If you’re just getting started with search engine optimisation (SEO), you might be tempted to go through Google’s ranking factors one by one and create a list of things you need to do to optimise your site.

Normally, that would be a good approach. The problem is that major search engines are governed by complex algorithms that take into account not tens, or hundreds, but more than 10,000 factors when ranking sites.

The best thing to do is to start small. Choose a few key things to focus on, learn how to implement them on your site, make the changes, and then measure the results. In this post we’ll walk you through six things you should do as a SEO beginner to convince major search engines like Google that your website deserves one of the top spots.

Before you start working on your SEO

Following simple SEO tips will give you a good chance of boosting your rankings in search engines.  Here are a few important starting points:

Meta Title

Your website’s meta title should summarise your website and connect to your content and services. Try to keep your meta title no more than 55 characters long and avoid repeating keywords within it, otherwise your site will be penalised by search engines. You should also try to make it as compelling as you can, so that visitors feel encouraged to visit your website.

Meta Description

Much like with your meta title, your website’s meta description should be a short statement that summarises the content of each page and inspires curiosity for visitors. Each page of your site should feature a meta description, which should be around 150-154 characters long. Avoid stuffing too many keywords into your meta description though, otherwise you’ll be penalised by search engines.

Keywords

Part of what search engines look for when indexing sites is the number, and type, of keywords found on the site. Essentially, these should be the main words or phrases that customers will be entering into search engines.

Keywords can be longer phrases or just one or two specific words – the most effective method is a mixture of the two. For example, a window glazier would include the word “Window” on their website. However, people searching for the term “Windows” would receive results for new computers, software and mobile phones.

So, alongside the word “Windows”, you could also include “double glazing”, “glass repair” and “patio doors” – this will mean that when people are searching for someone to fix their windows, they are far more likely to visit your site.

Alt Tags

Alt tags are alternative descriptions for images that make it easier for search engines to find your website and categorise it. These should describe the appearance or function of your image in a way that fits the context of your page.

For example, if you offer a window fixture service and you have an image of a window on your site, a great alt tag could be ‘High-quality window fitting services’. Essentially, the more descriptive your alt tag, the better. However, try to keep it relatively short (i.e. within 125 characters).

Now that we have the basics out of the way, let’s move onto our Top Six Tips for SEO Success.

1. Find out how people search for your brand or business

Your prospects search for your brand, business, products or services in lots of different ways.

For example, if you’re an emergency plumber in London, users could search for “emergency plumber in London”, “emergency plumber near me” or “24/7 emergency plumbing repair” to find you online.

While the search terms are phrased differently, the users’ intent is the same: to find an emergency plumber.

The first step to boosting your site’s visibility in the search engine results is to find out and understand how your audience is searching for the product, service, or information you provide. You can then use those exact search terms, or variations of them, to create the great content that all those people are searching for.

But how do you find out how your audience searches for your website? This is where keyword research tools come in.

Those emergency plumber keyword examples above aren’t made up. Some are directly from Google’s auto-suggest and related searches boxes.

You can go to Google and enter the main keywords that you would like to rank for. These will be things like your products, services, or other topics that your website addresses.

You’ll notice that as you type in a keyword, Google will suggest related search terms:

And once you hit enter, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll see another list of related search terms.

Make a list of the search terms that are relevant to your website and you’ve got a good starting point for your search terms.

However, you don’t know how many people are searching for a particular keyword, so you can’t know which you should prioritise.

That’s why it’s a good idea to use a keyword research tool.

A keyword research tool will let you know how many people are searching for a particular term and it can help you find keywords you hadn’t thought of.

Check out this beginner’s guide to keyword research where we share some of the most popular tools and how to use them, along with tips on the type of keywords you should target for SEO purposes.

2. Use your research to create relevant content

Now that you know what your audience is searching for, it’s time to create great content that answers their questions and gives them the information they’re looking for.

One important thing to keep in mind here is that you want every page on your site to rank for a specific keyword or keyword phrase (or set of related keywords). Don’t optimise two pages for the same keywords because then they’ll be competing against each other. You don’t want that, especially since you’re likely competing against lots of other sites already.

So, here’s what you should do next:

• Figure out which pages you want to rank for which keywords.
• Create content that’s useful for your audience. Make sure it answers their questions and gives them the great advice and information they’re looking for.
• Optimise that page to make it relevant to people’s searches. This means including your main keyword as well as variations of it throughout the content in a way that makes it read natural, and only when and where it makes sense.

In this post you can find lots more tips and advice on where and how to use keywords to properly optimise your content for search engines. To get an idea, you should include your keywords in your page title, meta description, headings and subheadings, images and, of course, the actual content.

You also need to make sure that your most important keywords are mentioned on your most important pages. For example, a product page should include multiple keywords that are relevant to that product.

3. Publish high-quality blog content

There are few SEO tactics that are more effective at putting those powerful keywords to work and increasing your site’s visibility online like blogging.

A blog gives you all the space you need to answer your audience’s most pressing questions, share useful tips and advice, and build your reputation as an authority in your industry.

And you know what else happens when you constantly publish quality, useful content on your blog? Google and other search engines index it. And the more pages they index, the more chances you have to rank high for various keywords and keyword phrases.

In other words, the higher your chances of being found online by people who are searching for answers or solutions to their problems on Google.

Read our beginner’s guide to blogging for business to learn how to get started with your blog, including how to find out what keywords and topics to focus on to bring in more visitors.

4. Earn backlinks and mentions of your brand

Read any SEO blog and it won’t be long before you encounter talk of backlinks, link building and brand mentions.

If you’re not familiar with backlinks, these are links from other sites or blogs pointing to your site. They’re an important ranking factor that Google looks at when deciding which results to show first.

Why are they so important? Because Google looks at a backlink like a recommendation for that page and its content. With enough links, a web page could start to appear on the first page of Google.

It’s similar with brand mentions. If lots of people talk about a brand online, Google will understand that the brand is worth of attention, increasing the chances that the brand’s website will appear on the first page of Google.

Although you can use backlinks to boost your search engine results, remember that you still need to target relevant keywords. If you don’t target relevant keywords, any link building you do could be a waste of time and effort.

Check out these two posts to learn more about how to attract backlinks and brand mentions:

1) How to get started building links for SEO

2) How to get more brand mentions

As well as earning backlinks, you should also look at the internal linking of your website. A good internal link structure will help both people and search engines navigate your site easily. Check out this guide for tips on internal linking.

5. Speed up your website on all devices

Site speed not only affects your SEO efforts and visibility in the search engine results but also users’ experience on your website.

Site speed is also a Google ranking factor, which means that if you want to rank higher in the search results, you need to make sure your site loads quickly.

Here’s the official word on site speed from Google: “Speeding up websites is important – not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.”

You can check your current loading time using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool:

Marks are out of 100 and anything over 90 is ideal, while a score under 80 indicates you have speed issues that need to be addressed.

Helpfully, the PageSpeed Insights tool also tells you what you need to fix in order to speed up your site.

Find out more about why speeding up your website is important for both SEO and your visitors, and learn what you can do to improve it.

6. Register with Google Search Console

The sixth piece of SEO advice is to make sure to register your site with Google Search Console.

This suite of tools helps you identify issues with your site as well as opportunities for improvement that can ultimately boost website traffic. It can even let you know if your site has been infected with malware (which is something you want to deal with right away).

And the best part? It’s free so you have no reason not to take advantage, especially since there are many more useful things you can use it for.

Take a look at our beginner’s guide to Google Search Console to learn more about how it works and how to set it up.

In conclusion

Building a site that both your visitors and search engines love is not easy. Not to mention that it can take about three months to start getting SEO results.

But instead of trying every tactic out there, go with a more effective approach that’s ideal for anyone who’s just getting started with SEO. That is to smart small with these six SEO tips. Next, make the necessary changes to your site and see what works and gets you closer to the top of the search engine results pages. Good luck!