Getting Started With SEO For Beginners: Top Ranking Factors For SEO
As a search engine optimization-first digital agency, the experts at Blue Compass get asked a lot of questions about SEO from businesses looking to improve their online presence. Many business owners know that SEO is important, but they’re not sure where to begin with implementing SEO best practices into their own websites. If you are just starting on this journey, search engine optimization may be overwhelming, but we are here to help you get started! We’ll be uncovering how to improve the SEO of your website as a beginner, and what ranking factors for SEO to keep in mind.
Why Is SEO Important?
Search engine optimization helps make your website more visible in search results, which means more traffic and opportunities for increased conversions. A strong SEO strategy can make sure your brand appears in front of the right audiences to drive traffic, leads and sales.
While SEO is a foundational element in meeting business goals online, there are so many factors that go into SEO that it can be difficult for beginner marketers to know what to do. Google’s algorithm looks at over 200 ranking factors—from page content to technical coding of the site—that can make it challenging to solve the SEO puzzle.
SEO For Beginners: Common Terms To Know
Search engine optimization terms can feel like another language entirely, making it difficult to determine what solutions are needed for an SEO problem. While our SEO guide can provide additional information on key SEO concepts and terms, here are a few to keep in mind as you’re developing your own SEO strategy.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness (EEAT)
EEAT is an important acronym to signal SEO success. As a key component in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, this term provides a blueprint for how to develop, structure and write your website’s original content to increase ranking potential and improve your site’s search performance over time. EEAT describes your content’s level of experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, which helps show Google the website’s credentials and real-world experience with the topics on the site.
Search Engine Crawler Or Spider
A search engine crawler, spider or bot reviews content from all across the Internet. Crawlers systematically browse web content to learn about the information on the pages so it can show up in search results for relevant queries. You can also use a search engine spider tool to crawl your own website and check for errors or on-page elements to optimize.
Crawl Budget
Crawl budget signals the total number of URLs on your website that a search engine bot will crawl within a specific time period. Once these crawlers have reached the maximum budget, they’ll move on to another website. Especially if you have a large, complex site, resolving SEO errors is critical to avoid increasing your crawl budget. If your crawl budget prevents Google from visiting all pages on your site, your content will not show up in search results.
Keywords
A keyword is a word or phrase that users type into a search engine to find relevant content based on their query. When writing page content, spend time researching to understand the types of words and phrases your target audience is searching for. That way you will have a better chance of showing up in search results for relevant queries. After you generate your list of keywords, strategically placing them in headings and body copy will bring greater SEO value to your content (we say more on this topic below too!).
Meta Title & Meta Description
When you type a word or phrase into Google’s search bar, the search results will be displayed with a meta title and meta description to provide brief information about the page content. These short introductions entice users to click and read more. Meta titles and meta descriptions are crucial elements to a successful SEO strategy because they help Google quickly understand the purpose of your webpages in order to rank your website appropriately.
What Are The Most Important SEO Ranking Factors?
While you could start chipping away at Google’s list of 200+ algorithm ranking factors, there are a few key elements to focus on to put your site in a good position to continue growing in search engine results pages (SERPs). Adopting a holistic approach to SEO by focusing on big-picture factors will help you gain SEO value quicker than optimizing individual pages for smaller ranking factors. As you begin putting your SEO strategies together, focusing on these SEO ranking factors will help ensure your website is compliant with Google and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards:
- Website security and accessibility
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals scores
- Optimized page content
- Internal links, outbound links and backlinks
- Technical SEO improvements
How To Boost Your Website’s SEO For Beginners
When thinking about making your website more SEO-friendly, remember that Google’s entire purpose is to provide valuable results for its users. While past SEO strategies involved using sneaky tactics to stuff keywords into pages or gain backlinks through unique means, these days good SEO means thinking about how to create content your audience will find helpful. In order for users to find your content, it’s important to make sure Google can easily find and understand the pages on your website.
Conduct An SEO Website Audit
Ensuring a solid SEO foundation will help search engines rank your content, which will drive organic traffic. One of the best ways to do this is to conduct an SEO audit to identify any technical, on-page or image errors. Fixing SEO errors will increase the user experience on your website, as well as make it easier for Google to crawl your site.
Do Keyword Research
Keyword research helps increase your site’s helpful content by allowing you to answer the questions your potential customers are asking. When using a keyword research tool, you’re able to choose which terms to include in your page content that you’re most likely to rank for based on their keyword volume and difficulty. By choosing keywords strategically, you can increase your chances of ranking for certain queries in SERPs, establish authority and build goodwill with your audience.
Increase Internal Linking
To make sure Google can easily crawl and understand your website, include internal links to relevant pieces of content throughout your site. Adding links within content to a related blog or service page allows you to push users towards similar products or services to keep them on your site for longer and encourage them to return again in the future. Google uses internal links to build a full picture of your website to see how your products and services connect to one another.
How Long Does It Take For SEO To Work?
While there are some tasks you can do to boost your site’s SEO within one day, they won’t lead to long-term success. If you want long-term success with SEO, you must continue to evolve and work on it. SEO is not a “set it and forget it” tactic; it’s not something you can do once, check it off your list and see instant results. You must continually work to improve on your site’s SEO because Google’s algorithm is making constant updates. As Google evolves, you need to prepare to shift your content and best practices at any given time to ensure you’re staying relevant in search results.
Learn How To Improve The SEO Of Your Website With Search Engine Optimization Services
Getting started with SEO as a beginner can be daunting, and it’s often difficult to know where to begin. If you’re looking to boost your website’s SEO value but you don’t have the bandwidth to implement our strategies outlined above, we can help! Our team of experts is skilled in ensuring your website is in the best shape to begin ranking in search results. Contact us if you’re ready to build a solid SEO foundation and develop helpful content that resonates with potential customers.
Hannah Burke
Hannah Burke graduated from Iowa State University with her degree in Advertising. As a Digital Marketing Specialist at Blue Compass, Hannah excels in helping clients develop a solid SEO foundation to set them up for success in search results. Hannah is always eager to expand her knowledge of all things digital to enhance her marketing capabilities.