SEO for Beginners

SEO for Beginners

SEO for Beginners

“Not just for you; learn what your competition is doing
– and beat ’em. “

SEO for Beginners will give you a quick overview of what SEO is and isn’t. It is NOT a complete understanding of SEO.

Most everyone knows that SEO has as a primary goal the placement of a website near the top of the first page of results that a searcher sees when doing a Google search. This is the very basic understanding that you need for understanding SEO for beginners. And we think just about everyone knows this. 

We know that a searcher will receive a large number of pages from Google that give the results of a search that they have performed. We also know that being on page 138 of the results is not much help for a business. Just about everyone thinking about SEO for Beginners know this.

It is better to be listed in the first few pages. In fact, it is best to be listed on the first page of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS).

And, the top three positions are where you should aim for.

Unfortunately, most SEO for beginner’s knowledge stops here.

But, if you are serious about your business, you know that this is not the end of the story. Just as YOUR website is listed in Google’s results, so also are your competitors’ websites.

And that’s the difficulty confronting you if all you know is SEO for beginners. You are not alone; your competitors are right there with you!

SEO Accolade Group of VermontA knowledgeable businessperson can leverage this knowledge to discover the ranking of his competitors and to determine if there is anything that he can do to jump ahead of them.

 

A businessperson knows that Google can tell him a lot about his competition and it can provide clues as to how to outdo them.

So, how do you get this knowledge?

The first thing you can do is to perform an SEO Audit of your website. 

This is the starting point for SEO for beginners. An audit will help you to understand what you are doing right and, more importantly, what you are doing wrong.

Very many times a web page is put online without any real SEO behind it. Many website creators are thinking only about making a website beautiful or easy to navigate. But, the owner of the website does not think of those things first. The owner thinks about “how do I get this website to make money for me.”

At Accolade Group, the people creating a website work closely with those who do Search Engine Optimization so that a finished website is ready to begin making money for the website owner.

At the very least, you should have a properly formatted URL, unique description of the content on the page, and a descriptive title for the page. This is the very minimum…and, some developers, including those at Accolade Group, would say these elements are not even the minimum you need! But, this is where the person who wants to know about SEO begins; you need to move beyond SEO for beginners. And, to know this, he should perform an SEO Audit.

Read more about an SEO Audit.

SEO can also provide insight into how Social Media is affecting the ranking of a business’ website. Of course, if you don’t have any Social Media such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you miss the opportunity to promote your own business ahead of your competition.

When we mention Social Media, we immediately think of applications that you are already familiar with such as Facebook, Instagram,  LinkedIn and a few others.

These applications are also part of promoting your business and shouldn’t be overlooked.

However, we know that the content of these applications is not on your website; so, we call them “off page SEO” in contrast to “on page SEO”.

On page SEO is what you do to your website itself to help it rank better in the search results. And, off page SEO is what you do to your social media applications like Facebook to help your website rank better in the search results.

On page SEO and off page SEO work together to help your business succeed. Take a few minutes and learn more about on page and off page SEO.

And right here we usually need to slow our clients down from clamoring to implement a Social Media campaign. After all, what good does it do to promote your business on social media with links to your website if your website is not ready? It’s too bad that some people have come to think that Social Media is part of SEO for Beginners. 

It’s sometimes difficult for our clients to understand that it is NOT advisable to leap into Social Media before their website is ready.

After all, it’s the website – and not Facebook, and all the rest – that has the information that you want to present to your prospective clients. What good does it do to send people who are looking for information to a website that isn’t ready to provide it?

Understanding this issue is a large step to have taken in your quest to understand SEO.

You should work with your developer to understand what you should change to fix your website. Only then should you think about off page SEO.

If you understood what we just said, then you will understand that the same holds true for on page SEO. Begin with getting your website ready.

Remember, it’s not a good idea to spend money on SEO when you first launch your website. Let your website kick around for a few months and see where Google ultimately places your site in the SERPS. Then, you begin your SEO campaign.

Accolade Group can work with you to understand your ranking in the search results pages. We can work with you to determine which of your pages should enjoy SEO efforts and what kind of efforts should be done to make your website more revenue aware.

No, just having a website is NOT enough; you must do SEO or your competition will eventually gain what you are losing.

Who says we know about SEO?

Contact Us!