SEO for Beginners

Does your website work as hard as the rest of your business? Does it rank high in search results? Is it being found by the right people? Does it make your phones ring? Does it generate income? If it doesn't, there's no need to tear your hair out. But maybe it's time to look a little closer at your SEO strategy.

And before you run away screaming let me tell you what SEO isn't: SEO is not witchcraft. SEO is not rocket science. And neither do you need a huge budget and an IT department.

SEO is a marketing function, focussed on meeting your customers' needs.

Only in this case, the customer is Google or any other search engine. And by optimising your site in a way Google understands you simply help meet their needs. So if your website is not working as hard as you, then maybe it's time to take some baby steps towards optimisation. And you can start right here. SEO for beginners is a mini-course of basic SEO steps that anyone can do. Spend five minutes a day - sometimes just reading, at other times completing one of the tasks - and your site will soon reap the benefits.

SEO for Beginners requires no high levels of geekiness or computer wizardry, just common sense and access to your business website.

What the SEO for Beginners mini-course teaches you:

  • What is Search Engine Optimisation?
  • Why you should install Google Analytics on your site
  • How Search Engines Work
  • How search engines rank their search results
  • The importance of keywords
  • How to use keywords: a simple SEO primer
  • Page Title: Snappy is Best
  • Page Description: Food for Google, a taster for your customers
  • Keywords box: your secret weapon in reaching the right customers
  • A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words
  • Image file names - would YOU like to be called xdfdlj30555.jpg?
  • Image Alt Tags: another secret weapon
  • Image Title Tags: Now you see them...
  • Inbound, outbound - should you bother about links?
  • Why outbound links matter
  • Inbound links: do numbers count?
  • Internal links: why click here doesn't help you
  • Adding an xml sitemap file

You'll get the most out of SEO for beginners if you work your way down the list, one topic at a time. When there are tasks to perform, make sure you've completed them before moving on. In the beginning, you will spend much of your time re-doing pages on your site and yes, that's boring. But don't skip this step. A consistently optimised site will score a lot higher in the long run than a haphazard effort.

If you need an extra pair of hands, you'll know where to find me. I'm always happy to help out.

Now, on to the first lesson:
What is Search Engine Optimisation?