SEO Basics

If you’re new to SEO, the process can seem daunting. However, it’s actually quite simple once you get the hang of it. In its most basic form, SEO is all about improving your website so that it will rank higher in the search engines. This can be accomplished by adding relevant keywords to your website’s content, making sure your website is easy to navigate, and ensuring that your website’s code is clean and well-organized.

Set up GSC and Bing Webmaster tools

Adding your site to Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Web Master Tools is a fundamental first step in any good SEO process. These tools provide valuable insights into how your site is performing and how it is being seen by the search engines. They also allow you to submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling, set up 301 redirects, and much more.

Set up Google Analytics

To set up Google Analytics, you’ll need a Google account. If you don’t have one, you can create one for free. Once you have a Google account, sign in to your Analytics account (or set up a new account) and add your first property.

Install and configure an SEO plugin (wordpress)

There are a lot of different SEO plugins for WordPress, but we recommend using Yoast SEO. It’s a comprehensive SEO solution that will take care of all the technical aspects of optimizing your website for search engines. Best of all, it’s free!

Here are the steps you need to take to install and configure Yoast SEO:

1. Install the plugin: Go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress admin panel and search for “Yoast SEO”. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Configure the plugin: Go to SEO > General in your WordPress admin panel and click on the Features tab. Enable all the features that you want to use.
3. Set up your titles and metas: Go to SEO > Titles & Metas in your WordPress admin panel and fill in the fields for each of the different types of pages on your website (e.g. Homepage, Post Page, Category Page). Make sure you enter your focus keyword for each page!
4. Configure XML sitemaps: Go to SEO > XML Sitemaps in your WordPress admin panel and check the box to enable XML sitemaps. If you want, you can also add some additional sitemaps (e.g. for images or videos) but they’re not necessary.
5. Connect your website to Google Webmaster Tools: Go to SEO > Webmaster Tools in your WordPress admin panel and enter your Google Webmaster Tools verification code (or property ID if you’re using multiple web properties). This will allow you to see how Google is indexing your website and spot any errors that need to be fixed.
6. Set up social media integration: Go to SEO > Social in your WordPress admin panel and connect your website to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and/or LinkedIn (if applicable). This will allow you to share your content on social media and get more traffic from those platforms
   Keyword Research
   If you’re serious about ranking in the search engines, then keyword research is a must. You need to find out what keywords people are searching for that are related to your niche. There are a few different ways to do this, but the easiest is to use a keyword research tool. There are many different keyword research tools available, but my personal favorite is Google Keyword Planner.
   Identify your competitors
   
   In order to find the best keywords for your website or blog, you need to know who your competition is. There are a few different ways to find out who is ranking for the keywords you want to target. The first way is to use a tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner. This tool will show you the average monthly searches for a given keyword as well as how much competition there is for that keyword.

Another way to find out who your competition is by doing a Google search for your target keyword. Scroll through the results and take note of which websites are ranking on the first page. These are your competitors. Once you have a list of your competitors, you can start to do some research on their keywords.

Conduct a keyword gap analysis

Before you can know which keywords to target, you need to understand which keywords your competitors are targeting. This is done through a process called keyword research. Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing the search terms that people are using to find products and services like yours.

There are a number of ways to do keyword research, but the easiest way is to use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner. With this tool, you can enter a word or phrase and get results that show you how many people are searching for that term and how much competition there is for it.

Once you have a list of keywords, you can start to analyze the gap between your own use of those keywords and your competitor’s use of them. This process is called keyword gap analysis. There are a number of ways to do this, but one simple way is to create a spreadsheet with two columns: one for your site and one for your competitor’s site. Then, fill in each column with the keywords that are most important to you. Finally, compare the two lists and look for gaps where your competitor is ranking for keywords that you’re not. These are the keywords that you should be targeting!

Find your main ‘money’ keywords

Before you start any digital marketing campaign, it is essential to carry out keyword research. This will enable you to identify the best keywords to target in your SEO and content marketing efforts.

There are a number of different methods you can use to carry out keyword research, but one of the simplest and most effective is to use a tool like Google Keyword Planner.

With Google Keyword Planner, you can enter a seed keyword or phrase and get ideas for related terms that people are searching for. You can then use these keywords in your content to attract traffic from search engines.

In addition to using Google Keyword Planner, there are a number of other methods you can use to carry out keyword research, including:

• competitor analysis
• searching on social media platforms
• using keyword research tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs
  Technical SEO
  Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website for the search engines. It is a subset of SEO that focuses on the technical aspects of a website. Technical SEO includes optimizing the server, website structure, and code. It also includes optimizing the website for speed and mobile devices. Technical SEO is important because it helps the search engines understand and index your website.
  Leverage “Inspect URL” feature in GSC
  
  The “Inspect URL” feature in Google Search Console (GSC) is an extremely useful tool for Technical SEOs. This feature allows you to see how Google perceives your website’s URL, and can be used to identify and fix common Technical SEO issues.

To use the “Inspect URL” feature, simply enter a URL into the GSC search bar and click the “Inspect” button. This will bring up a report that details any issues that Google has found with your website’s URL. The report will also provide recommendations on how to fix these issues.

Some common issues that can be identified using the “Inspect URL” feature include:
-Duplicate content
-404 errors
-Robots.txt file errors
-Missing H1 tags
-Slow page speed

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

One of the most important factors in technical SEO is ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly. In today’s world, more and more people are using their mobile devices to access the internet, and if your website is not optimized for mobile devices, you will lose out on a lot of potential traffic. There are a few things you can do to make sure your website is mobile-friendly:

• Use responsive design: Responsive design is a type of web design that allows your website to adapt to the device it is being viewed on, whether it be a desktop computer, a tablet, or a mobile phone. This means that your website will look good and be easy to use no matter what device someone is using to view it.
• Use large font sizes: Another important factor in making your website mobile-friendly is using large font sizes. This makes it easy for people to read your content on their mobile devices without having to zoom in, which can be frustrating.
• Use short paragraphs: When writing content for your website, keep your paragraphs short and sweet. Mobile users are more likely to skim content than read it word for word, so make sure your paragraphs are easy to scan.

By following these tips, you can ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and more likely to rank high in search engine results pages.

Check your site’s loading speed

site speed is critical for many reasons. It’s a ranking factor for Google, it affects conversion rates, and it influences how users perceive your brand. Sites that load faster also tend to have lower bounce rates, and that’s because users are more likely to stick around when they don’t have to wait 10 seconds for a page to load.

There are a number of ways to improve your site’s loading speed, but one of the easiest is to optimize your images. When you save an image for the web, you want to make sure it’s the smallest file size possible while still maintaining its quality. There are a number of ways to do this, but one of the simplest is to use an online tool like TinyPNG. Just upload your image, and it will compress it for you.

On-page and Content

The on-page content of a website is what appears on the web page itself and includes the text, images, videos, and other information that is visible to visitors. The off-page content of a website includes everything else that is not on the web page itself, such as social media mentions, external links, and other online references.

Fix duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags

It’s important to have unique and keyword rich title tags on each of your website’s pages. This will help your pages rank higher in search engines and click-through rates.

Duplicate title tags can occur when you have multiple pages with the same or similar content. This can be fixed by either rewriting the titles to be unique, or by using canonical tags to point search engines to the correct page.

Missing title tags can be an issue if you have a lot of pages on your website, or if you are using dynamic content that doesn’t include a title tag. You can fix this by adding missing titles in your code, or by using a plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast which will automatically add missing title tags to your pages.

Truncated title tags can happen if your titles are too long. This can be fixed by rewriting your titles to be shorter, or by using a plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast which will automatically truncate title tags that are too long.

Find and fix duplicate or missing meta descriptions

If you find that your pages are missing meta descriptions, or if you find that some of your pages have duplicate meta descriptions, you can follow these steps to fix the problem:

1. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to check for pages with missing or duplicate meta descriptions.
2. For each page that is missing a meta description, add one. Make sure that your meta descriptions are unique and relevant to the page content.
3. For each page with a duplicate meta description, edit the meta description so that it is unique and relevant to the page content.
   Find and fix multiple H1 tags

Your website should have only one H1 tag per page, at the beginning of the page’s content. This helps search engines understand what your page is about and makes it easier for visitors to scan your page and find the information they’re looking for.

If you have more than one H1 tag on a page, or if your H1 tag is not at the beginning of the page’s content, you can fix this by editing your website’s code.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is the process of optimizing a website for better search engine rankings. It involves improving the site’s backlink profile and making it more user-friendly. However, off-page SEO can also be a time-consuming and tedious process. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of off-page SEO.

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

One of the most important aspects of any off-page SEO campaign is analyzing your competitor’s link profile. This will give you an idea of what kind of links they have, where they’re getting them from, and how you can replicate their success.

There are a few different ways to go about this. One is to use a tool like Majestic or Moz’s Open Site Explorer. These tools will show you all of the links pointing to a given website, as well as some other useful information like the authority of the linking site and the anchor text being used.

Another way to do this is to simply Google your competitor’s domain name and look at the results. This won’t show you every link they have, but it will give you a good general idea.

Once you have a good understanding of your competitor’s link profile, you can start working on building similar links for your own website. This can be done through link baiting, guest blogging, directory submissions, and more.

Conduct a link intersect analysis

Conducting a link intersect analysis is one of the most helpful things you can do for your off-page SEO. By finding intersections, or commonalities, between the links your competition has and the links you have, you can discover new link building opportunities.

Here’s how to conduct a link intersect analysis:

1. Export the backlink profiles for your site and your competitor’s site from a tool like Majestic, Moz, or AHrefs.
2. Import the backlink files into a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets.
3. Use the “vlookup” function to find common links between the two sites.
4. Reach out to the websites that are linking to your competitor but not to you and ask for a link.
   Target your competitors’ broken backlinks
   
   One of the most valuable link building strategies is to target your competitor’s broken backlinks.

When a website links to another website and the page they’re linking to no longer exists, that’s called a “broken link.” Broken links are harmful to both the user experience and SEO.

But here’s the thing: broken links present an opportunity for you to get a link from that same website. Here’s how it works:

1. Use a tool like Ahrefs or Majestic to find websites that link to your competitors, but not you.
2. Find the broken links on those websites using a tool like Screaming Frog or Check My Links.
3. Reach out to the website owner and let them know about the broken link.
4. Suggest your website as a replacement resource.

Doing this consistently can help you build high-quality backlinks from some of the most authoritative websites in your industry.