SEO Basics: Complete Guide For Beginners In 2021

With SEO at the top of Google? That is the goal of many, but on the first page of the search results, there is only room for a maximum of 10. The pole position is highly competitive. This article will tell you SEO basics and how to conquer it.

What is SEO?

So what is SEO all about and why is it so important to attract new visitors and customers?

SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization.

Optimizing your own website for search engines means that various factors have a greater chance of directing visitors from Google, Bing and other search engines to your own website.

Why does it make sense to invest in SEO?

1. Because it works: There are a few voices claiming that the days of search engine optimization are over.

The opposite is true. SEO has simply changed for the better in recent years.

SEO used to be very spam-heavy. However, this has changed significantly with the constant Google updates. Those who spam will be punished – those who strive to provide a good user experience will be rewarded with better visibility.

2. It will work for a long time: Search engines are tech giants who always have to keep their fingers on the pulse in order to remain relevant and to be really used.

The trend is towards videos and voice searches, which also require search engines that display relevant results. So it can be foreseen that SEO will also play a major role in the future.

3. Your competition is using SEO: It’s no secret that SEO is a digital marketing tactic for attracting new customers and generating a profitable ROI.

Most likely, your competitors know this too and use search engine optimization to secure full shopping carts day in and day out.

If you know that your online shop will deliver better value for a customer, but that customer cannot find you, they will buy from another shop.

Therefore:

If you don’t use SEO for yourself, you give competitors your customers and sales!
Now that you know about the immense importance of search engine optimization, let’s turn to the second part of the SEO statement:

How do you decide which web pages are displayed at the top and which are not?

After a search query has been submitted to the search engine, web pages have displayed that match what the searcher has entered.

Search engines, whether Google, Bing or Duck Duck Go, use an algorithm that decides which websites are displayed for a search query.

Experts believe that the Google algorithm has well over 200 factors that determine whether a website is well positioned in search results. Or not.

By and large, there are two main factors that determine the positioning of a website.

OnPage SEO & OffPage SEO

OnPage SEO refers to the optimization that takes place on your own website. A few of the crucial OnPage factors are:

• How fast your website loads?
• How good and relevant the content is?
• The structure of your website
• The (mobile) view

Off-page optimization is understood to mean everything that happens outside of your website. Such as:

• The external link building
• Social media activities (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)

In order to get your own website up on Google and to be displayed for relevant search terms, there are a few factors to consider.

You can find out what these are and how potential customers can find your online shop via search engines with the help of SEO:

SEO Basics- How to Improve Your Website Ranking

In the second part of this article, we will walk you through the individual points that you have to implement in order to increase the visibility of your website.

1. Choose the right hosting

No SEO effort will be successful if the basics are wrong. And the basis of every website is hosting.

The hosting of your website should be one thing above all: fast.

You can achieve this by investing in a premium server that is close to your target group.

The alternative to premium hosting, which starts at around different rates per month, is shared hosting. It’s slower but much cheaper.

With the shared hosting variant, your website is on the same server with others and has to share the power.

This mean that your website will slow down if one of the other pages on the server gets a lot of visitors. Not ideal, but often sufficient to start with.

Our tip: As soon as the budget allows, you should invest in better hosting. Since this can simply increase the speed of your website, which often also improves the ranking.

2. Choose a good domain name

The domain name is the address at which your website can be found. For example  www.seoisb.com – the URL of this website.

Make sure you choose a meaningful domain that will still serve its purpose in a few years.

In the best case, it is a branded domain or branded search term domain, and not a pure search term domain.

3. Put a website focus

Right from the start, be aware of what you want to be found for and what you want to achieve with your website.

Because basically, a website (mostly) only has one task: to win customers.

And your website should be geared towards this.

So think carefully about what the most important search term is for you:

Is the focus on making contact or on selling a product? Do you want to position yourself as an expert or do you mainly want to promote a product?

Take a few minutes, hours, or even days to really be aware of what you want your website to achieve.

This is not only important for the next point but also if you want to invest in AdWords later:

4. A modern & responsive website

More than half of Internet traffic already comes from mobile devices. Ascending trend.

That is why it is extremely important to optimize your website on smartphones and tablets right from the start. This way, mobile users are not put off when they visit your site.

With WordPress, the creation of a modern, responsive website  design and its content is very easy.

But even with other CMS and shop systems, creating a responsive website is no longer as complicated as it was a few years ago.

If you don’t take the web design into your own hands, you should definitely tell the chosen designer what the focus of the website is.

Make sure he has SEO experience so that your website not only looks good later but is found too.

It should also be ensured that the content on the website is optimized for mobile devices.

5. Create the most important pages on your website

Make sure that the most important sub-pages are available on your website from the beginning in order to create a meaningful basis:

Homepage – The homepage

Contact Page – So that your visitors can get in touch.

About Us Page – So that your visitors can learn more about you (& your team)

Offer / Services – So that your visitors know what you are offering

Blog – The articles you publish appear here later

Basically, this is the standard structure that search engines and users expect.

The bigger a website gets, the more important it is to have a meaningful structure.

Each subpage should be accessible with a maximum of 2 clicks!

6. Paste in the essential texts

After you have created the most important pages, they need to be filled with content (texts, images, videos, etc.).

On your homepage, you should come up with around 500-2500 words so that the search engines can understand what the topic of the website is.

The following questions should be answered on the homepage :

What do you offer?

Who are you?

What do customers think of you? (Reviews/customer ratings )

Where you are active, how can customers find/contact you? (Location & contact options)

Moving on to the next page:

The contact page should offer an easy way to contact you.

On the About Us page you should introduce yourself and your team:

Who are you?

What is your story?

Why are you and you offer the best choice?

Present your offer on the product/offer page :

What problem do you solve for your customers?

Why is your offer the best on the market?

The blog: You can also create a subpage for a blog directly, even if you have not yet published any articles.

You don’t have to start designing again later and can publish articles about your company, your offer, your products and your industry.

7. Collect the first few backlinks

Backlinks are the connection of other websites to your website and are very important in order to be found later on Google. Strong backlinks = good ranking!
To your website right on top of power to give, should be the main links are set up directly.

These links come from established websites that are already very strong and trusted by Google.

In search engine optimization, this is called off-page optimization.

Create profiles on the following websites and set links to your homepage, about us page and the offer:

1. Facebook business page
2. Instagram profile
3. Twitter profile
4. YouTube
5. Pinterest
6. about.me
7. Xing & LinkedIn
8. Medium.com
9. WordPress
10. Tumblr
11. Blog spot
12. Weebly
13. Pen.io

That should be enough to start with.

Many of these platforms allow you to not only set a link to the website, but also to the other platforms.

This makes sense because it connects the profiles with one another and thus strengthens the circle of trust.

8. Create a Google MyBusiness profile

After you have created the most important profiles and established links, you should log into Google MyBusiness even if you run an online shop!

Fill out the profile completely.

Company name (+ location)

opening hours

Contact options

Pictures (logo, team, pictures of the rooms)

Link to your website

finished

If you don’t have just one location, this process has to be repeated for each one!

Even if you do not offer local services, you should create a GMB profile, as it is an important link and makes your project/company more serious.

GMB can also be used to efficiently collect reviews. An important trust factor on the internet .

9. Submit your website in local directories if you also sell offline

In order to increase the local relevance and the chance that your company will be found by customers, you should also create entries in various directories and fill them out completely.

The basis has been laid. Congratulations, you are already in a better position than a large part of your competition.

10. Optimize your website for search

Use this small checklist for your homepage & every subpage on the website (apart from contact, imprint & data protection) to be perfectly positioned.

1. Use a meaningful page title with a length of max. 50-55 characters

2. Make sure you have a clean URL structure without filler words. The URLs should be as short and concise as possible.

3. Avoid thin texts. Each subpage should have at least 500 words and 2 pictures – if it makes sense.

4. Deliver value. The texts/videos/images on the website are intended to inform the visitor, solve a problem or help. Don’t use duplicated, stolen or bad content.

5. Set the meta title (heading) and the meta description (a brief description of the content on the page). The title should be max. 60 characters and the description max 155-160 characters. Three hundred characters long, otherwise it will be shortened in the search results. There are several tools and plug-ins that can help you with this.

6. Give the images on your page a meaningful name (not 814bild.jpeg) and set descriptive alt tags.

7. Optimize the images on your website so that they are as small as possible but still sharp. There are various tools and plug-ins that can help with this. However, it is best to upload them already optimized!

Likewise, there is (almost) no reason to include an image with a resolution of more than 1900×1080 pixels on the website.

8. Use headings and sub-headings (H2, H3, H4, etc.) to structure the texts on your page in a meaningful way.

9. Loosen up your texts. Use enough paragraphs, pictures & videos so it doesn’t look like a giant block of text and is easier to read.

10. Check the spelling and grammar of your texts. Nothing looks more improper than a text with too many errors.

11. Use internal links to interesting information (preferably) on your own website, but do not hesitate to link to external sources.

12. Set NoFollow links to data protection, imprint and contact to keep the power on the important pages.

13. Add the address of your company location using the Schema.org mark-up on the location page. If you only have one location, consider adding it to the footer.

14. Embed share buttons on your website so that your visitors can easily share the website if they want.

15. Add only the most important pages to your menu – Home, Offer, About Us, Blog, Contact – There is no need to clutter the website menu.

16. Align your website with the goal that it should fulfill. If you want visitors to contact you, don’t hide the contact.

If you want to sell something, the same rule applies. Make it as easy as possible for your visitors to take the desired action.

11. Research lucrative search terms

If you offer a local service, it is clear what you want to be found for. Nevertheless, it is worth researching other interesting search terms.

So it would be interesting for someone to search keyword How to generate leads? to be found.

In order to find lucrative search terms, you should ask yourself the following questions:

What problems does my target group have?

What is my target group looking for online?

What does my target group find interesting?

What concerns my perfect customer?

In a nutshell:

Put yourself in the mind of your dream customer and write down possible questions that a customer might ask.

Check these words and searches with a keyword tool.

If they have decent search volume, then you can mark them as winners.

That brings us to the next point:

12. Start a blog

After you’ve done your keyword research and created a list of interesting search terms, it’s time to tackle them as well.

It’s time for the first article on your blog!

With almost all providers who offer a basis for websites, e.g. WordPress, there is a possibility to create a blog post.

13. Create texts that will be found

To ensure that your website or article is also found easily in the search results, there are a few things that you have to consider.

In the first step you analyze the pages that are currently on the first page.

How long are your texts?

How are they structured?

What is the focus on?

Your goal should be to produce more informative, longer, and better text. Use the standard structure of an article:

Headline: Create a headline that includes the search term and invites people to click. Make them exciting and interesting.

Instructions: Briefly introduce the content of the article here, use the search term again, explain to the reader what to expect and why he should read the article.

The main part: structure the text logically

If it makes sense, you should explain the topic/search term again in more detail.

Introduce the reader to the topic and structure the text with subheadings so that a reader can scan the text quickly. This way, you can quickly find interesting & relevant sections.

To break up the text, use images, bullet points, videos, quotes, and paragraphs when it makes sense.

Try to keep your sentences short. That makes reading easier. And the reader is not easily bored.

Don’t get lost in technical jargon. Try to use simple words. If you use technical terms, you should explain them in simple words.

Tip: Write your texts in a way that a 10-year-old would understand. That has proven itself on the Internet. Remember that your customers are often not experts in their field, otherwise, they would not need your help/products.

The bottom line: Briefly summarize the most important findings from the text (& give your opinion on the topic).

The call to action: You not only want to make your visitors smarter, you also want to make sure that they hire you or buy your product.

Therefore, you should refer to your offer! For example, like this …

Contact me now to make an appointment.

Download my book now to finally make your dream of six-pack a reality

This is very important so that your visitors don’t just leave the website again.

Also, remember to optimize your articles:

Keep the headline between 50-60 characters.

Make the URL short & concise, insert the keyword.

Optimize the images & add alt tags

Set internal & external links

Tip: Try to publish a new blog post at least once a week. This is how you show Google & Co. that the website is constantly being updated.

14. Optimize the landing pages

Landing pages are the subpages on your website that are responsible for sales. These pages are like your digital sellers.

In the best case, these pages will be found directly by searchers. To achieve this, the same rules apply as for a blog post.

They should be detailed, streamlined, and interesting.

They should also highlight why you are the best choice for the potential customer and include a call to action.

15. Build backlinks

Backlinks are extremely important in competitive industries in order to reach the top positions in search results.
At the beginning of SEO basics, we already built up the first essential backlinks – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, directories & Co.

Now it’s time to go one step further:

We want to collect backlinks from other relevant websites!

One way is to buy backlinks.

However, this is not recommended as there is a risk that Google will make your website undetectable in search results if you are caught.

Google doesn’t like bought backlinks!

The best way to get backlinks is to earn them. In order to automatically collect links, your content has to be better than the competition texts.

But so that your articles & texts are discovered, you have to make people aware of them.

This can be achieved by notifying website operators in your industry via email or social media.

Alternatively, you can also advertise your content on Facebook, Google & Co. in order to build up a readership and backlinks.

One strategy that you should employ is relationship building.

To do this, interact with your target group on social media. Or, regularly leave helpful comments on other blogs in the same industry.

16. Get active on social media

Social media platforms have become an indispensable part of life. It only makes sense to use these platforms to attract new visitors and customers.

Depending on the industry, you should focus on a social media platform.

Find out where your audience is most active – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or YouTube?

You should then focus on this platform.

Nevertheless, you should try to distribute your articles, pictures and videos as widely as possible.

You should, therefore, post an article on Facebook, Twitter & Co. after you have published it on your blog.

Also Read About: How to build brand awareness strategy

17. Test & stay tuned

Know that for good search engine optimization that will bring you long-term success and new customers, you need patience.

So don’t be discouraged if you are not in the first position for your desired keywords tomorrow.

Stick to the checklist, post more articles, and earn backlinks.