – Your H2 is your subtitle for your H1 Heading. The First H2 Heading right underneath your H1 heading should also contain your Keyword or Key Phrase – try using your keyword/phrase in a slightly different way as with your H1. If you are using your H2 header again (like we did in this article) try using similar, but not exact keywords.
H3 – Your H3 is the subtitle for H2. Put a similar keyword or key phrase, or a secondary keyword that pertains to your content in your H3 headers.

Remember: Your headers need to be readable, grammatically correct and make sense, so make sure you don’t just fill them up with random keywords.

Content and Paragraphs:

Your Keyword or Key Phrase needs to appear in the first paragraph of your page, preferably the first sentence. It also needs to be distributed throughout your content, but don’t overdo it!

What about the length of your content? Many people mistakenly think there is a ‘Golden’ number of words to write for optimum SEO and Ranking. This is not the case! Your focus should be on writing quality, unique content. This is far more important for Ranking than quantity.

Remember: Your keyword need to make sense in the content. Quality over quantity! Never plagiarise, most search engines (ie. Google) will blacklist you if they pick up any plagiarism. It’s not worth the risk! An awesome free tool to check for plagiarism is Plagiarism Checker. Simply put your copy into Plagiarism Checker and click ‘Check’.

SEO Basics Step 3: PERMALINK, SLUG and URL

What is a Permalink, Slug and URL?

A Permalink or Slug is part of the URL more specifically, it is part of the URL that identifies your page. It is very important to have your exact Keyword or Key Phrase in your Slug. Looking at the Page URL – https://www.dmgadvertising.com/(the content HERE is the Slug). Normally, when you create your page, the page slug will automatically be the name you chose for the page. You can edit your slug later if you’ve decided to use a different Keyword.

Remember: Having your keyword ready from the start enables you to save time.

SEO Basics Step Four: METADATA DESCRIPTION

What is a Meta Description?

Metadata is the content that pops up under a page name on search engines. Your Metadata needs to have the Keyword or Key Phrase in it. It needs to be enticing and stand out from your competition’s metadata. The optimum metadata length is under 160 characters.

Below, as an example is the Meta Description for Google…

Remember: Having good, powerful metadata, is more about the content than the keyword. Although your keyword needs to be in metadata. You need to see your metadata almost as a ‘shop window’. It’s either going to drive traffic to your website or go past your website.

SEO Basics Step 5: IMAGE METADATA and ALT TEXT

What are Image Metadata and Alt Text?

Image Alt Text or Alternative Text is the content you put into your image. Much like Metadata, this helps to rank your images.

This step is often overlooked in SEO, it is however, a fundamental part of SEO. According to a recent study by MOZ a 3rd of all Google searches are for Images. therefore it is integral to put your Keyword or Key Phrase in your Image ALT text.

Remember: Image Alt Text is a very powerful tool to rank your images!

Super simple, is that it?

Nope 😉

SEO is an ever-evolving algorithm. Doing the basics we suggested in this article is going to give you a head start to excellent, page ranking SEO. The secret to Powerful SEO, however, is something called “Link Building”, or “Backlink Building”. It is a deep dive type of SEO, and takes a bit of expertise to do, however, to explain it in its simplest form. It is getting external (in other words other) Websites to have links in their content that link back to your website.

As mentioned, it is a bit more complicated than that (but we’ll cover that in a new article.)

We do, however, have some cool SEO Plugin suggestions for your WordPress sites.

Free WordPress plugins

These plugins make SEO simple and fast and give you suggestions on how to better your SEO.
Have a look at these FREE SEO WordPress plugins.
YOAST SEO has a FREE version, as well as a premium paid-for version. However, the FREE version has plenty of amazing tools available.
RANK MATH is another FREE Plugin that makes SEO easy and fast.
We will be covering these two plugins in an article in the near future, so watch this space!

Well, that’s it!

If you have any questions, tips or tricks you would like to share. Likewise, if you would like to tell us what you think of this article feel free to leave a comment! We love hearing from our readers

Till Next Time!
Cheers
Melissa Grey
SEO & Marketing Specialist, DMG